The monks have been the recipients of two good used cars in recent weeks. Denis Bachand, father of Bro. Louie, gave us a 1999 Oldsmobile, and Rosemary Vogelweide, mother of Bro. Bertrand, gave us a 1998 Honda Accord. Although we are trying to cut back our traveling in the face of high fuel prices (and global warming), we still need to make trips. And no trips in North Dakota are short. So we are very grateful for these cars.

     Our winter Open House sale on December 1st was very successful. This sale of home-baked bread and fruitcake, as well as the lovely pottery by Bro. Llewellyn, and Abbey wine, is becoming a well-known event in our region. This sale, which takes place twice a year, is largely the project of Fr. Thomas and Bro. Alban, who do the baking. But the event itself requires the cooperation of at least a dozen monks. Perhaps the most important aspect of the sale is friendly contact it gives us with the local people.

     Fr. Valerian was home at the Abbey for Christmas Day from his teaching post in Bismarck, but he left the day after. His destination was Holy Trinity Abbey in Huntsville, Utah, where he spent a week giving the Trappist monks their annual retreat. From Utah, our peripatetic brother traveled directly to St. John’s University, Collegeville, MN. He will spend the spring semester there on sabbatical as a fellow in the Ecumenical Center. He is the first monk of Richardton to take advantage of this considerable educational opportunity. He will be researching the spirituality of college students.

     Each year the Sisters of Sacred Heart Monastery come to the Abbey for a Christmas party and often the monks put on a skit. This year’s presentation was “The Trial,” written by Bro. Bertrand. It seems that a certain monk (actually, Bro. Gregory) has sued the Sisters for a huge amount of money because one of their llamas spit on him. After intensive grilling by the Judge, a.k.a. Prior Basil, and testimony by witnesses such as Bro. Jacob, Bro. Victor, Fr. Victor and Fr. James, the truth comes out that it was in fact Bro. Gregory who spit on the llama. And so the truth wins out again.

     Over the weekend of January 24-28, Abbot Brian attended the annual Abbots’ Workshop in St. Joseph’s Abbey near New Orleans. The workshop dealt with the environmental crisis and featured the charismatic Fr. Sean McDonagh of Ireland. While in Louisiana, the abbots toured the areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. About 40% of the population has returned to the city, but it will be decades before it is restored to full normality.

     This has been a winter of remodeling in our house. Readers are probably aware that we are redoing several of the private rooms so as to provide bathrooms. Unlike some of the previous work on the bedrooms, this project did not involve tearing out whole walls. So we avoided the plague of plaster dust that accompanies such work. But we did have a hallway full of tools and furniture and other stuff. We also had small crews of carpenters, plumbers and electricians working among us. We even had a lady-carpenter working in the cloister. Don’t tell the Vatican!

     One of the major improvements that came along with the renovation was the installation of new carpets in the east wing. This was done not only in the new rooms but also in the east and south hallways and in the novitiate.

     Another winter project that finally got taken care of is located in the large room below the cafeteria, commonly known as the North Lounge (although the South Lounge has long since disappeared). Down there the original tile (from 1963) was looking pretty bedraggled and Bro. Gregory was having a harder and harder time making the place look spiffy when he cleaned. So we installed a spanking-new tile floor. In fact, this floor was laid by Frank Haupt, an Abbey alumnus, who also laid the carpet in the monastery.

     On January 11, Fr. Lawrence gave the community a short conference on the problems of the hearing-impaired. This lead to a lengthy discussion which surfaced many suggestions for improvements in this matter. One of the first concrete results was a rearrangement of the choir order, that is, the seating pattern in church. The idea now is to put the stronger voices in the back row and to place those with poor hearing in front of them. As we get older, hearing disorders are becoming a serious issue in this community.

     After 21 years as chaplain of Maryvale, Valley City, ND, Fr. John Odermann has moved home to the monastery. On the last weekend of January, Bro. Louie and Bro. Herman drove 200 miles east to transport John and his chattels to the Abbey. In Valley City, Fr. John was chaplain to the Presentation Sisters and also at the local hospital. One of his favorite pastimes is the fashioning of crucifixes from the branches and twigs of trees. A goodly load of this wood came home with John and he is thinking about getting to work on it over at the carpenter shop.

     Fr. Claude has replaced Fr. John at Valley City. He too has worked in his present assignment in Dickinson for many years. He has lived at St. Patrick’s Church and ministered to St. Joseph’s Hospital. As often happens in these cases, monk follows monk. But this is not a case where an old man is replaced by a young man. In fact, Claude (83) is four years older than John (79)! But his health is better, and the work in Valley City is not heavy. As long as there are lakes with fish over there, he thinks he will be alright.

     Once the new rooms were finished, it was time for the inhabitants to move in. In this case, no fewer than five monks were involved: Gerald, Warren, Victor John, Michael and John Odermann. Once you start moving people around in the monastery, it sets off a chain-reaction. Such moving usually involves the trucking of heavy furniture and that requires young muscles. Fr. James directed this project, and he also did a lot of the heavy lifting along with candidate Richard Zolper.

     Fr. Benedict Fischer is spending the spring semester in Jerusalem. He is working on his Master’s Thesis in Scripture for St. John’s School of Theology in Collegeville, MN. To do this work, Fr. Benedict is using the library of the famous L’Ecole Biblique in north Jerusalem. He is not living with the Dominicans at the L’Ecole, but with another religious order in the Old City. Fr. Benedict completed his class work at St. John’s in the first semester and passed his comprehensive exam in late January.