On October 2, through a combination of boat, plane, and car, I traveled to a Trappist monastery in a village called Shuili, in a township also called Shuili, in the county of Nantou, in the country of Taiwan. The monastery was located about an hour by foot up a mountain. There were only three resident monks, all of them priests: the current superior Father Paul and two aged former superiors Fathers Raphael and Francis. I stayed for five nights and had the opportunity to partly participate in their strictly regimented lifestyle that involved among other things rising at 3:30 a.m., retiring at 8 p.m., daily Mass at 6:30 a.m., and corporate prayer six times per day. (Although I set my alarm clock for 3:30 a.m. with great earnestness, each time that it arrived, I could not find within me the passion for 3:45 a.m. corporate prayer requisite to mobilize my slothful body. Thus, the earliest round of corporate prayer to which I could ever make it was the 6 a.m. round.)
Since Vatican II Trappist monks no longer observe a vow of silence; nevertheless, the monks were generally taciturn. This was frustrating initially since I am a highly relational person. Clearly, I am not called to a contemplative lifestyle. I asked for a directed retreat. I had wanted to be able to confide my hopes, dreams, visions, goals, and frustrations with a priest and receive wise counsel how to proceed. Unfortunately, Father Raphael was unpracticed in the art of active listening. Each day when he arrived at 8:30 a.m. to give me direction, he gave an impassioned monologue with his eyes closed, instinctively knowing when an hour had passed and promptly leaving at 9:30 a.m. I never had a chance to speak more than twenty words. It almost seemed that his hour with me was a release valve for his pent-up need to talk, and he had no capacity to listen. This was also frustrating.
Father Paul was very fascinating. During corporate prayers his facial expression was so hard to interpret. If it had been on my face, it would have indicated boredom, but I am not convinced it had the same meaning on his face. He led the corporate prayers like a parliamentarian, with a timer to guarantee that each devotion was exactly the prescribed length. When he spoke with me, he never once looked me in the eyes. When he delivered my meals to me, the interaction lacked the greeting and leave-taking civilities that I had taken for granted that everyone used, and I realized that phatic communication in fact functions to lubricate interaction. I mentioned in passing that I planned to go to Sun Moon Lake one day, and he volunteered to take me. I could not quite visualize what it would look like to do something touristic with someone whom I had not yet seen smile, but I agreed.
Father Paul and I set out together at 10 a.m. He blankly asked if I wanted to see some ethnic dancing, to which I responded in the affirmative. We had polite conversation while he drove me to the lake. We stopped at several different places for different views of the lake. Being a very food-centric person, I kept asking myself, "I wonder what we will do for lunch. I hope this is not a fast day. Has he been to a restaurant before?" At last he interrupted my internal debate and said, "Let's go to Starbucks for lunch." This surprised me on a couple accounts:
- Even in America, I would not eat at Starbucks because the price of a sandwich is high relative to its size. I assumed a vow of poverty would not allow eating at Starbucks.
- Although I consider coffee to be a near necessity, I still consider Starbucks coffee to be a luxury. I assumed a vow of poverty would not allow drinking Starbucks coffee.
Through this one lunch, I began to see that Father Paul was human too. I asked him questions like, "Does following the same routine every day ever start to feel boring or monotonous?" He answered, "Yes." I followed up with, "So how do you handle it?" He followed his pattern of interpreting my every
you as a plural "you monks" and said, "We talk to our superior." I tried again to elicit a personal answer to which he responded with the results of a personality inventory, said that he is not emotional, is well-suited to a contemplative life, and does not have those types of feelings.
The next thing that happened really helped me to see his humanity. In follow up to my response about my wanting to see some ethnic dancing, he took me to an "aboriginal village". I was very surprised how much the entrance fee was, but I did not think about it any more. As we walked around, I kept thinking that this was an odd place. I had expected to see at least a reconstructed but functioning aboriginal Taiwanese village. Instead, I saw a reconstruction of a British earl's house and garden and fountain in one place. Then an area with stocks and totem poles and quasi-American Indian stuff. Then he pointed to a building and said, "Let's go in there." I followed him and got in a little boat, expecting it to take me to the aboriginal village. As we slowly went along, the man-made scenery was very early American West. The ride ended with a hide speed drop resulting in a huge splash of water. It was a water ride, not a boat ride to an aboriginal village.
Afterward, he kept saying like a kid who tasted candy for the first time, "That was very exciting." Then he took me to another building, where I sat in another seat that turned out to be a roller coaster. It finally dawned on me that we were in a "Aboriginal" theme park. I could not believe how dense I had been. I just so did not have a category for riding a roller coaster with a monk in a theme park that it blocked me from realizing where I was. The total absence of lines did not help. At Six Flag Great America, you sometimes wait in line >45 minutes for a single ride. It was a rainy day, few people, no lines, no loud music, and both "rides" so far had been indoors so my senses did not have the data to interpret. After the roller coaster, my eyes were opened and I could see the other rides and games and other trappings of a theme park.
Eventually, we took a cable car to the top of a mountain where there were nine imitation tribal villages, and we watched a performance of the courtship dances of a particular tribe. Then we headed back to the monastery, where Father Paul put his robes back on, and we headed off to Vespers. The other monks probably thought we just went and serenely looked at the natural scenery of the Sun Moon Lake, but I knew that I had ridden a roller coaster with this monk.
