By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
Depending on the day, my attitude about our common ephemeral condition ranges from reluctant acquiescence to flat-out denial. As a result, I relish the rare occasion when some small something seems to defy the general rule that all good things must end, and lives on beyond its apparent expiration date. I enjoyed such a moment just a few weeks ago.
If you read this blog regularly (and why wouldn’t you?), then you know that Bill White now owns the old Huntsville Trappist monastery and farm, which closed in 2017. Bill and his wife Alane are close friends with the monks, and are trying to preserve a monastic legacy in Northern Utah’s Ogden Valley.
Last autumn, Bill asked if I wanted to salvage the monks’ church choir seats before he razed the seventy year old “temporary” Quonset hut cloister, which had exceeded its useful life by two or three decades. (Bill had offered the building for free to anyone who could bear its multi-million dollar restoration price tag, but there were no takers.) There are about fifty of these choir seats. I jumped at the chance.
My predictable reaction is a fine example of my passionate but futile battle against impermanence. Freud, Jung, or any therapists worth their degree, would explain that by holding on to the wooden choir seats, I am clinging to the past, to the old Abbey where I spent many a happy boyhood day. They are right.
The wood used to build the choir seats is a lovely and sturdy oak that the Trappists re-purposed from old discarded shipping pallets. Having salvaged them—with some help from friends more skilled than me at all things carpentry—now I am contemplating ways to re-purpose the monk seats once more.
I blogged about finding a new home for some of the monastery’s old library books (see: A lovely old book’s final resting place ), and so I also wrote about my quest to preserve the choir seats (see: Sustainable Brother Stanislaus ). Eric Haiduk from White Deer, Texas read the post and contacted me.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, answering a lifelong calling, Eric was a novice at the Huntsville monastery. He loved the place, and was on track to take final vows there. However, when his father suddenly got sick, Eric had to take a leave of absence to care for him. Despite the difficult circumstances, something wonderful happened when he got back to Texas.
Eric met up again with an old acquaintance—a beautiful young woman named Kay. She had just made the difficult decision to leave her convent near Amarillo where, like Eric, she had not yet made final vows. Eric and Kay fell in love, got married, and proceeded to prove that you can take the monk/nun out of the monastery, but you cannot take the monastery out of the monk/nun.
Although he had found a new vocation, Eric stayed in close touch with his Utah Trappist brothers. Eric and Kay had three children. One is called Therese, and another Alberic, but they also named one Brendan—after Eric’s monastic mentor. Father Brendan Hanratty hailed from Northern Ireland and spent many decades in Utah making bread and caring for the sick Trappists in the Abbey infirmary
The Haiduk children grew up hearing stories about monasteries. Eric and Kay also stayed in close touch with Kay’s Franciscan sisters convent in nearby Panhandle, Texas. Eric mowed the lawns and trimmed the trees while Kay and the Haiduk children tended to the good sisters’ many flower beds. Kay, a registered nurse, cared for retired priests, nuns, and others who lived in the sisters’ care center.
Because of his new life path, Eric never took his final Trappist monk vows, including the promise of celibacy. Yet, the Trappist way of life made an indelible imprint on him. Like me, he has tried to translate the Trappist vows into the context of a life outside the monastery.
In fact, one of his best translations is of the Trappist vow of celibacy which, for us non-monks, can best be understood as a promise of devotion. Eric lives a devoted life—a good husband, father, and grandfather. He has been married to Kay for almost 40 years. For the last decade—since Kay had a debilitating stroke—he has tenderly cared for her on the family farm in North Texas.
And at the same time, he has constructed his own personal monastery. His children see the monk in what he says and does. Painted on the red barn is the monastic motto ora et labora—prayer and work. He has bells on the farm, a shrine to Mary the Mother of Jesus, and is planning to build his own private chapel for prayer and reflection.
When he read my article about salvaging the monk choir seats, Eric sent me an email message. We started corresponding about our time at, and mutual love for, the monastery. He was stunned to learn that not only had we preserved the monks’ church seats, but that we also had mapped the choir stalls and marked each seat to identify its original location.
From some monastery photos, we figured out where Eric sat in the choir. We also realized that fate/destiny/providence/serendipity demanded that Eric get back his old monk seat. A few weeks ago, his son Brendan came here on a work trip, and I gave it to him. Eric will make it part of the Haiduk family farm chapel in White Deer, Texas.
It is a minuscule—but joyful and meaningful—way to keep alive the old Utah Abbey.
I know I cannot hold back the tide of impermanence that erodes life’s sacred shores. Still, every once in a while, I stumble upon a tranquil safe harbor that is immune, if only briefly, from the relentless reality of entropy.
I confess that when that happens, I am not a humble man. I smirk at the universe, and I savor my small victory over our fleeting human nature.
*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah will be published in the Spring of 2021.
