Road Trip, Part 1

For those who haven't read my previous entries, I am the oldest of triplets.  This weekend, my youngest brother, the one that doesn't look like me, is making his final vows join the Trappist Order at New Clairvaux Abbey in Vina, California.  Jeffrey, also known as Brother Placid, has been at the monastery for 6 years.  He made his Simple Promises of obedience, simplicity, and stability; this is basically the same formula for any type of Catholic vocations: obedience, poverty, and celibacy.  Here is Br. Placid:

 

 

The Abbey of New Clairvaux has an interesting history in its short life from its foundation in the 1950's.  The abbey was part of an expansion from the motherhouse in Gethsemani, Kentucky which was made famous as the home of the Catholic mystic Thomas Merton, whose book: Seven Story Mountain, written in the style of Augustine's Confessions, helped jumpstart the Catholic vocations boom in the 60's and 70's.

New Clairvaux was founded on the former property of Leland Stanford Ranch, a failed vineyard and winery that was converted to a Walnut and Sugar Plum orchard. The winery structure is a 2 acre brick structure, which is still the largest brick structure built west of the Mississippi.  Recently, the abbey has been successful in recovering the stones from its original structure in Ovila, Spain, which was bought by William Randolph Hearst to be built as a larger structure than his infamous San Simeon Hearst Castle.  During the 1920's and 1930's, Hearst bought the structures of many abandoned castles and monasteries in France and Spain with the intention of transporting the stones for use in new buildings. He had the stones from the Abbey of Clairvaux, which was built in the 12th Century, transported to the Presidio in San Francisco, and then ran out of funds before construction could begin on his Windhaven Project. The stones languished in storage at the Presidio, some being damaged in fires, the church stones bought by a parish in Florida which reconstructed the old abbey's church, and the rest being used in Golden Gate Park as the bedliner for manmade lakes and decorative stones throughout the park, eventually being worshipped by Druids and other assorted pagans.

In the late 1990's, Governor Gray Davis signed an act of the California Congress to cede ownership of the stones to New Clairvaux Abbey to establish the original Chapter House structure with the provision that the building be open to the public as a historic artifact.  Once completed, the Chapter House will be the oldest structure in California at over 800 years old.  Here we see the current progress of the reconstruction.

 

 

Some of the original stones have been incorporated into the window archways, as you can see here:

 

 

Here's what the inside of the construction looks like:

 

 

 

Most of the recovered stones formed the gothic arches that held up the ceilings of the walkways that enclosed the central quad.  The yellowish stones you see are new stones from a quarry in Texas which were cut on the abbeys grounds to make sure they would fit with the old stones.   Here's a view of the new and old stones placed together to make the buttresses for the outside of the Chapter House wall:

 

 

The Chapter House is the most important building in the communal life a Cistercian monastery.  It gets its name from the readings of the chapters, or writings, of St. Benedicts Rule during meetings which the monks attend to contemplate and help interpret The Rule to apply to daily life.  All monastic life in the Catholic Church is based on the interpretation of St. Benedict's Rule.  Some orders are stricter than others, which is why there are so many different kinds of monks and nuns in the Catholic Church.  The Trappists are an offshoot of the Cistercians, and have a stricter observance of St. Benedicts Rule than the other Cistercians.

 The Chapter House, therefore, is the center of community life for the monastery.  Simple vows are professed there, formal meetings, and celebrations are held there.  That's why its a big deal for The Abbey of New Clairvaux to have the original chapter house from the Abbey of Clairvaux.

This blurb about the current reconstruction project is just something that I wrote during the trip up there.  I just got back and wanted to post something, so look for the more personal stories (i.e. funny) to be posted here during the coming week.  I'm tired now and will post more later.

Here's me being tired before I took off from the monastery on Monday: