Categories

We are praying, praying all the better when we voice no prayer. We trust all the more strongly when we seem to doubt. We show our faith when we show our love, and he who needs no telling knows what we desire.

                                                       -St. Bernard of Clairvaux

Many of us entering this upcoming recession could learn lessons from the California monks of St. Bernard of Clairvaux at Vina, California. With most convents and monasteries giving one a new outlook on life, these individuals have dedicated their entire lives to following religion. They follow certain rules to prayer, meditation, and avoiding the media, yet working with surrounding communities to teach others about prayer and religious beliefs. Meanwhile, their buildings have been known to be from historical or medieval times, giving the convent or monastery a true look of the past. Bordered by the Sacramento River, the retreat consists of a modest library, a store, and a small dining hall gently overlaid by century-old walnut trees. With guests considered welcome and to observe silence at night, they are not required to attend religious requirements nor schedule their stay. But if they choose, they are welcome to attend prayer services at the small church of the monastery or worship as they choose. Each of the guest rooms for visitors are simple and austere, with a twin bed and a desk, with a private bathroom considered very modern.

The monastery near Vina, California, follows the Rule of St. Benedict while living under its abbot. Called a "school of brotherly love", everything is shared---heart, mind and burdens.  Located in the Northern California area near Vina, the monks rise before dawn on a daily basis to pray, work the land with walnuts and plums, and make their full bodied red wine as a way to make cash from its original 3,800,00 vines. Considered the first Roman Catholic Cistercian winery in North America on its 580-acres, it was land once owned by Leland Stanford—once a California governor, university founder, and railroad magnate.  In 1865, Stanford had defeated George Hearst, father of William Randolph Hearst, in the position for the 1885 Democrat Senate seat.

The reason for much of their needed cash is for a new project---the resurrection of an 800-year old pre-Gothic building, the Cistercian abbey, which was built in 1190 and 1210 near Madrid, Spain, during the Middle Ages. A slow progress being built stone-by-stone, it will eventually become one of California's oldest standing structures whenever it is done. William Randolph Hearst had purchased this disrepaired stone building in 1931, which had been carved by the monks in Moorish Spain until the Spanish government had ordered it closed after 1835. A fee of $90,000 was paid by Hearst for it, while having it taken apart stone by stone with each stone carefully numbered. They were then crated to have the stones rebuilt on his land, while being transported on 33 miles of railroad track built by Hearst which totaled over a million dollars in the process. Once it reached California, he ran out of money and donated the stones to San Francisco for the Golden Gate Park to be rebuilt.

Over the years, due to World War II and lack of money, the stones laid idle with vandalism and a fire destroying them,  with the ink coding becoming lost over time along with many of the stones being destroyed or carried off to landscape projects. When the Abbot of the Cistercian abbey in California learned of the stones, twenty years were spent in acquiring the stones with twenty truck loads moving them. The difficulty which remains is to put them back together without the original coding Hearst developed so carefully doing, with present-day building codes, earthquakes safety measures, and construction costs presenting continuous obstacles. Unfortunately, 40% of new stones remain to be matched for the building to be finished which makes it a complex puzzle which will involve extremely old stones and modern-day cement to make it look as if it were an 800-year old abbey.