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Heaven Holds a Place : At St. Andrew’s Abbey in the Antelope Valley, a small cloister of monks opens its doors and its life to the rest of the world.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Summer dwindles on the high desert. The sun draws back a little earlier each day, and the monks at St. Andrew’s Abbey must hurry to finish their evening game of croquet on the cloister lawn.

Soon after dark, a bell clangs. These men, a little less than two dozen in number, rustle across the courtyard in black robes, gathering for the last communal prayer of the day. Chants echo from a brick and spruce chapel.

Compline.

Then the Grand Silence begins.

Each to his own room, as feature-less as a college dormitory. A desk and shelves and boxes of books that often spill out to the hallway. A single bed. A place for prayers and meditation. Not a word will be spoken, save for prayers, until after breakfast the next morning.

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This is a search for God in the quiet hours. In an era of cable television, computer games and cellular phones, the monks of St. Andrew’s listen for a “still, small voice” they hope will emerge from their silence. They cherish their home, an unlikely Benedictine monastery on the rim of the Antelope Valley, like a diamond they polish each day with their prayers.

They do not keep this jewel to themselves. It is offered to the rest of the world as a source of inspiration.

This weekend, that inspiration will shine more brightly than usual, as the monks celebrate their 37th annual fall festival. Bagpipes will whine across the grounds. There will be mimes and booths that sell everything from art trinkets to hot dogs. Thousands of visitors are expected.

For the remainder of the year, however, days will unfold delicately amid this scattering of low-slung ranch houses beneath planted cottonwoods and evergreens. The monastery brings youth groups for retreats and invites outsiders to stay in guest rooms on a hill above the cloister. Visitors are extended the unusual opportunity to join in daily prayers and meals, to taste of a life prescribed by the Rule of St. Benedict centuries ago.

“Our basic concept is not so much separation from the world. It is worship and community, to give a sense to the people of what the church can be,” says Father Vincent Martin, who helped establish the abbey in California almost four decades ago. “The monastery represents the best, the mystery of the church.

“I call it an ‘Island of Sanity.’ It attracts people like they are coming for clear water.”

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The Grand Silence is broken at dawn with songs of praise, voices accompanied by the aroma of incense, at vigils and lauds. Then, there is the snap, crackle and pop of breakfast cereal.

Later, when speaking is allowed, Father Vincent tells a story in the refectory lounge. He uses his hands as if drawing pictures and pauses to touch a listener, to give a feel for what he is saying:

The year was 1929 and a band of monks left the motherhouse in Belgium to bring their tenet of work and prayer to China. They landed in the northern part of the country and established a modest school to train a handful of young men for the priesthood. Famine eventually drove them south. A new home in Chengdu, where they hoped to build an East-West cultural center, lasted only two years before Communists expelled them.

But the Benedictines, Father Vincent says, pride themselves on resilience. He recalls the history of Monte Cassino, the Italian hilltop fortress that Benedict chose as his home 14 centuries ago. It was destroyed by the Lombards and the Saracens and then by the U.S. Army in World War II, only to be rebuilt each time. The abbey’s motto is “Struck down, it will live again.”

So, displaced from China, the monks determined to find a new life. They chose an unlikely spot.

“California,” Father Vincent says. “California looks toward China. And there were no Benedictine monasteries.”

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The motherhouse approved, sending $50,000 for a new abbey. Father Vincent traveled alone to Los Angeles and looked at dozens of parcels before buying a 720-acre turkey ranch nestled between two ridges in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.

His fellow monks arrived from all over the world, one by one.

“The very first time I came here, it was June and it was noontime,” recalls Father Werner de Morchoven. “Very hot. Everything looked gray. I said, ‘Vincent, this is the place you want us to be?’ ”

The rhythm of monastic life beats steadily over the desert’s irregular breath.

Five minutes before noon Mass, newcomer Jose Julian Taborda rings a bell in the courtyard. As what is called an observant, he rings notice before each of the daily prayers and meals. Taborda wears earplugs.

Inside the chapel, the aptly named abbot, Francis Benedict, sings in a clear voice that echoes from brick floors and an open-beamed ceiling. The monks chorus their response:

Why do you boast of your wickedness, you champion of evil, planning ruin all day long, you master of deceit.

A short bow follows each mention of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And within this orchestration, minutes of silence follow each psalm, intermezzos for reflection.

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The unvarying pattern resonates through days and years. When a new monk makes his vow of stability, he promises to follow the same routine for the remainder of his life. And the beat echoes beyond the monastery’s confines.

In La Verne, a couple pray when the monks do. So does a man in Carpinteria. These people visit the abbey regularly and its rituals are part of their daily lives.

“They know the rhythm,” Abbot Francis says.

Prayer is the stated mission of the Benedictines. They pray for the church, for those who have forgotten to pray and for those who don’t know how to pray. That is why they pray so often.

This devotion envelops them. It surrounds them in the music of communal prayers and in the silence of lectio divina , a solitary ritual by which a monk concentrates on a phrase from the Scriptures, or perhaps only a word, allowing it to simmer, to evoke personal thoughts.

“Do not be afraid of distractions,” writes Father Luke Dysinger, in a text on the ancient art. “Memories or thoughts are simply parts of yourself which, when they rise up during lectio divina , are asking to be given to God along with the rest of your inner self. Allow this inner pondering, this rumination, to invite you into dialogue with God.”

It is the rhythm of the call and response:

“Learn to use words when words are necessary,” Father Luke writes, “and to let go of words when they are no longer necessary.”

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Much of the afternoon is spent with assigned chores. The Benedictines prize scholarship and the arts, so it is not unusual to find Brother Peter working on his poetry or Father Werner painting or Father Luke tending to the 25,000 books he has gathered for the abbey’s library.

But the monastery requires constant attending. So these same monks make repairs and wash the dishes after meals.

“A lot of the older fellows are too old to do manual labor,” Abbot Francis says. The monks range in age from the 40-year-old Father Luke to the Father Eleutherius Winance, who is 83. The abbot says: “We try to do as much of the work as we can.”

The abbey would not have survived without moxie. In the early years, the monks converted a barn into their living quarters. They enlisted the help of Marines from the El Toro base to turn a stable into a chapel, laying the floor and lugging a slab of granite for the altar.

“At the very beginning, we lived just with God’s providence,” Father Vincent recalls. “I went begging, begging for materials.”

A forest ranger gave them a sequoia seedling. Father Eleutherius planted it at the center of his garden, surrounding it with Lombardy poplars.

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Once the monastery became livable, the monks had to find a way to pay for food. It is a dilemma they still face. Even though St. Andrew’s is relatively small and poor, the yearly budget totals $1.75 million.

Much of that money comes from ceramic plaques that are crafted in a workshop beside the cloister. They take the shape of doe-eyed angels in various action poses. A fishing angel, a fireman angel. The plaques are sold by mail order.

The abbey also makes money from its guest rooms. Outsiders have been coming here since 1956. Some visit for the prayers, others for the quiet. Russell Taylor drives up from Seal Beach to work on a play, paying the $50 donation for a single room each weeknight. A woman named Carol writes her dissertation here.

Others come for workshops that range in subject from “Gregorian Chant as Contemplative Prayer” to “Spirituality and Contemporary Cinema.”

The constant flow of outsiders can be unnerving.

“It’s like having relatives in your house every week of the year,” Abbot Francis says. “You don’t have your house to yourself.”

The abbey is so accessible that a photographer from Lancaster brings couples for their wedding pictures. The abbot thinks this is “romantic” but other monks worry about tarnishing their holy image. They fret about outside intrusions.

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“Some say, ‘This is not Benedictine,’ ” Father Werner explains. “They think we go too far.”

Around Valyermo, people call this place “the ranch monastery.”

The grounds cannot hide their secular past. A weather vane shaped like a horse sits atop the chapel’s peaked roof. Inside, in the reconciliation room, a Mexican rug hangs from the wall.

“When I first came here, I had stone and pillars in mind,” Taylor says. “I thought, ‘Oh darn.’ ”

But the abbey’s physical contradictions are, in their own way, fitting. St. Benedict was nothing if not open to change. Back in 520 A.D., he considered the monastic traditions too strict. His order promoted moderation rather than austerity.

This mantle is carried, centuries later, by Abbot Francis. Raised in North Hills and an alumnus of nearby Alemany High School, the abbot is large and talkative and quick to laugh at his own jokes. He is the kind of man who greets acquaintances with a hug first, then a handshake.

The other monks say they elected him as their spiritual leader last year because of his sensitivity, his knack for making decisions while keeping 20 personalities and, sometimes, egos in mind. They also praise his knowledge of the Scriptures. An emotional singing voice didn’t hurt his chances, either.

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“He brings the liturgy to life,” Father Vincent says.

And the abbot has a clear sense of the monastic life, the heritage of St. Benedict. If this abbey seems unusual or very Californian, that is because it has adapted to the needs of both its monks and the surrounding city.

“We’re not the Marines,” Abbot Francis says. “We’re monks and our community forms to our personalities. It’s a very human kind of thing.”

The Stations of the Cross loom on a hillside above the refectory. Each wooden cross sends long shadows at dusk. Taborda stands beneath them.

A new member, like him, joins the abbey every few years or so.

“I could have gotten married,” he says in an accent as thick and sweet as Colombian coffee. “But no. To sleep with the same woman all my life? Ach. To have children? I hate children.”

Celibacy is one aspect of monastic life that has not been adapted.

The Benedictine monks make their vows to God. If they have been married, they must have such earthly vows annulled. They must learn to live without sex.

“That’s not easy for some,” Abbot Francis says. “Our society is oversexed.”

Men seeking to join the monastery must display the necessary restraint. Some monasteries require two years of celibacy prior to entering. St. Andrew’s is not as strict. “But if they had their last fling last week,” the abbot says, “they probably won’t make it. They won’t be able to come here and be celibate.”

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There are other strictures. A graveyard up the hill, where seven of the founding fathers are buried, serves as a stark reminder that the monks have pledged to remain on this patch of land--save for occasional vacations and sabbaticals--for as long as they shall live. Fathers Eleutherius, Vincent and Werner have been members of this monastery, both here and in China, for 60 years or more.

“Boredom can set in. Part of being a monk is that you cultivate happiness within yourself,” Abbot Francis says. And, he adds, you take strength from compatriots: “There’s a lot of love here. It’s not a sweet love. It’s a manly love.”

So the mood at St. Andrew’s is both calm and pleasant, even in the late summer’s heat.

“The monks,” Father Werner says, “they love their life.”

Taborda, who will make his temporary vows in November--receiving his robe, having his feet washed by the abbot--smiles as he surveys a desert horizon splashed purple by sunset.

“I think that I can be happy here,” he says. “I can study and pray to God. That’s what I want.”

St. Andrew’s works to a fever pitch in the days before the annual festival. Volunteers help construct booths. Ceramic plaques must be finished for the arriving hordes. Abbot Francis spends an hour promoting the festival on a radio station. His segment is followed by a discussion of sperm banks.

“It’s too funny,” he says.

But the hubbub of this week is not entirely pleasant.

“The disruption to our life is disturbing,” the abbot says. “I think that if we could afford to live without the festival, if we took a vote among the monks, they’d want a smaller event or none at all.”

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The abbey cannot live without the money the two-day festival brings in. And though their home is converted into a carnival setting, they hope its beauty and faith will shine through. It is, they say, one of the ways to inspire people.

Some of these visitors may return later for retreats. Others may find a measure of personal peace. A Presbyterian minister, who spends a week here every summer, says the monks have prayed so much that the abbey grounds are saturated with spirituality.

“Some people feel that the church is only a moral tyrant that tells them when they are sinning. This is another view,” Abbot Francis says. “Maybe they’ll come to terms with their religion while they’re here. At least they won’t hate the church anymore.”

WHERE AND WHEN

What: 37th annual Valyermo Fall Festival. Location: St. Andrew’s Abbey. Getting there: Take Highway 14 (Antelope Valley Freeway) north to Pearblossom Highway east. Turn south on Longview Road, then east on Pallett Creek Road. Hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Masses at 10 a.m., 5 and 6 p.m. Saturday and at 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 a.m. noon, 1 and 5 p.m. Sunday; Mass in Spanish at 6 p.m. Sunday. Vespers both days at 3:30 p.m. Booths: For food, games, arts and crafts. Price: Free admission; parking is $3. Retreats: Suggested donation for a single room is $50 per night during the week, $60 on weekends. Double rooms are $40 per person on weeknights, $45 on weekends. Group rates run slightly higher. Call: (805) 944-2178.

Daily Life of the Monks

6 a.m. Vigils , the first communal prayer. 6:30 a.m. Personal prayer and lectio divina. 7:30 a.m. Lauds , the morning prayer. 8 a.m. Silent breakfast. 10-11:30 a.m. Assigned work. Noon Mass. 1 p.m. Lunch with guests. 1:30-3:30 p.m. Assigned work. 3:30-5 p.m. Study, reading. 5 p.m. Personal prayer and lectio divina. 6 p.m. Vespers , the evening prayer. 6:30 p.m. Silent dinner. 7-8 p.m. Community recreation. 8:30 p.m. Compline , the night prayer.

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