Reflections on New Norcia: 1- First Impressions

As promised, I will share some reflections on my week at the Benedictine Monastery in New Norcia, WA. Because the week was so full and rich, I will do this over a few entries, under different categories.

I went to New Norcia as part of a mid-year intensive unit, called Prayer and Hospitality: Benedictine Spirituality and Australia with the United Faculty of Theology (UFT) as part of my B.Theol. degree.

Our group consisted of 15 people, including Katharine and John, our two lecturers, and the 'students' among us included people like myself, who were taking the unit as credit towards a degree, as well as others who were 'auditing' the unit (ie participating in the unit for enjoyment/personal interest, and not required to do the assessment tasks).

View of the frontage of the monastery and guest house

We all met at Perth airport on the Friday afternoon, and travelled the 130km to New Norcia by bus, arriving around 4pm. We were accommodated in the Monastery guest house, and because of the size of our group, we completely booked out the guest house for the week, and had most of the visitors' facilities there to ourselves. The guest house was quite comfortable, and I was one of the lucky ones who was accommodated alone in a twin room with private en suite bathroom. Some of our group were in the lower guest house which had single rooms and shared bathroom facilities (and the fact that these shared facilities were unisex, caused surprise -and mild consternation- for some members of our group, and great amusement to the rest of us).

After we arrived and settled into our rooms, we had time to wander around the vicinity of the Monastery before our first scheduled activity, which was Vespers in the Oratory. As the sun began to set, I was struck by the sense of quiet that wrapped the place like a blanket. As I stood with one of the guys in our group outside the front gate of the Monastery, gazing at the line of bare trees along the road, and then across at the Abbey church and the buildings beyond in the rest of the town, we just stood, with mouths open ... and he commented: "wow," which summed it all up, really.

At that stage, I really didn't have much idea of what the week would hold (despite having a relatively detailed schedule for each day, I didn't quite know what to expect). But there was an overwhelming sense of "place" here. Peace and quiet (despite the regular road trains thundering through the middle of town up the highway) and a strong feeling that the whole town is a sacred space.

Later, a few of us had a cuppa in the guest house loungeroom (which would also be our classroom for the week) before having our first Benedictine prayer experience at Vespers. I'll talk more about the prayer, worship and Daily Offices in another post.

The Abbey Church in the morning light

After Vespers comes dinner. Because of the early start to the day (the bell rings to wake the community at 5am most days... but on Sunday we got to 'sleep in'... until 5:45am) the midday meal is the main meal of the day, and the evening meal is known as 'tea' or 'supper' and is lighter. When we entered the dining room, there was a large pot of soup, and a goodly supply of the famous New Norcia bread awaiting us. After being told by Katharine about lunch being the main meal, I was expecting that soup and bread would be the total of the meal... but then noticed other cutlery on the table. When I mentioned this to Katharine, her comment was, "Oh yes, there's main course to come after this". When I then queried about this not being the main meal, she replied: "At lunchtime there are three courses. You may find that your spirit is not all that grows whilst you're here!"

And so it went on... at every meal we had a range of delectable fresh New Norcia Bread, lovely soup and a main course, with a bonus dessert at lunch. There was also wine on the table at every meal, and bowls of fruit available to munch on at any time. I seriously doubt that anyone has ever starved whilst experiencing Benedictine hospitality (or at least not in New Norcia!).