Bits and pieces

Today has been a bitsy kind of day in New Norcia.

As always, I was up at 5am, for prayer with the monks at 5:15, but today was not the only extra body there. Another fellow, who I think is staying in the monastery clericatus, was there.

The clericatus (thanks for asking) is a section within the monks' cloister where visiting clergy, special guests with a close association with the monastery and some staff or volunteer workers are accommodated (as long as they have the right kind of genitalia).

But all jokes aside, it makes sense for only males to be accommodated there, as the monks' cloister is the private space where the monks live in close community with each other, and get to be blokey blokes together. This section of the monastery also includes the refectory, where the monks eat their meals, the monastic library, music room, monks' parlour and various other rooms that make up the private living and study space of the monks.

It used to be that women were not allowed in this section of the monastery at all, although the previous Abbot, Placid, started to relax those rules, by allowing some women into this sacred space on special occasions. Whenever any Good Samaritan Sisters are visiting the monastery, they are usually invited to eat with the monks in the ref, and Abbot Placid also always invited the members of the UFT study groups to share a meal with the monks during their stay. I was fortunate enough to do this on my first visit here in 2007. UFT groups also usually receive a guided tour of the monastic library, which is just to die for. My reaction on entering the space was to drool, and exclaim that it would almost be worth having a sex change and becoming Catholic so that I could become a monk and study there. (ALMOST... :-)

Since the current Abbot, John, was installed just over three years ago, he has relaxed the rules even further, so that he regularly invites female staff and visitors to the monastery to join the monks for meals in the ref, however the procedure is that any male visitor coming to New Norcia can request to eat in the ref with the monks, but females have to be invited. Since John has been Abbot, I have usually been invited to share a meal with the monks on each visit. This also includes sharing post-prandial coffee and port in the parlour afterwards (and if it happens to be a Sunday, there is also chocolate! :-). The first time John invited me to such an occasion, was for Sunday lunch, after the conclusion of a spirituality retreat on women in the Scriptures. A couple of female staff were also invited, as was the facilitator of the retreat. 

As is usual in the refectory, the meal is eaten in silence, as one of the monks reads to the group. At each meal the readings usually include a passage of Scripture, an excerpt from the Rule of Benedict and a reading from a book selected by the Abbot as being beneficial or interesting for the monks. On that occasion, the book was The History of Vatican II (can't remember which volume... I think there are 7 in total, and they were working their way through them all... although interspersed with something a little lighter in between volumes, according to the Abbot).

After the meal we were invited to join the monks for coffee and port, which a few of us did. By now, I had had one or two glasses of wine with the meal (because The History of Vatican II will do that to one), and the Abbot's secretary (Fr Ian) had plied me with a couple of glasses of port. Also present was Joanna, who with her husband, managed the New Norcia Hotel. Although I'd seen Joanna around, and knew her to say hello to in the past, we only really got to know each other during the retreat, which was great, and were happily chatting away over our port and coffee in the parlour.

When the time came for us to leave, Fr Ian escorted us out of the parlour, and rather than leaving via the side exit into the guesthouse cloister (the way we came in), he led us through the courtyard to the main gate of the monstery - the one that has a big "PRIVATE" sign on it. As we approached the gate, we were talking and just a tad giggly (as one is after a couple of glasses of port in the middle of the day). Fr Ian (who was wearing a very daggy tracksuit, and didn't look at all like a priest) said, "Hey, wouldn't it be funny if there was a town tour group stopped at the gate, and the guide's in the middle of saying, 'here's the private section of the monastery where only the monks are allowed to go... and women are not allowed in here', as I let you out". We all giggled at the thought.

The monastery gate

So picture if you will- two giggling females, one only slightly less giggly male (looking very daggy and un-priestlike) approaching the main gate of the monastic enclosure from the inside, to find an ABC television film crew camped just outside the gate, with a camera trained on the monastery gate as we approached. Joanna and I laughed so hard we almost fell over, and I don't think Fr Ian blushed, but he came close (as I asked him how long he'd had the gift of prophecy ;-).

As it happened, that weekend, a group of pilgrims who had been walking the Camino Salvado trail, from Perth to New Norcia, had completed their pilgrimage and walked into New Norcia on the Saturday, shared some of their story during Mass on Sunday, and the film crew from Compass had been around New Norcia all weekend, filming the walkers, interviewing monks and generally shooting footage of the town. When the program was aired on television, I watched it with great interest, but it seems that someone edited out the footage of women in the cloister (probably just as well, really :-)

Hmm... this post hasn't really gone where I was expecting it to... not really much said about today's happenings, but perhaps that's enough for today.