hilltopics Images People Features 6A Monday, November 20, 2000 For comments, contact Clay McCuistion at 864-4924 or e-mail features@kansan.com
The Our Lady of the Annunciation of Clear Creek Monastery in Halbert, Okla. Watercolors by Thomas Gordon Smith. Contributed by Clear Creek Monastery
contemplative life KU students who joined a french monastery in the 1970s return to the united states to found their own
by matt merkel-hess *writer@kansan.com* kansan staff writer
A bird's view of the Our Lady of the Annunciation of Clear Creek Monastery in Hulbert, Okla.
Watercolors by Thomas Gordon Smith. Contributed by Clear Creek Monastery
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the quest for a contemplative life of work and prayer took a group of KU students to a medieval French monastery in the mid-1970s. Giving up their families, native country and
modern conveniences, they entered the monastery to lead a simple life in the 1,500-year-old tradition of Benedictine monks.
After almost 25 years, 13 monks—including seven KU alumni—returned to the United States in 1999 to found the Clear Creek Monastery near Tulsa, Okla. The new monastery is associated with the Benedictine Abbey of Notre Dame of Fontgombault, where the monks lived in France.
"It's just a great joy to be back in your own homeland," said Philip Anderson, prior of the Clear Creek Monastery.
"The purpose of it all is just to live the gospel," Anderson said. "Nobody's perfect but you can attain a certain kind of perfection. Monastic life is just an organization that favors that."
As Benedictines, the monks at Clear Creek lead a life of ora et labora — prayer and work — set down by St. Benedict in the sixth century. In addition to praying five hours a day, the monks tend to their 1,200 acres in the Ozarks of Oklahoma. They have hay fields, Angus cattle, sheep, chickens, apple orchards, and make furniture out of the numerous hardwoods on the ranch.
Collegiate roots
For the KU alumni, their spiritual journey began in a series of classes offered in the 1970s known as the Integrated Humanities Program. The four-se semester, 24-credit program covered literature, history, philosophy and poetry of western civilization.
Anderson said he entered the program in the fall of 1971 as a "wild teenager," fed up with the Vietnam conflict and traditional teaching styles. But the classes taught by Frank Nellick and John Senior, both now deceased, and Dennis Quinn, professor of English, surprised and challenged Anderson.
Quinn said the program, which began with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, was an experiment by the three professors to reach out to first- and second-year students.
"This was the most profoundly interesting educational experience I ever had," he said. "It was just a tremendous success."
"The spirit of the program was very poetic." Quinn said.
He said first-semester class typically began with 125 students, which fell off to about 50 by the fourth semester. Classes included memorizing 10 English poems a semester, learning Latin orally, studying calligraphy and extracurricular events such as a formal spring waltz.
Through the program, many students became interested in European history and the Catholic church, Anderson said.
Some converted to Catholicism of their own accord, including Anderson. He was baptized in April of 1973 at the age of 20. Quinn said the three Catholic professors did not attempt to convert the students, but as successful teachers they did have an influence.
"Doesn't every faculty member have an influence?" Quinn said. "If teachers don't have a personal influence on students, then there's something wrong with the teacher."
After the 1977-1978 academic year, the program ended after questions arose about the number of students who converted to Catholicism and because the program's popularity caused enrollment to decline in other departments. Quinn said.
In 1972, two students from KU set out for Europe with the goal of finding a monastery and way of life that could be brought to Kansas, Anderson said. They discovered Fontgombault, a French monastery founded in 1091. When they returned to school and the Integrated Humanities Program, word spread among the students about the monastery. Each year, some students visited the monastery and a few of those decided to stay and join.
"A lot of the reason for the objections were we constituted some competition for the current system, which was what the intention was," Quinn said.
Founding a monastery
After two years at KU, Anderson was not sure if he wanted to become a monk, so he joined the Marine Corps for two years. Then, in the fall of 1875, he went with friends to France to observe the monastery at Fortongault and work with the monks.
"It's a difficult, much more austere life," he said. "All of us were very charmed by the beauty of the place — the complete
An inside peak of the Our Lady of the Annunciation of Clear Creek Monastery in Hulbert, Okla. Watercolors by Thomas Gordon Smith. Contributed by Clear Creek Monastery
peace of it. We were looking for an ideal, sobriety order."
The next spring, Anderson and his friends made the decision to enter the monastery and began studying philosophy and theology in order to become priests.
In the back of their minds were hopes to return to United States and found a monastery, which they thought would take 10 years. Instead, it was almost 25 years later that 13 men from Fontgomb bault, including the seven KU grads, moved to Oklahoma to found the Clear Creek
Monastery.
There are other Benedictine monasteries in the United States, but Clear Creek is the only one associated with the Congregation of Solesmith, which retains the use of Latin in the liturgy after the reforms of Vatican II allowed other languages to be used in the church.
When the monks of Clear Creek raise their voices in Gregorian Chant, the Latin echoes in a former horse barn, which also houses some sleeping quarters in converted horse stalls. A cabin and other buildings constitute the modest monastery, which sits on what was once a family ranch.
With the addition of six new members this year and five more on a waiting list, the young monastery may start construction on a church and living quarters within a year.
"It's hard to convert agricultural buildings into a church," Anderson said. "We're working very hard, trying to find the means to build a real monastery."
The lack of a "real monastery" hasn't stopped visitors from coming to Clear Creek during the last year. Anderson said the groups were usually from Catholic parishes or student organizations, and everyone was invited to participate in a mass, listen to their Gregorian Chants and observe their life.
A way of life
Quinn said he was happy to see his former students return to the United States and start a monastery.
"People have this idea that monastic life is gloomy," he said. "But the thing that inspires people who don't know much about monasteries is the monks are happy, cheerful and so ordinary. They have a spark of loy in them."
Father John Pilcher of the St. Lawrence Campus Catholic Center said students went on a spring-break trip to Conception Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Northwest Missouri, but only a few college students sought monastic life on a permanent basis.
"I haven't really had many people say anything," he said. "Usually they have heard about it themselves somehow."
"College is not just getting ready for a paycheck — you're opening yourself up to a lot of wisdom," he said.
Anderson said the mentality of young people had changed from when he was in college, but there still was a search for spirituality.
After spending half of his life in France, Anderson and the other KU alumni are continuing their own search for truth and wisdom and embracing the challenge of founding a new monastery in America.
"We're bringing over the monastic ideal itself that some people should be set apart and just pray and work, so that everyone can profit from that." Anderson said. "The contemplative life is our ideal."
—Benedict Bax McCainton
A typical day at Clear Creek Monastery
4:50 a.m. – The monks awaken
5:15 a.m. – Matins, the first of the liturgical hours
6:15 a.m. - Lauds, the daybreak hour
6:30 a.m. - Priest offer low Mass,
where prayers are recited
8:15 a.m. - Prime, the morning hour
8:45 a.m. - Breakfast, followed by
sculpture reading
scrimage reading
**10 a.m.** - Terce, followed by High
10 a.m. - Yerce, followed by high
mountain prayers are sung
11 a.m. - Wardh, followed by
11 a.m. - Wark
11:15 a.m. – work
12:50 a.m. – Sext. the midday hour
13:50 p.m. - Sext, the midday hour
1 p.m. - Lunch, the main meal of the day
**2:35 p.m.** - None, the "ninth hour" when Christ died, followed by work until 5:15 p.m.
5:30 to 6 p.m. - Private prayer
6 p.m. - Vespers, the evening hour,
followed by study
8:30 p.m. - Compline, the night hour
After this, silence is observed until
8:30 the next morning.
9:45 p.m. - Lights out.
Melissa Carr/KANSAN
For more information:
Clear Creek Monastery
5804 W. Monastery Road
Hulbert, OK 74441
The Congregation of Solesmes, which Clear Creek belongs to, has a website at www.solesmes.com
Books about the Integrated Humanities Program:
Truth on Trial: Liberal Education be Hanged by Robert K. Carlson
Poetic Knowledge: The Recovery of Education by James S. Taylor
KU monks
In addition to Father Philip Anderson, the KU alumni include Father Francis (Roark) Bethel, Wichtia; Father Francis (Rick) Bales, Roeland Park; Father Laurence (Lany) Brown, Kansas City, Kan.; Father Matthew Shapiro, Prairie Village; Brother Martin (Scott) Markey, Fairway; and Brother Joseph Owen, from Oregon.
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