A Pastor and a Monk

This is a work by Nicholas J. Costa winner of the 2024 Morling Beuchner Writing Competition.

Last July, at the insistence of my wife, I saddled up the motorcycle and headed north to the New Norcia Monastery for a week. It was a five-hour ride, the last two in squalid rain and fetid darkness. The roads were hilly, narrow, and curving. Rain pelted me like bullets, ricocheting off my helmet. Water mocked my waterproofs, its cold fingers clutching at my thighs and belly whilst the corpses of spattered bugs blurred my vision. My riding instructor’s voice rang clear: you can’t stop what you can’t see. Dropping from eighty to sixty, then to forty, my stop-zone converged to a stone’s throw of swampy bitumen.

A hot meal and a warm bed beckoned. The Benedictine monks dished a mean soup—the perfect aside to freshly-baked bread with home-pressed olive oil and balsamic to boot. Not to mention their full-bodied red. On my last visit two years ago, I’d dined with them each night. Guests would sit at a large table in the centre of a long dimly lit dining room, while the monks sat around us along the panelled walls with the Abbot at the head. One monk sat on a dais and read aloud during the meal, while another served the food. The server brought around platters of home-cooked staples while the reader served up a dizzying array of Scripture, Benedictine writings, and seemingly random tracts on historical art and literature. The only other sound was the clink of glasses and cutlery until the Abbot tapped his ring on the table, rose, prayed, and dismissed us with a silent nod.

I was drawn from my reverie by a set of headlights growing larger and larger in my rear-view. Whatever it was, it was moving fast. Suddenly a road train hurtled past throwing up waves of water. I pulled over. My flickering headlight probed the thick woods off the side of the road. Peeling off my gloves, I thawed my fingers in its hot glare. There was nowhere to stop; my only option was to keep moving. I got back on the horse.

When it came to church ministry, I always had other options. I wasn’t one of those pastors whose service outlived their call due to grim necessity to make a living. To the contrary, my call to ministry involved giving up a lucrative career. So, when the going got tough, the tough ought to get going, right? Why not throw in the towel and earn some real dough, buy the kids some decent clothes, and procure a set of wheels for the missus?

My wife had listened patiently to all of this and then calmly suggested this trip, telling me I needed some time alone with God. A ‘retreat’ she called it. But ‘retreat’ was not the right word for what I was facing tonight. This was an advance. This was battle. The charismatics would be expounding the powers and principalities and exorcising the minions of Beelzebub.

I put it down to a stock standard Aussie cold front in July.

New Norcia is a ghost town, a few clicks off the highway, nestled within a rugged landscape of rolling hills and valleys. My motorcycle and I both spluttered our way into town. Eerie monolithic buildings materialised only meters from the road, their eighteenth-century Spanish parapets rearing up to pierce the sky in proud defiance of the occasional flashes of lightning that reflected off the many storeys of empty eye-like windows. I felt watched.

The only light in town hung over the monastery guesthouse. I pulled up, drenched, shivering, exhausted, and—possibly worse for a monastery—late for dinner. The front doors were locked, so I squelched my way around the wall where I spotted a small door at the base of the tower. It was wedged slightly open. I slipped in and made my way to the front reception. A key sat on the desk with my name and a room-number scrawled on it. Heading back outside, I followed the room-numbers to a large wooden door nestled beneath the stairs that led to the oratory above. My imagination still heightened from the ride, I opened it with some trepidation. You can’t stop what you can’t see.

Inside was a small couch, a lamp, and a water dispenser. Automatic lights flicked on as I entered, illuminating a long hallway with dozens of doors off each side. A hand sanitiser greeted me with aplomb, emitting a pleased electric buzz when I waved a bare-knuckle underneath its sensor. My room was the first on the left and I tumbled inside. A soft lamp threw a homely yellow glow on a small writing desk, a single bed with a pale green duvet, and a small wooden wardrobe. An oil heater clicked quietly in the corner, agitated by the sudden influx of cold air. I lay my waterproofs out to dry and peeled off my dripping clothes. A blistering (and lingering) hot shower put some warmth back into my bones and I headed across to the dining room on the other side of the monastery in search of a cup of tea and perhaps some bread. To my surprise, I opened the fridge to find leftovers labelled with my name: soup, homemade curry-puffs, and salad. Now that was ministry.

I joined the monks for prayer an hour later in the oratory, a large panelled room with vaulted ceilings, a small pipe-organ at one end and an altar at the other. They sat on opposite sides of the room and sang, chanted and recited liturgical prayers at scheduled times from five in the morning to about eight at night. I must admit it took time for my Protestant foibles to wind down, my hackles having arisen particularly in the presence of the statues and what appeared to be an altar of Mary. But like an ice-bath, once the initial shock wore off, I began to find myself strangely revitalised. There was space to simply be. Gregorian harmonies washed over me and for the first time in a blue moon, I was able to simply sit and enjoy God’s presence—you can’t stop what you can’t see—without agenda, a service to run, or others to minister to.

Henceforth I found my soul strangely warmed in the presence of these God-fearing, black-cloaked men, oddly imposing in their vestments and their non-apologetic virtues, materialising like apparitions at the peal of the prayer-bell, revolving their entire lives around service, sacrifice and simplicity. Whereas my own tradition's approach is to dictate ‘truth’ loudly and unambiguously, theirs is to speak quietly yet persistently through the rhythms and routines of religious life.

Startlingly, no inquiry was made into my own faith background. There were no greeters to ascertain my agenda in visiting, no connect cards thrust in my face, no show bag for first-time visitors. In fact, nobody spoke to me at all. They seemed unfazed by my upraised hands during prayer or my lack of ritual gestures. I must admit I did do the whole spectacles, testicles, wallet, watch thing a few times, for old time’s sake if nothing else, remembering from decades ago my old man mouthing those words to me ironically from across the pew. But I opted out of all the Marian jazz. The Matron, although respected for her role in the Biblical drama, stopped short of eliciting worship from my cold Protestant heart.

With my pastor’s hat on, the liturgy felt rigid and impersonal at first, but I began to appreciate its preciseness, predictability and uniformity. Here was no two-day preparation for a thirty-minute sermon, the product of one mind drawn from an overwhelming sea of endless possibility. Instead, here was a sustained commitment by a group of people to present themselves before God together in excellence, discipline, and community. I thought about the excessive ups and downs of my week as a pastor, with the Sunday event perpetually looming large, eliciting days in preparation then costing days in emotional deficit; and I wondered at the attractiveness of their steady rhythm of obedience and brotherhood.

“Oh, but we aren’t about religion, we are about relationship!” Many in my own tradition claim, right before they expound the acceptable range of behaviour and beliefs one must adhere to in order to be included in their particular version of Christian hospitality. I had once worked for an organisation that prided itself on being the only Christian establishment in town—much to the chagrin of the Catholic one a few streets away. Centuries of distrust and demonisation doesn’t disappear overnight. But I did find it difficult to recall the reasons for such discriminate remarks whilst being on the receiving end of such indiscriminate hospitality. At the dining table, questions of orthodoxy and orthopraxy seem less severe alongside the simple olfactory pleasure of freshly baked cobb loaf and the silky warmth of an oak-barrelled red. It's hard to demonise those feeding you.

Spending a few days inside their routine was therapeutic. Between prayer sessions there were small pockets of time for study or work, sufficient for marginal achievements without being so superfluous as to promote laziness or melancholia, negative thoughts lacking time to congeal before the prayer bell rang again. I wandered around the surrounding town and hills, wrote in my journal, read my Bible, and thumbed through Willard’s Spirit of the Disciplines. There was no big ecstatic experience or new revelation, just a steady loosening of something inside me. Without acquiring any answers, my questions simply became less weighty.

On my previous visit, I’d asked permission to play the piano in the Abbey. This afforded me the opportunity to engage with one of the monks with whom I’d shared a passionate conversation about music and composition. He’d played an original composition, hands flowing across the keys as naturally as water over rocks, music filling the Abbey from earth to eaves in a joyous crescendo—I’d never heard or seen anything quite like it. I’d suggested he record his pieces and we’d discussed some methods for doing so.

On this trip, I only saw him as I departed. He was working in the sunshine in the garden of the guesthouse, and quickly removed his earphones, his face splitting into a warm smile as I approached. I congratulated him on his album (which he had recently released) and he said, “Oh, you’re that musician!” and then, "so how's life with you?" We chatted about music and family and life, and I asked him about his recent translation work.

As we chatted, I wondered about the possibility of joint musical projects and translation endeavours. When I mentioned I’d studied Koine Greek his face lit up and he asked me where. I told him Morling College, the Baptist Seminary, and he exclaimed, “Oh that’s wonderful!” He didn’t ask anything further about my faith background and I didn’t feel the need to elaborate. In retrospect, I think I didn’t want to ruin the moment with potential disinterest or discomfort. Perhaps I lacked the courage, or perhaps I just wanted to hit the road while the sun was shining.

I suspect that God had given me all I needed for this trip.

I left with a nostalgic sense of possibility. My call was different to his, but not necessarily divergent. Could an Evangelical pastor become mates with a Benedictine monk, both of whom share a passion for music and ancient translations, despite having different theological foundations? Could it be that I have something to learn from his quiet reverence, sustained persistence, and indiscriminate hospitality? And if one pastor and one monk could connect so naturally over a common interest, what might happen if whole traditions did the same?

Most ghost towns are preserved to teach us about the past, but I wonder … on this occasion was God teaching me something about the future?

“I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me” –Jesus (John 17:23).

 Nicholas J. Costa

Buechner Writing Competition

In celebrating and recognising the written word, Morling College hosts an annual creative writing competition in conjunction with the Frederick Buechner Foundation. Usually opened during the mid year semester break, we invite students to compose and submit a piece of creative writing on any topic.  (Conditions apply). The top three entries receive prize money and the works made accessible on this site.  It is a beneficial opportunity to creatively express your experiences, reflections and explorations, or provide entertainment, through the power of the written word.

Frederick Buechner was an American writer and theologian whose works inspire readers to see the grace in their everyday lives. His works encompass multiple genres and has been the recipient of many awards one being the Pulitzer Prize.  

The writers who get my personal award, are the ones who show exceptional promise of looking at their lives in this world as candidly and searchingly and feelingly and truly as they know how and then of telling the rest of us what they have found there most worth finding. We need the eyes of writers like that to see through. We need the blood of writers like that in our veins.  –Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner, ed George Connor (New York, Harper San Francisco, 1992), p. 191.