The Wisdom of the Mountain Valley

By Michael Patrick O’Brien–

In 1960, the famous Kentucky monk/writer Thomas Merton and New Directions published a book called The Wisdom of the Desert, a collection of sayings from the Verba Seniorum, the words of the Egyptian desert fathers, some of the very first monks. I bought a copy in the 1980s while studying theology at the University of Notre Dame.

I enjoyed reading The Wisdom of the Desert. Only later did I realize that having grown up around—and enjoyed lifelong friendships with—the Trappist monks from the now-closed Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity in Huntsville, I also had my own collection of monk sayings worth remembering and saving.

These are some of my favorite sayings from that beloved monastery, located not in the desert, but rather in a picturesque Northern Utah high mountain valley.

Thomas Merton (Father Louis):

Merton never came to Utah (although his journals suggest he wanted to), but he closely followed and wrote about the development of the Huntsville monastery from his own Kentucky cloister. He once described the land on which Holy Trinity Abbey was built as “a wild and lonely spot” which on one side is “a wilderness without roads or farms.” Noting that deer drink at “two plentiful springs,” Merton said the only sound there was “the howling of coyotes,” at least until the Trappists “set up their bell and began to ring it.” (Thomas Merton, “The Trappists Go to Utah,” Commonweal, August 29, 1947.)

Father Frederic Dunne:

When the pioneer Utah monks arrived at the site of their future monastery on July 10, 1947, some sixty miles north of the Salt Lake Valley where Brigham Young had arrived a century earlier, Kentucky Abbot Frederic Dunne softly declared, “I think this place is near to Heaven, and it should be our endeavor to make it more so.” The Utah monks spent the next seventy years doing exactly that.

Father Patrick Boyle: 

Father Patrick lived at the Huntsville monastery for 67 years, arriving in 1950 and beginning in the 1970s regularly greeting visitors at the bookstore. These are some of the things he told those visitors.

“What’s the difference between a monk and a monkey? A monkey has a tail!”

“This moment is a gift!”

“The first hundred years are the hardest!”

“When you walked through that door, Christ came into this room!”

“I believe in the sacrament of the now moment. The past is the past, God will take care of the future, so my job is to live in this moment right now.”

After blessing the fields at the abbey: “Every time a monk lifted a bale of hay out there, it was a prayer.” 

“See you in Heaven, and sooner rather than later!”

Brother Isidore Sullivan: 

Brother Izzy worked on the abbey farm. This was his typical farewell greeting: “Strong!”

Brother Felix McHale:

Brother Felix helped start the Utah monastery and was the abbey’s main contact to the outside world. His often-repeated July 4th advice was, “If you go forth with a fifth on the fourth, then you won’t be able to go forth on the fifth!” 

Father Jerome Siler: 

The old monastery scholar and librarian wrote to me, when I way away in college, about goings-on at the monastery. Once he led with this important announcement: “The real good news is our lilac is now full of buds!”

Brother Nick Prinster:

Brother Nick ran the monastery cattle herd and managed the farm. He was friends with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and she visited him in Utah in October 1972. He was a rugged and quiet man, but also a philosopher at heart. Brother Nick wrote eulogies for each Prinster family member. His nephew Anthony compiled them into a 2018 book titled The Unlikely Monk.

“When I first met Mother Teresa it was in the police station in Calcutta. Now there are a lot of people here especially my two brothers, that when I say I met her at the police station they would say, ‘Well, that figures.’ If they ever write a book on me it will probably be entitled ‘The Unlikely Monk.’” (The Unlikely Monk, p. 2)

Discussing the monks’ early wake up time (3:15 a.m.): “People often ask me, ‘What in the world do you do at that hour of the night?’ Well, for the first 10 or 15 years in the monastery, you try to stay awake!” (The Unlikely Monk, p. 24)

“In our mountain valley, and under that spectacle of such a display of stars and the vastness of the universe, it is easy to meditate.” The Unlikely Monk, p. 25)

“There are only two profound tragedies in any life—not to love and not to tell those we love that we love them.” (The Unlikely Monk, p. 35)

“It’s not a simple thing to be a human being. We all have many persons inside of us. Who is the real person? They all are.” (The Unlikely Monk, p. 29)

“We are all of us broken. We live by mending, and the glue that we are mended with is the grace of God, and what is the grace of God but love?” (The Unlikely Monk, p. 27)

“At our monastery, we live in daily contact with nature. Our fields and hills are home to all kinds of wildlife which we are privileged to constantly observe. We experience to the full the four seasons, each season so distinct with its own beauty. Our winters are long and deep in snow; summer hot and dry; autumn always colorful, but definitely presenting to us a dying world. Finally, springtime comes again, proving once again that life abides; that although the world we live in is both frail and transitory, restless and migratory, that world abides; and life goes on, and that if we only look we can always see that our world and our lives are constantly being renewed by beauty, by love.” (The Unlikely Monk, p. 30)

“None of us can deny that in each of our lives, there is suffering, pain and sorrow, and death. It is these difficulties and trials that make it all the more necessary that we always be watchful that we see the beauty of creation, the beauty of life, the beauty of loving.” (The Unlikely Monk, p. 30)

Father David Altman:

Originally from Philadelphia, Father David was an abbot at Holy Trinity Abbey. He wrote many homilies and posted them on the abbey website. His common message? “The bottom line in a person’s relationship with God is not his formal religion. It is love, because God is love. God is not Catholic or Protestant. God is good will.”

He once described what life in a monastery entails: “Outside the monastery there are legitimate escapes from problematic relationships. Simply drop them and go somewhere else. In a monastery, however, there is little or no escape. The monk must put forth great effort to make many relationships work and to grow through them…this is challenging work.”

When asked how he did it? “The same way a flea eats an elephant…one bite at a time.”

Father David Kinney:

Father David once described the purpose of the monastery to a news reporter, “We’re here to pray. We’re praying for the world and all the conditions in it. We’re asking God to take care of it. Peace, peace, peace. It’s a calling. That’s what a vocation is, a contemplative life devoted completely to God. It kind of helps, doesn’t it, to know we are all up here praying for you?”

Brother Boniface Ptasienski:

Brother Boniface, from Brooklyn and a founder of the Utah monastery, once told a news reporter about a visitor who had arrived at the Utah abbey thinking the monks were “weak men hiding from society,” but left the place admiring “the manliness of their commitment.” 

He wrote this poetic prayer to a friend: “Let Your God Love You. Be Silent. Be Still. Alone. Empty before your God. Say nothing. Ask nothing. Be silent. Be still. Let your God look upon you. That is all. God knows. God understands. God loves you with an enormous love. God only wants to look upon you with love. Quiet. Still. Be. Let your God love you.” 

Father Charles Cummings:

Father Charles joined the Utah abbey in the 1960s. He wrote a lot about monks and monastic practices. These are my favorite of his comments.

“I’m glad there’s such a thing as monks. I’m no good at anything else.”

For a time, Father Charles was in charge of placing lids on the tops of tubes of the monks’ famous honey. He once told a news reporter, “My fervent hope and wish is that they get a machine to replace me.”

“Acceptance does not mean accepting behavior that is harmful to the common good, but it does mean that I stop trying to change or refashion everybody so they live as I would prefer them to live.” (Monastic Practices, Liturgical Press 2015, p.155)

“The ability to wait is characteristic of those who have learned to slow down and live in the fullness of the present moment.” (Monastic Practices, Liturgical Press 2015, pp. 143-44).

“The relationship between the environment and those who live there in stability goes in both directions. The inhabitants influence the natural environment, and the natural environment has its subtle effects on the inhabitants. There is a symbiosis, that is, a mutually-beneficial, cooperative, interdependent relationship between the environment and those who dwell there.” (Monastic Practices, Liturgical Press 2015, p. 185)

Writing about the value of monasteries: “In our contemporary age of fast-moving, fragmented, driven, overstimulated, pleasure-and-profit seekers, the witness of a stable, peaceful monastic community is likely to attract visitors who find themselves by pausing for a time to share the monastic tranquility and prayerfulness. When they leave, they may carry with them a resolution to live a more God-centered life themselves. In this way, the monastery gradually has a stabilizing influence on the surrounding society, like leaven in the dough that permeates and transform everything that comes into contact with it.” (Monastic Practices, Liturgical Press 2015, p. 187)

Father Brendan Freeman:

Father Brendan, originally from New Melleray Abbey in Iowa, was the last leader of the Utah monastery.

Father Brendan once wrote a book about monastic life. After quoting Saint Augustine (“Men are strange creatures, the less they focus on their own sins the more they focus on the sins of others”), he explained: “There must be hundreds of Desert Fathers’ sayings that forbid us to judge our brother. The best way to do this is not by making a firm resolution not to so act, as if willpower alone could achieve this. The best way to keep from this vice of judging others harshly is to be acutely aware of our own failings and sins. Hold them like a sack in front of our face, not like a sack slung against our back. On our back, we might forget they are there. In front of our eyes, we cannot forget them.” (Come and See—the Monastic Way for Today,Cistercian Publications 2010, pp. 129-130)

“St. Benedict did not create monastic life. His generous gift to the church was to make it accessible to the ordinary Christians. His work is like a vine with many clusters of grapes. All kinds of people, monastic and non-monastic, can enjoy his wine. When people live his rule honestly and thoughtfully, they become friends. They do not set out to become friends. That is not the purpose of the rule. However, in the process of living the Gospel, people become friends.” (Come and See—the Monastic Way for Today, Cistercian Publications 2010, p. 73)

Father Brendan Freeman wrote in Cistercian Studies Quarterly (“To Close a Monastery,” 52.2, 2017) about the poignant final days of the Utah abbey. He concluded, “It comes down to this: no matter where we are on this earth we have no permanent dwelling. Our true homeland is not here: our true monastery is not a building or a visible place. It is in the heart—a space that can never be diminished or demolished. It is eternal and everlasting as the heavens.”

*Mike O’Brien (author website here: https://michaelpobrien.com/) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (https://www.amazon.com/Monastery-Mornings-Unusual-Boyhood-Saints/dp/1640606491), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, was published by Paraclete Press in August 2021.