What’s It Like Inside a Trappist Monastery?
Paul Prather
4 min read ⭑
In 2023, my wife Liz embarked on a self-guided spiritual retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, the Trappist monastery in Nelson County, Kentucky. She returned with an armful of books and souvenirs from the abbey’s gift shop.
One book she brought back was, “In Praise of the Useless Life: A Monk’s Memoir,” by Brother Paul Quenon, a monk who lives and writes at the abbey.
Kentucky writer Fenton Johnson notes in his foreword to a new book by Quenon that the name of that earlier tome “might just be one of the most audacious titles in Anglo-American literature, given our twin empires’, British and American, drumbeat emphasis on Being Useful.”
I’d add that, in addition to its arresting title, “In Praise of the Useless Life” is a lovely piece of work.
Now Quenon, who will turn 84 in November, has produced an equally engaging volume called “A Matter of the Heart: A Monk’s Journal 1970-2022.”
A native of Fairmont, West Virginia, he entered Gethsemani as a novice in 1958. Thomas Merton was his novice master. “A Matter of the Heart” draws from Quenon’s experiences and observations over five of his more than six decades inside the cloister.
I talked with Quenon recently via email. Here are lightly edited excerpts from our exchange:
Prather: I’m a fan of your previous book, “In Praise of the Useless Life.” In a few sentences, can you tell our readers what a “useless life” is, and why it’s worthy of praise?
Quenon: Monks do not live according to the standards of utility in our culture. We have no
particular ministry, such as preaching or teaching. Our primary occupation is praying, liturgically and personally; praying for the church, the world. We live a simple life and live by the work of our own hands in a quiet life in the country.Prather: In “A Matter of the Heart,” you’ve chosen to share entries from your journals, selected from across slightly more than 50 years. Did you have a particular type of reader in mind as you chose these excerpts? If so, who might that reader be?
Quenon: I published the journals as an overflow of my contemplative life, in its daily thoughts
and experiences. It is a gift passed on for so much that I have been given. Someone
fascinated with the monastic life, or with spiritual living, may find it of interest.Prather: Did you notice any change in your journaling across the decades? Did you find you’d changed the kinds of things you were most concerned with or the ways in which you dealt with them? If so, what were those shifts?
“Many people today are looking toward monasteries for a more centered, focused and deeper life. Looking for a heart open to the higher things, and lived in the culture of peace.”
Quenon: This selection intends to reflect (my) interior and monastic life. I did not include the
several engagements I later had with the Merton International Society, the Merton Institute and the local Merton Circle. Little is said about friends I have acquired.Prather: Perhaps I’m wrong, but I imagine some readers being quite interested in reading about life inside a monastery, but then asking themselves, “What has that got to do with me and my life out here in the larger world? I’ve got a spouse and two kids and a 9-to-5 job and a mortgage.” What can people outside the monastery learn from this book? Are there monastic insights or principles they can apply to themselves?
Quenon: This is not a book for everyone. But many people today are looking toward
monasteries for a more centered, focused and deeper life. Looking for a heart open
to the higher things, and lived in the culture of peace.Prather: After so many decades as a monk, is there a central spiritual truth — or, for that matter, an unanswerable, nagging question — that has come to mean more to you than any other?
Quenon: People ask me why I entered the monastery, and I say I am still figuring that out. It
is a mystery of a vocation, one basically hidden from my eyes, lived in faith. I have been following an intuition of faith that leads me onward. To explain it and make excuses does little to clarify things, and compromises the reality. It is a matter of the heart.
Before “In Praise of the Useless Life” and “A Matter of the Heart,” Quenon published 10 books of poetry. A poet’s eyes and ears pervade this new book. Consider this example:
I was awakened from a dream on the lumber shed porch by the singing sound of a skunk — the only time I’ve ever heard it. With this quiet and charming tune, she was walking away without noticing me. After I dressed and started in the dark toward Vigils, a dog beyond the outer enclosure wall began barking.
That set off a pack of coyotes in the farther woods. When they had gone through their cycle of howls and yaps, another pack far to the southwest got started. After that quieted, another one to the northeast, more distant still, was already yelping and howling. That sound was then brought back full circle and provoked howls from the first pack — a repeat — so rare to hear a repeat!
And all the readers whispered, “Amen.”
Paul Prather has been a rural Pentecostal pastor in Kentucky for more than 40 years. Also a journalist, he was The Lexington Herald-Leader’s staff religion writer in the 1990s, before leaving to devote his full time to the ministry. He now writes a regular column about faith and religion for the Herald-Leader, where this column first appeared. Prather’s written four books. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.
