I got to do some old-fashioned journalism for today's paper. Erin took a Western humanities class this spring, and for one of her writing assignments she wanted to visit a Utah monastery. Her professor had told the class about the Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity, located in the Utah mountains near Huntsville. We were both intrigued by the idea of a Catholic monastery in the middle of Mormon Central. So we set aside a Saturday to make the trip. (It was also a weekend when my sister Chrysta was visiting.)
I took a ton of pictures (I'll put some at the end of this blog post), and we listened to the 12:15 p.m. prayer and browsed the gift shop. At the gift shop, we found a fascinating man named Father Patrick who answered our questions but also asked us a few things. He acted like we were just as interesting as a Catholic monk was to us. We had a great conversation and I'm sure we'll be back to visit Father Patrick again.
Here's the news story:
Monastery invites all to learn about Catholicism
Then, a J Squared column, specifically about our time with Father Patrick:
A day with a monk - The words of Father Patrick
Be sure to check out the stories on the PDF version of the Universe too. That way you can see some of the photos too and how they were laid out on the page. (The photo with the online version of my story is not actually one I took of the monastery, just a DU file photo from another church.) Also, my story went along with another religion-related story. You can read that one here.
And now, to end the post, a few of the pictures I took.
I also took a little bit of video of the prayers.
This seems like it was a good experience for you. Yet what are some of the questions you asked each other?
ReplyDeleteI actually only came with three questions to ask. I wanted to ask a monk what attracted him to monastery life, if he ever missed anything from life outside the monastery and what was his favorite part of life as a monk.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that we ended up talking for quite a while was part of why the interview was so significant. Instead of just answering my questions, he asked me, my wife and my sister all about us (where we're from, what we're studying, etc.). And he was able to respond with wisdom based on the doctrine he has learned as a monk. We had a great time conversing, laughing and hearing and telling stories.
The highlights of our conversation are in the "J Squared" column, the link for it is in the blog post.