Time for another update!   

          Sorry about the delay, but it’s been mid-term exams, papers and all.  Ahhh, don’t you all love it – midterms.  I vowed NEVER come back to school after I graduated the last time.  With God all things are possible I guess.

           I thought I’d write a little about the focus of the seminary as I’ve been experiencing it.  Now that I’ve gotten the better part of the semester down, I’m starting to get a handle on how this place works.  First and foremost, I feel the environment is primarily driven by the idea that unless you are a healthy person, you cannot help anyone else; and being a healthy person means that you are balanced in your studies, prayer life, hobbies, fun time, spiritual and personal growth. Most of the focus of these first years seems to be to make you a healthy person.  Because of this, I’ve been experiencing a lot of personal growth and personal healing.  Something about this place makes the rough parts of your personality and the things of the past that haven’t healed come up.  Often times, you didn’t even know they were a problem until it smacks you in the face.  The community living environment with a focus on prayer is like accelerated living.  When you spend this much time around the same people and hours in prayer each day, you can bet that if you have inter-personal troubles, immaturity, or hurts you are covering up in yourself, this place can quickly become unbearable.  You must grab your difficulties head-on and deal with them or be drowned in them.  The amount of work and prayer you do is such that you don’t have enough energy to battle yourself as well.  You must live openly and freely; and that parts of you that are not mature really show.  Most of this work is done and recognized on your own.  Trust me, you feel the effects of problems long before others.

          They have set up such a wonderfully healthy, healing environment.  There is absolutely no reason not to seek help or get guidance with something you are facing.  There are all kinds of people to talk to about just about any topic.  If it’s a spiritual matter, there is a hill full of amazingly spiritual people to chat with and walk through questions.  If it’s psychological (substance abuse, family problems, whatever) they have a full-time clinical psychologist on staff – free for visiting.  He’s a great guy just to stop by and pick his brain and eat lunch with.  If it’s physical - you are covered by a health plan (almost exactly the same as the Intel one).  They encourage you to bring everything up in your spiritual direction meetings.  One of the most interesting pieces of advice I got was, “If you don’t feel like talking about something – that is EXACTLY the thing you need to bring up.”  That advice has been totally true and every bit as hard as you might imagine.  It’s hard to bring up things that are embarrassing or the past you’d rather forget.  But if it is still bothering you, it still hasn’t healed and you must go back and face it.  You don’t have to dig for these things.  As you reflect on God and on your own life, these rough areas naturally start becoming clearer and you WANT to work on them.  They encourage this atmosphere of openness by living by the philosophy that they won’t toss anyone out for admitting they are having any problem, they’ll only wave red flags if you DON’T admit to or deal with your problems.  They have regular meeting of alcoholics anonymous up here for people that have been healing from alcohol problems.  If you have any problem, they will do whatever it takes to help you.  All you need to do is ask and it is done confidentially and with the goal of you becoming a healthy person.

          Another example is the academic philosophy.  They don’t put the focus on the grades you get – academics are only 1/3 of your evaluation.  Granted, you must get a C or better in every class, but the focus is on being a balanced, healthy person. The classes ARE challenging and require a lot of work, but it is more about your growth as a whole person from this new knowledge. You could get straight A’s, but still get tossed out.  This was an amazing eye opener coming from the ultra-competitive world of curves and competition where grades were the end-all and be-all.  What a refreshing environment – education to become a better person?  What a concept!  Because of this, you are free to live out your Christian calling - by helping your fellow seminarians do the best they can as well.  Not giving them the answers, but helping them learn too.  We have study sessions together before tests and share everything we know and help each other learn.  My new goal is to help those I can become the best person/priest they can become.  By adopting these attitudes, you actually become free.  How?  Because by just doing your best and being a well-balanced person at the same time (academics, prayer, exercise, hobbies, etc), you are free to let your natural aptitudes come out.  Some people are gifted academically, others are not.  In this environment, the gifts God has given you direct your growth, instead of you forcing a direction to your growth that you don’t naturally have.  Each of us has something unique to offer others, and you let that come out instead of trying to be like someone else.  You find out all sorts of interesting things in yourself too – talents you didn’t know you had, things you liked that you didn’t even realize.  You simply ARE who you are – growing in self-knowledge.  I’m getting much more out of school this time around. 

           The environment can be very difficult.  I had a particularly bad two weeks when I was fighting with something that I was having trouble even recognizing what it was.  In times like this, each day can feel like an eternity.  It can be very difficult to face your past and your mistakes.  But each time you do, you feel like a new person.  Almost like being born with a new chance at life with self-knowledge and more free self.  You can walk into all the dark corners of your life and let the light shine on them.  One of my own observations is that if you cannot talk about a part of your life with someone else (with the proper person you feel comfortable with), you haven’t totally healed from it yet.  Even better is doing this in prayer, letting God take a look at it all.  All this said, I believe this is the greatest thing I’ve ever had happen in my life.  I feel like everyone should get the opportunity to do this kind of self examination and experience a healing and spiritual environment like this one.  I know my life has already been changed forever because of it.  I’ve learned so much about myself – and how God can fill in all those little places if you let Him.

 All of the guys studying from the Portland arch-diocese were all invited up to the arch-bishop’s house for dinner.  It was a wonderful time and the archbishop has to be one of the most amazing guys.  He’s an extremely approachable and down to earth guy.  He is really loved by all the other priests and they all say he’s the best bishop they’ve ever had.  It is interesting to think about because he won’t just be a ‘boss’ per se.  Priests take a vow of obedience to their bishop – on the same footing as a marriage vow.  So, he’s more than just the boss of the diocese, he is like a dad to his priest.  He is truly a wonderful man with a mind like a filing cabinet.  Calls everyone by first name and usually knows of some tidbit going on in your life.  Considering all the priests he’s in charge of and people he meets, this is amazing – nearly miraculous in my book. 

          Most of you got my update on the NPR clip that was done up here.  Ever since then, the people that are in the reserves up have been inundated with calls for interviews from papers, TV stations and even the Morning Show.  Fr. Karl (interviewed on NPR) is really tired of it and doesn’t do any more interviews.  He’s a really, really wonderful and soft-spoken Benedictine priest.  I think he doesn’t like his solitude invaded in this way.  I can’t say as I blame him.  I go running with him every other day or so and he’s such a peaceful man.  Wouldn’t ever guess that he’s was a Marine and is now in their reserves.          

          For those of you who have been asking, yes, I have gotten back into regular exercise again.  I’ve been running a couple of miles every other day with a group of priests and other seminarians.  Fr. Karl is one of them.  It’s a lot different than old Forest Park in Portland.   Since we’re on a hilltop, we get a massive calf-burning stretch back up the hill at the end of every run.  Talk about a workout.  I’ve been having a little trouble with my knees again, so I might have to resort to biking more.  Bummer.  They have a weight room up here and I’ll probably be doing some exercise in there as the weather gets rainy.  I’ve made regular exercise one of my formation goals for the year.  They insist that you have a balanced life of study, exercise, recreation and prayer.  If you don’t, they’ll flag it for you to be working on.  Wow, part of my job is to have fun – what a life! 

Another thing I’ve been doing is practicing the guitar.  I’m starting to get the chord changes down and the like; but there is a long way to go.  It’s nice just to grab the ax and go sit on the porch and play while chatting with a bunch of guys.  There are some amazing musicians up here.  One guy just finished writing all the music for a mass.  Several of the brothers up here have studied in Europe and do a lot of composition as well.  They have a lot of neat classes on making medieval icons, pottery, music, etc.  Pick a topic and you can probably take it.  Just no programming courses for some reason… 

Interestingly enough, I got inquiries on the Samoan cooking style they used for the pig.  Again, if you don’t want details, don’t read this paragraph.  Anyway, what they did was interesting.  After butchering the pig and dressing it, they took it over to a fire pit lined with rocks.  Then, they took a bunch of special rocks they had brought over from Samoa.  They had a name for the rocks, but it was Samoan and I didn’t quit catch it.  Anyway, they throw these special rocks into a fire and they’ll literally get glowing red hot.  These special rocks are what do all the cooking. Then, they take a bunch of these 3-5 inch diameter red-hot rocks and put them inside the carcass of the pig.  They would then usually wrap the pig in big tropical leaves.  Well, since those aren’t available, they wrapped the whole thing with wet newspaper and surrounded it by the rocks in the pit.  Then, they just let it sit in there and cook.  I must say that it certainly did come out good. 

          Well, that about does it.  I’ve got one more round of tests to get through and finals.  I’ll be getting done with classes around the 12^th of December and haven’t quite figured out the plans for the break yet.  We’re getting almost 7 whole days off for Thanksgiving, and boy do I need it.  It’ll be nice to recharge the batteries after all this.  For those of you in the area, I’ll probably be in touch.  There will be a concert up here at the abbey on December 9^th.  You’re all cordially invited to come up and listen to the music of the choirs and organists as well as get a guided tour by a real live seminarian (me).  

Please let me know how you all are.  I love hearing from you all.  I keep you in my prayers.

Matt