By Michael Patrick O’Brien– People came from all around the world to visit Northern Utah’s old Trappist monastery in Huntsville. For some—including six monks from China—the Ogden Valley abbey was…
Posts published by “mobrien@joneswaldo.com”
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– What was supposed to be just a fun and casual barbecue lunch unexpectedly (and delightfully) turned into a fascinating study in intergenerational dialogue when Utah’s old…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– The last five years have been challenging for the Trappist monks who used to live at Holy Trinity Abbey in Huntsville, Utah. Their monastery closed, they…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Members of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, but also pledge loyalty to the worldwide mission statement of their founder.…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– My paternal grandfather, whom I never knew, was a writer too. When I finally read some of his writing, I discovered we share a conversational style…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– When I was a young boy growing up at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, my family and I often attended the last monk chant…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– In our internet-fueled, twenty-four-hour-news-cycle, social-media-meme-dominated, attention-deficit-disordered world, we often are attracted more to form than to substance. For example, consider the way we treat the name…
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– When I was a young boy in the 1970s, my family was trying to recover from a painful divorce. My mother took us to visit the…
By Gary Topping– Like the Blue Mouse theater that Mike O’Brien, our blogger-in-chief, wrote about recently, the much older Utah Theater in downtown Salt Lake City is also now closed. …
By Michael Patrick O’Brien– Although I saw Utah’s Trappist monks at their old Huntsville monastery all the time, I never expected them to make an appearance at the state’s best…