The hiker in me is running a little breathless this morning as I hoof my way up into the woods above this abbey nestled in the hills of Yamhill County.

Hoofing, I say, because my fellow hiker Kathy is leading the way.

“Since they logged out the pine and fir,” she says, “the path is finally clear, straight up to the shrine.”

Yes, the illusive shrine which we never did find, a few years back, when she led the way through much thicker woods.

There were too many trails back then she says, and poorly marked. Some weren’t marked at all. It’s much better now, she says. Just one straight trail running up the hill.

Except, not. 

A mile into the hike we have already come to some unexpected forks in the road. We follow our intuition, based on nothing in particular.

I notice that Kathy has no backpack, no water bottle. “I didn’t even bring the map,” she says, her tone a little regretful.

She also confesses that she has no sense of direction. Neither do I, which reminds me, uncomfortably, of our hike those few years back.

We were so lost, back then, that we ended up on a trail that led us down to the cloistered backside of the abbey property. I recall sheds for farm equipment. Or maybe it was the monks’ bookbinding operation. Or their storage area for local vintners’ wines.

“Kathy,” I remember saying to her, “we’re going to get caught. Some brother monk is going to find us where we don’t belong.”

Sure enough. Brother Monk comes flying along, clad in dungarees and blue work shirt, headed straight for us.

“We’re lost,” I sheepishly cry out.

So, today, again, the shrine eludes us. I pull out my phone to find where we are. Yep, we’re in the thick of the woods, not far from the neighboring vineyard on the northeast side.

“We’re not lost,” Kathy says encouragingly. “We’re smack dab in the middle of God’s creation! How can we be lost?”

I could count the ways.

At Noon Prayer, back in the quiet abbey church, I hear the monks chant the ancient psalms they chanted close to sixty years ago when I first came here. I was smitten, then, by these psalms, chanted slowly, softly, by this community of men living austere and gentle lives, hidden from the eyes of the world.

Their prayer rises fresh with each hour, because the prayer never starts with them but springs forth from the font deep within them, which is the Holy Spirit.

Reflecting on my own solitary life of prayer and labor in another portion of the Lord’s vineyard, I contemplate these monks, and their hidden witness to God’s faithfulness and love.

Why would men dedicate their lives—some far better than sixty years—to a life of praying the same ancient two-week cycle of psalms, to rising seven days a week for Vigils at 4:15 a.m., back in the church for Lauds and Community Eucharist, more community prayer throughout the hours of the day, a meatless diet, a life devoid of the many forms of stimulating distraction which the rest of us wouldn’t want to live without?

Why?

Because they have been invited by the Lord himself to have “the mind of Christ” in this particular way. While the world rages they hold a space for peace. They hold a space for the soul of the world, intercede for it, and in this way make of this world a pleasing offering to God.

While the church itself bleeds, they keep watch through this particularly troubled night, holding firm in a season of dying, holding firm to the promise of resurrection.

Without their vigil, church itself would be, perhaps, an organization like many others—strategy without heart, action without contemplation.

Many of us give ourselves over to decades of routine, with predictable schedules, days like every other day, the endless repetition of prayers, and commitments, and mundane chores.

These men happen to make a profession of this life. A solemn profession, because they entrust their solemn Yes to a life together, a life of hidden, steadfast, costly love.