A Place Where You Can Hear Yourself Think

I finally got the courage to spend a few days with the monks. I had thought about it but never dared to do it. I doubted I could live that kind of life, even for a few days. For one thing, monks don’t talk much. That sounds easier than it turns out to be. I consider myself the quiet type, but living among them made it very clear that I don’t know the first thing about solitude.

I learned this at St. Andrew’s Priory in Valyermo, a small Benedictine monastery at the hemline of the Mojave Desert, near Palmdale. Anyone can stay there as long as they call first to be sure there is room. Most people find out about it by word of mouth. A dozen or so monks live on the grounds, and there are a few extra spaces for guests, like me.

I went to St. Andrew’s looking for a peaceful place where I could sort a few things out. A monastery is a likely choice if you want a little peace and quiet. But in my four days there, I discovered something I had not considered. Quiet doesn’t guarantee peace. Silence isn’t the same as solitude.

I’m still asking myself what makes the solitude of a monastery so intimidating. It must have something to do with the setting. Go for a walk in the hills near St. Andrew’s and you find yourself trailed by desert-dwelling ghosts. Prophets, hermits, recluses, saints, outcasts, desperadoes, devils; that’s a very lonely list.

Go to the chapel to pray with the monks, which they do five times each day, at 6, 7:30, noon for a Mass, at 6 and at 8:30. There is chanting, sacred reading and afterward, silence. No one gives a sermon about how the ancient applies to the modern world. No one even mentions the modern world. It’s as if it didn’t exist.

Between desert walks and formal prayers, the silence wears on. No talking at breakfast, through most of dinner, or afterward, if you’re following the Benedictine way, which I tried to do. Faced with the seamless quiet, there is nowhere to turn but inward. And I found myself beginning to listen to my own interior yak.

At first the physical discomfort served as a useful distraction. There was the bland monk food --gluey spaghetti and salade of iceberg lettuce. There was the cold-shower stall in my bare-bones room--a small dormitory cell of cinder blocks with a space heater in the wall, noisy as a blast furnace. Everything was brown: the spread on my twin bed, the linoleum floor, the desert landscape beyond my window. Oddly enough, it started to seem cozy.

But it was the monks who lulled me into staying. I was fascinated by everything about them. They weren’t what I expected. They don’t all look like Sean Connery in “The Name of the Rose”--medieval aesthetes in hooded robes. And they aren’t the rosy-cheeked Friar Tucks from my childhood.

Some are tall and thin, some short and thick, some handsome and some not. The oldest and feeblest among them hammers his bran flakes to dust with the back of his spoon each morning, breaking the silence. One has a gray beard cascading over his chest.

They dress in an elegant, if austere, way, in black robes with a wide brown belt at the waist. Some tuck their hands into their belts during long periods of standing. They chant more often than they speak. And they keep their eyes cast downward no matter what happens.

That in particular sets them apart from the rest of us. Life isn’t a spectator sport for a monk. It’s a distraction from what they might call reality--the spiritual world.

Many at St. Andrew’s came from the real world: Oxford scholars, medical doctors, film historians, university professors. Several still cross back to the world they left behind, teaching at local colleges. One directs retreats based on his favorite classic films.

Whatever else they do outside, they all help with the kitchen work and serve the soup at lunch.

They do talk, sparingly, with each other about domestic matters. With visitors, they greet those they’ve met before, but newcomers must seek them out.

No monk speaks easily to women. They try to avoid us in individual ways. Some talk too much; they get nervous and chatty but don’t make a lot of sense. They go on about obscure saints or pedantic texts. Others whisk briskly past, appearing too busy to stop for more than a moment, evasive if asked about appointments and office hours.

I found it easier to communicate with the other civilians. At lunchtime, people talked nonstop, hungry for any kind of personal connection. Some asked me what I do for a living. That got sticky. I was a refugee of sorts and certainly looked the part, dressed in the same gray sweat suit and hiking boots day after day, no makeup, no curlers. I cut the personal conversations short, or deflected them. Anything to avoid explaining that I am a fashion editor.

And, I now realize, a major sound machine. On the phone, in my office with reporters, in planning meetings and during interviews for my own stories. I’m on, all the time. And so is everyone around me. And even when I am not talking, I am not silent by monk standards. I read, listen to music, drive my car, walk on the beach.

Some of the other guests were more willing to talk about themselves. A pro-choice nursing student, an artist from the San Fernando Valley, an ex-seminarian from the Philippines who knew all the chants, a senior citizen and her daughter. They remarked about how peaceful they felt there, and how much they needed to find peace, living in Los Angeles.

Eventually, I did manage to quiet down. The chapel, a small, rustic building with wooden beams and a faded brick floor, turned out to be the eye of my personal hurricane. In that small room I first realized how seldom I venture into real solitude in my own life.

It’s a scary place, from what I can tell. There is no controlling what you might hear yourself think. Or if you believe in God, what you might hear being asked of you.

At dinner one night, an older monk who spoke a mix of English and French stopped to visit with the guests.

“Our biggest mistake is haste,” he said, talking to a college administrator he seemed to know. He asked how long the man would stay at Valyermo.

“Till tomorrow,” the man said. Then, a bit uncomfortably, “Well, maybe the next day.”

“To rush is a form of violence,” another monk said. That was Thomas Merton.

Once I was back in town, I bought a tape of his lectures from the ‘60s. I’d read his autobiography, “The Seven Storey Mountain,” and wanted to hear the sound of his intelligent, humorous voice.

His judgment seemed inhumanly harsh when I first heard it.

But after my days at St. Andrew’s, his words keep coming back. They collide against something I read in a news magazine at Christmastime, in a cover story about how people pray.

One man explained he prays in his office while he rides his exercise bike. I thought it was enterprising of him. I doubt Thomas Merton would approve.