Monks and Millennials

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 Trappist monks recently met—and hit it off with—some millennials sixty or seventy years younger than them.

The Huntsville, Utah monastery closed in 2017. The surviving monks, now in their 80s and 90s, live in a retirement community in Salt Lake City. From time to time my wife Vicki and I drive them back to the Ogden Valley to see their old abbey environs and to visit with their friends, the new monastery landowners Bill and Alane White.

This summer, one of my daughters and three of our nieces—all in their 20s—joined us on one of these excursions. I certainly expected that my young kin would be pleasant and polite. They were. I never expected monk/millennial friendships to form quickly, but they did.

The bond started with basic kindness. The monks needed help in and out of cars, with their walkers and canes, in moving around, and in getting their lunch. The young folks jumped right in and lent several hands. The monks noticed and appreciated the gestures.

Only after all the monks had been served lunch did the millennials get their own food. And then, rather than finding their own segregated table and diving into their social media cell phone worlds, they sat down right next to the monks and starting talking with them.

They chatted about their work and backgrounds. The monks asked questions and even told jokes. One monk shared with the young women a Tik Tok video someone had sent him, describing the three most difficult things for people to say: “I’m sorry, I love you, and Worcestershire sauce.” My nieces, who are pilots too, shared flight stories with one of the monks who was a pilot before he joined the monastery.

That monk, Father Alan Hohl, told them he had considered joining a monastery in Alaska because the monks had to fly everywhere and his skills may have been put to better use, but he didn’t regret his years at the Huntsville monastery, which he said had “made for a wonderful life.” My niece Kaylin was touched: “I have no idea what I’m doing with my life (and I’m 27 now!) but no matter the journey, I just hope I can have that same contentment and gratefulness when I reflect back on my life the way Father Alan does.”

After the bbq ended, my niece Katie was impressed too. She told me, “They were so witty and funny….Even though they are members of a religious order, they are also still normal people in that they had lots of memories and experiences to share that didn’t just center around their joining the monastery, although you really did get a sense of grace/spirituality from them too.”  My niece Kater works with older people who are struggling, so she noticed right away that the monks “had found real peace and contentment, which was really inspiring.”

The instant chemistry that developed reminded me of other times I have introduced young people to the monks. This includes my two daughters and my son, and also a family friend who joined a Benedictine monastery in New Hampshire. The monks were thrilled to spent time with a twenty-something embarking on the same vocation to which they had devoted so many decades (see: The Once and Future Monk).

Bill White has noticed the magic of such encounters too. He once told me the Catholic Church should consider starting a mission program similar to the one used for young people in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Bill suggests that the Catholic Church could assign its young missionaries to provide care and companionship services for retired monks and nuns.

Bill’s idea, and my personal monks/millennials observations, bring to mind some news articles I read about “the Nuns and the Nones.” This program brings together aged Catholic nuns with young millennials, many of whom on surveys check the “none” box regarding religious affiliation but who also yearn for a spiritual life of some kind. These diverse groups always find surprising common ground in their encounters.

In one article abut the program, a None said, “We millennials have so much hunger for spaces of community, belonging, meaning, depth, and we aren’t finding that in our social media. We aren’t finding that often as we move city to city. And so to be able to find that with these Catholic sisters who hold wisdom of their traditions from centuries is a gift for us to be able to translate that into our own life.”

A participating nun equally enjoyed her time with the nones. “I’m deeply impressed with their goodness,” she said. “I’m deeply impressed with their wanting to make the world a better place, with their questions, with what they’re seeking. That’s not any different from what I’m seeking or we’re seeking.”

I doubt that any of the intergenerational monk/millennial dialogues that I recently witnessed will cause a massive rush to monasteries or to the religious life the way World War II did in the 1940s for my friends the Utah Trappist monks. Sadly, the same likely is true about the bonds formed by the Nuns and Nones program.

Yet, with the number of monks and nuns declining steeply every year, it is comforting to hope that maybe something important is being passed along to the new generations. Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister thinks it is, and she describes the process much more eloquently then me.

Sister Joan compares the current state of religious life to “grieshog,” an Irish practice of burying warm coals under ashes to preserve the embers in order to start a fire the next morning (The Fire in These Ashes: A Spirituality of Contemporary Religious Life). She calls it “a holy process, this preservation of purpose, of energy, of warmth and light in darkness. What we call death and end and loss in our lives, as one thing turns into another, may, in these terms be better understood as grieshog, as the preservation of the coals. As refusing to go cold.”

It sure is a heartwarming thought.

*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (found here), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, will be published by Paraclete Press (more information here) in August 2021.