Three years later my husband and I planned to go to New Hampshire and hike the difficult Presidential Range in the White Mountains. We decided that we had better hike one of the toughest parts of the Appalachian Trail while we were still relatively young and fit. I had the trip planned day-by-day and had researched the different clothes and equipment we would need for weather that could turn hypothermically dangerous above treeline even in the summer. We were literally and figuratively gearing up for the big challenge.
Those plans and dreams came to a grinding halt when I seriously injured my back in late May. One afternoon as I prepared the house for the arrival of overnight guests, I started to convert the futon sofa into a bed. As I shifted the mattress, it quickly and forcefully slid from my grip in the opposite direction. My back wrenched so violently that I dropped to the floor and howled in pain despite no one being there to hear. Even breathing sent stabbing pain into my lower back. I struggled to stand up, and finally made it excruciating step by excruciating step up stairs to my kitchen where the phone was (pre-cell phone days) and called the doctor. Heat and rest were the order of the day. In the meantime I made it to my living room sofa where I lay down, praying that I could somehow move to greet my guests when they arrived. Two hours later, my guests called to say that they would not be coming because they had met with disaster on their way. They had a flat tire, and while changing the tire, the brother-in-law had cut his finger so badly that they had to go to the local hospital where they learned he needed immediate surgery to preserve the finger.
I saw my doctor the next day and received the diagnosis of a lower lumbar sprain with muscle spasms. The injury would take two months to heal with physical therapy. Hiking the Presidentials was not going to happen, and whether any hiking would happen later in the summer remained an open question. Reading and writing, the heart of my trade, proved extremely difficult because I could not sit for any stretch of time. All of this was happening while I was pre-tenure, when the saying “publish or perish” was absolutely true, and if I could not sit for long periods of time to read, take notes, and write, doom loomed larger, especially during the summer when I was not teaching and could otherwise devote myself entirely to research and writing.
The injury and its consequences deepened a conflict that I had been battling because of the dual draw I felt to academic life and a life of more direct, public service, both important aspects of my call to ordained ministry. In some colleges and universities, the combination of research and public service has a happy, mutually reinforcing relationship, but at tier-one universities, it has little merit. A year before, I had undergone a round of career testing to find out if I should return to parish ministry, stay in higher education, or go in a third direction. The results said that my career in higher education was about as good a fit as I could get unless I started my own retreat center, and that would require a lot of fundraising. I did not see myself thriving in the constant scramble for money. Intellectually I belonged where I had landed, but other values did not line up quite so well. Nevertheless, I determined to make them line up knowing that it would be countercultural, ironically, in an institution that attracted politically countercultural people. Adding to this difficulty, my husband and I had been trying to start a family. We found ourselves captive to the roller coaster cycles of anticipation and disappointment made all the more difficult by our working in cities two-and-a-half hours apart. Two activities in my life sustained me in those pressured, pre-tenure, trying to conceive days: worship and the trail. Now the trail was gone.
A glimmer of hope shone when I started physical therapy and the therapist learned I was a hiker. She said that walking would be an excellent addition to the exercises she gave me. So I walked. I walked around our neighborhood, and I gradually increased the length over three weeks, even connecting roads that had steep hills. By the end of the month I was walking up to four miles a day. I hoped that if I could keep walking I would not lose strength. I also hoped that if therapy and walking worked, Bill and I could take a number of day hikes along the AT north and south of the Shenandoah National Park to cover my yet untraversed section in my drive to hike the entire trail.
In late-July, one of my departmental colleagues made an odd request of my husband Bill: a visit to a monastery in northwestern Virginia. The Abbey of the Holy Cross belonged to the Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance, a Benedictine order more familiarly known as the Trappists, the same order to which the famous mid-twentieth century monk Thomas Merton had belonged. Holy Cross had a young man from Estonia staying with them who was discerning a monastic vocation and seeking political asylum. He feared persecution for being Catholic in a country that although recently liberated from Soviet dominance still had plenty of anti-religious animus. The monk in charge of men discerning a vocation asked my colleague, who had recently made a retreat at Holy Cross, if he knew of anyone who might be able to assess the man’s story and talk with him about what seeking political asylum entailed. My colleague immediately thought of Bill whose specialty was Russia, the Soviet Union, and relations with the United States. Bill agreed to visit the man. When I looked on the map at the location of the monastery, lo and behold, I saw that the Appalachian Trail made its way along the ridge that looked down upon the Shenandoah River and the monastery. My back had sufficiently improved so that I thought we could combine a visit to the monastery with a hike on that section of the trail. We could go the monastery in the late afternoon, stay at a hostel that night, and hike the next day. Several phone calls later, we set a plan in motion.
My excitement mounted. Not only would we hike, I would get to visit a monastery and meet Trappist monks. In high school I had first read a book by Thomas Merton that made such an impression that I became curious about the monastic life and read more books by him. A course on the early middle ages during my first semester of college in which we studied the origin of Benedictine monasticism further piqued my interest. Hungry for more, I decided to read the Benedictine Rule on my own and found that it spoke to me. I felt attracted to the multiple prayer times per day, living in community, and working by one’s hands to sustain the community. The chapter on the abbot served as a helpful model of leadership for me, not only pastoral leadership but leadership in general. I had to wait until four years later when I was in seminary to make my first visit to a monastery, the Trappist Abbey of the Holy Spirit about thirty miles southeast of Atlanta. I did not, however, go for the loftiest of reasons and did not meet any monks. Having written part of my college thesis on Flannery O’Connor, I went to see the descendants of her peafowl—peacocks, peahens, and peachicks—that lived at that monastery. When I arrived there, I found myself drawn to the chapel and prayed in its calm silence, the afternoon light streaming through the tall windows. “This is the work of God,” I thought, recalling the Benedictine motto, ora et labora, prayer and work that summarizes their integrated life. I imagined the discipline that such a life requires. While I continued to sit in the chapel, I felt enveloped by a quiet yet vast assurance of God’s love.
Benedictine monasticism in the Cistercian form struck again when I studied at Oxford University for two years. While in England, I made a number of day trips to historic Cistercian ruins noted for their architecture, devout leaders, and influence throughout the British Isles. Something about those places exuded deep faith and commitment to holy living long after the monks had departed. On other trips that I made to famous sites or towns in England, I often discovered Cistercian ruins nearby. It was as if I kept bumping into Cistercians, albeit dead ones, despite myself. Each time I sensed something holy about those ruins that transcended those places and time itself.
When Bill and I prepared to visit Holy Cross Abbey, I was keen to go but anxious. Monks and monasticism were forbidden fruit for Protestants, and, no way around it, I was a Protestant and an ordained female one at that. Although I knew that I did not belong at the monastery, I felt strangely drawn. Perhaps having read books by Thomas Merton had something to do with it; perhaps the ideal of the monastic endeavor held particular attraction; but most likely it was anticipation of walking into something strange but not entirely unfamiliar.
Arriving at the abbey late in the afternoon, we went to the bookstore as instructed and met a monk who welcomed us warmly. He wore the Trappist habit of a white robe and black tunic encircled by a leather belt. Soon, a diminutive monk greeted us. He had close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, a neatly groomed salt-and-pepper beard, and twinkling eyes. A tall, muscular younger man dressed in street clothes accompanied him. The monk introduced the young man as Yevgeny or Eugene and himself as Brother Benedict. What were the chances of meeting someone in the Benedictine tradition actually named Benedict? We all shook hands, and Bill immediately started speaking in Russian with Yevgeny. Brother Benedict suggested that since the weather was nice, we could walk and talk along the road through their farm, Bill with Yevgeny and him with me. I was surprised because I thought the three men would talk and I would be politely dismissed as the trailing, second-class female spouse. My initial gratitude quickly transformed into a wave of uncertainty when I wondered what kind of a conversation I would have with a monk. I could only talk about the Benedictine Rule for so long! How much could we really have in common?
It turned out a lot. As we walked along the winding dirt road, Brother Benedict and I soon discovered that we had an unusual east Tennessee connection specific to the area around Sewanee and the University of the South. As our stories unfolded, we learned that we had each spent formative years of our youth in Sewanee or the surrounding counties. From the age of eleven until college, Brother Benedict had lived at and attended an Episcopal boys’ school, St. Andrews, where his father taught, and I had spent two summers in high school at the neighboring university’s music camp, and then through my senior year in college worked with a church-based service project in two of the contiguous, poverty-stricken counties. We had even frequented the same backwoods waterfall swimming hole called Fiery Gizzard. The commonalities multiplied. Thomas Merton had shaped both of us—Merton being a chief cause of Brother Benedict’s coming to the Trappists and important in my attraction to an intentional theological life. We were also fellow sufferers of bad back injuries, his being far worse than mine when he tore a ligament while picking up a huge bag of flour one day in the monastery bakery. We talked about my pull between the academic life and the life of public service. Depression came up as well, not only the depression that accompanies debilitating injury and grave disappointments in life, but the kind that arises seemingly and intractably from nowhere.
I told Brother Benedict about my love of the psalms, and he told me how they had become the fabric of his life having prayed them daily for years as a Trappist. We talked at length, too, about our respective religious vocations, his as a monk and mine as an ordained minister. At one point I remarked how lovely it was that our lives had so many seeming coincidences, quickly adding that I did not believe in marionette-like predestination with God pulling the strings. Brother Benedict chuckled and said he did not believe in that kind of a God either. Instead he liked to call such surprising times non-coincidences, a term he learned from his mentor to refer to the fleeting moments when such things happen as blessing. I asked if I could use “non-coincidence,” too, and he said that he would be delighted. A few years later I gave such moments my own name, Godhits, meaning all that Brother Benedict had said and understanding them further to mean the grace that comes when you need it whether you knew you needed it or not, the kind of moment to which you simply say “yes” or “thank you” or even sigh relief in acceptance.
Before I knew it, an hour and a half had passed and the time for Bill and Yevgeny to wrap up their conversation had come. In parting, Brother Benedict said that I might be interested in visiting their sister house, Our Lady of the Angels Monastery, only a few miles from where I lived. He added, “To support themselves, they make excellent Gouda cheese.” We promised to keep in touch—which we did—and embracing each other said our good-byes.
Upon Brother Benedict’s recommendation, Bill and I went to the monks’ short worship service called Compline marking the close of the monastic day. The cantor intoned, “Oh, Lord, come to my assistance,” the brothers chanting in response, “Oh, Lord, make haste to help me.” Then, they all sang, “Praise the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit both now and forever. The God who is, who was, and is and is to come at the end of the age.” A hymn followed, and then came the psalm, but not just any old psalm. It was none other than Psalm 91—the hiker’s psalm![1] Here we were on the eve of another hike on the Appalachian Trail, chanting Psalm 91 with monks, and less than a handful of miles from the trail itself. Little did we know how much we would need the encouragement of that psalm the next day. That evening, however, when reflecting on my time with Brother Benedict, a line from verse 15—“When he calls I shall answer: ‘I am with you’”—rang particularly true. Along with the non-coincidences, something holy pervaded in the disclosure of our lives, something of God’s presence that was more than comfort or easy assurance. Perhaps it was hope.
In the morning we met our shuttle driver at a trail head called Snicker’s Gap where a major east-west road crossed the ridge opposite the monastery. Although I knew that we had a challenging 14 miles to hike that day, it made me happy to know that we would finish at this spot near the monastery. Our driver took us down a narrow, twisting back road in the early morning to our starting point, Ashby Gap. We stepped into the day with a clear blue sky overhead, and the bugs already thrumming as the thermometer and humidity started their rise, a typical Virginia summer morning.
Thru-hikers appropriately call this section of the AT “The Roller Coaster.” According to the guide book, land closings had caused the re-location of the original trail route from the main ridge to a protected corridor that went up and over a series of side ridges, going in and out of the hollows between them. The nine ascents and accompanying descents of 300’-400’, often within a mile—up 300’-400’ for half a mile, down 300’-400’ for the other half a mile—contrasted sharply with the gently undulating ridge-walking in the other parts of northern Virginia and Maryland AT we had hiked previously. The guidebook used the word “seesaw” to describe the section, but “sawtooth” fit it better, and each “tooth” took its bite out of us. There is a saying among long-distance hikers that the challenge of hiking the AT is as much mental as it is physical. This hike proved that truth. We saw no spectacularly colored flowers and had no panoramic views from mountaintops, only a mostly tree-covered path that gave us some cover from the heat. “And under his wings you will find refuge” from Psalm 91 rang in my ear as we passed in and out of the shade. Had we been perpetually exposed to the sun, the hike would have been unbearable and undoable. I gave thanks for tree canopy like I never had before, especially as the pulsing of the heat bugs grew louder in concert with the climbing temperatures throughout the day.
Small gravel-sized rocks made for relentlessly unstable footing. Rocks by the million littered the trail, on the steep slopes up and down, in the stream beds we crossed, even on the few more or less level stretches. Our feet let us know they were unhappy. When we stopped for breaks, Koah our dog tended his feet, licking them for healing. At times I thought, “Lucky dog, you can lick your feet for relief.” Fortunately, Koah had hiked with us before and had toughened his paws, but we had heard stories of dogs whose feet had turned to hamburger. When we stopped, we not only rehydrated and munched on high energy snacks, we took off our boots and socks to let our feet air, more or less the human equivalent of what our dog did.
As for me, I heard verses of Psalm 91 in a new way. In the temptations of Jesus, the devil quotes verses 11 and 12—“For you has he commanded his angels…They shall bear you upon their hands/lest you strike your foot against a stone”—to entice Jesus to thrown himself down from the pinnacle of the Temple so that the miracle of Jesus’ being saved by the angels from crashing would be performed for all to see, and thus Jesus’ divinity revealed in a way inconsistent with Jesus’ ministry. Jesus refuses and counters by telling the devil he is not to test God. We did not set out to test God. However, our feet did not dash against a stone, nor did any other of our body parts. We did not slip or fall, stump toes, scrape shins, or skin knees despite the rocky path. Alas, if it was because of angels that we did not hurt ourselves, the angels must have been biblical literalists, tending only to our feet, because they did nothing to relieve the fatigue and exhaustion that rose with the heat and humidity.
By the end of the day my hope and confidence revived. Our toes were only slightly worse for the wear, pink in a few places, red in one or two. But, we had completed the most difficult part of the section between the Shenandoah Park and the Mason-Dixon Line. As we pulled out of the parking lot and headed down the mountain, I caught a glimpse of the monastery and longed to return. I had not imagined that hiking the AT would have led me to such a place, but perhaps because as Psalm 42 says, “Deep calls to deep,” they fit.
Six weeks later on Labor Day, Scott Stone, a friend of Bill’s, came to visit with his wife and two young daughters from the Washington, DC area. Scott was an active layman in the Lutheran church, and we had some long talks about church life and vocations. Though a successful lawyer with a prestigious firm, Scott doubted he would be a lawyer for the rest of his life, perhaps going into the ministry or becoming a public school teacher. Scott was also an avid outdoorsman. For a while, he and I talked about our respective adventures—backpacking, bouldering, whitewater rafting, and canoeing. Still keen to hike the Presidentials someday, I asked Scott if he might be game. He was. Emboldened by my new hope, I broached the idea of a different kind of adventure for that evening: a trip to Our Lady of the Angels women’s monastery, the place not far from my house that Brother Benedict had mentioned.
We went to Compline, the last service of the day, the same one that Bill and I attended at the monastery near the Appalachian Trail. The evening summer sun bathed everything in its glow on our drive. The trip itself had the character of stripping away all the refinements of life to the essential: stately homes gave way to horse farms then to more rural land when we turned onto a lane that crossed a river and went onto a gravel road that wound its twisty way along the river for another mile, reminding me of my beloved summers in east Tennessee, before we reached Monastery Road and the monastery itself a quarter of a mile up a dirt drive.
Inside, a narrow hallway led to the chapel door with a stoup of holy water at the left of the entrance. The chapel had three short rows of pews for laity, a small rail between the lay section and the altar area, then on either side of the chapel proper stood choir stalls for the sisters. We sat in the front pew to see the chapel more fully. The sisters entered quietly at seven, each taking her seat. Silence followed. A sister on our side of the chapel kindly approached us with a small booklet entitle “Compline.” A sister rang the tower bells to signal the beginning of the service. Before long, we were chanting Psalm 91: “He who dwells in the shelter of the most high, and abides in the shade of the almighty…”
In the months and years ahead, some of which had significant challenges for me, the sisters, God’s “angels,” would help “keep me” and teach me what it means to pray “my God in whom I trust” (v.2). They prayed for me as I became pregnant first with Hannah and then with Benedict (yes, Benedict). They prayed me through tenure, not once but twice. They prayed as I continued to hike sections of the AT and pressed on to Katahdin, even taking their Compline service with me so that I could pray it as I went.
Over the next few years, Brother Benedict and I kept in contact with each other through visits and letters. He blessed our own little Benedict a few weeks after his birth, and I made retreats at Holy Cross. Sadly, Parkinson’s and kidney disease slowed Brother Benedict until they finally claimed his life. Because of the strange but blessed way that God has made the AT so much more than a path through the woods, the AT’s segments linked me to Brother Benedict and the Sisters at Our Lady of the Angels. From that painful summer and surprising hike on the AT those several years ago, I have learned to hear more openly and patiently, with slightly less anxiety and far more gratitude, the truth of Psalm 91:15, “When [she] calls, I shall answer, ‘I am with you,’/ I will save [her] in distress and give [her] glory.”
[1] In Catholic enumeration, it is Psalm 90. For Protestants it is Psalm 91.