Not many people know this about me, but not so long ago (just a couple of years ago, really), I was seriously considering becoming a priest.  It even got so far as me applying, speaking with the Bishop of Sacramento and his staff, and the Diocese of Sacramento thereafter signing off on it and  planning to send me to seminary at a place called Mt. Angel.  I had never been to Mt. Angel before, but something about this trip told me that it was time to visit.  I am so happy that I did!

There are two parts to Mt. Angel: a town, which apparently is very well-known for hosting a fantastic annual Oktoberfest, and a seminary/abbey, which is essentially a small ‘college’ like setting and enclave for those seeking to return to God and escape the spiritual decay of the modern world.  Both parts of Mt. Angel, the town and the seminary/abbey, have a German flair to them, seeing as the area was settled by St. Benedictine monks and priests back in the 1880s.  

While I scoped out the entire area the evening before, my time exploring Mt. Angel really happened this morning.  I started in the town, which was adorable and awesome and looked like this:

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And the town cathedral looked like this:

Next, I decided to head up the hill…the “Mt.” Angel to see the seminary and abbey.  The entrance looked like this:

And running along the side of the road was a walkable trail with these oversized stations of the cross with each station written in German.   I saw many people using the trail as a running path both this morning and the evening before.  I only saw one person (I’m guessing a seminarian) praying a rosary and using it for its intended purpose.  It looked like this:

And this:

At the top of the hill, just prior to entering the grounds, was a shrine to the Blessed Mother and a cemetery for past brothers and priests of the Order of Saint Benedict (you can tell them apart by the “OSB” after their names).  The shrine looked like this:

And the cemetery looked like this:

And then finally there you are, on the main grounds.  I had never been to a seminary before, although I had been to a few monasteries, and of course I had been to plenty of churches in life.  Yet there was something about this place that set it apart from every other religious place I had been before.  It was almost too peaceful, serene, and set off from the world.  Almost like stepping up onto a cloud, away from earth and into a dreamworld, this interesting place where monks, seminarians, and priests, all in their black attire, wander about, pray together, take classes together, and live a life separate and rare from the rest of us.   It looked like this:

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The campus was a thing of art, like something out of a movie.  I took so many more pictures of it than I am showing here, trying to capture the energy of people going about their days, the religious class dressed in black studying, debating philosophy, playing in the grounds, couples flirting in the sunset (young seminarians being tempted?).  There were elements of the liminal and mystical mixed in with being there, like I had stepped into a place not so different from Hogwarts, or a place with as many surreal moments as an episode of the Young Pope.  Feeling moved and kind of dizzy from the experience, I decided to take refuge in the library, thinking maybe that would bring me back to reality.  I was wrong, and I headed further down the rabbit hole.

An original and priceless Guttenberg Bible greeted visitors at the library entrance, and it looked like this:

Once inside, the library’s architecture and design was on point and surreal in itself, and it looked like this:

And this:

And the books there were incredible!  It was not a repository of a bunch of old Christian tomes, but a repository of anything and everything you ever wanted to read involving the human experience: from human biology, psychology and sexuality, to all religions and languages of the world, to histories throughout the world, to philosophy, philosophy, and more philosophy, to catalogues on saints and angels, prayers and the history of the Church, to mystical and mythological interpretations of religion, to catalogues of potentially prophetic dreams, and the list goes on-and-on.  I had never seen a library like it in my life, so different from the libraries we are used to seeing in the secular world.  “I bet they have a forbidden section like in Harry Potter,” I joked to myself.  And then, there it was:

I decided to stay in the library for a few hours, grabbing some tomes on the philosophic nature of time and matter, on the original man’s connection to the Earth, and the Kabbalah.  It was interesting reading, and I wish I had had more time, a sabbatical of months or years, to just read through all the different tomes and perspectives in that library.  Yet after my time was up, as I gathered my things and left Mt. Angel for Tacoma, I couldn’t help but think to myself that I am glad things turned out the way they did in my life and that I did not go to seminary, because I am not sure that lifestyle would have fit with me.  Not that I am against my faith or religion, but to be cut off from the world like that in some sort of dreamland seemed kind of wrongful at the end of the day, and not my understanding of God’s calling for us, which is to serve and love our fellow human being in the thick of life’s troubles and tribulations. Something about my home of Red Bluff and all the pain it has caused me has made me a different sort of Christian man, one that is not looking outside for a sort of surreal experience that speaks to the soul, but one that is looking inside himself for strength and spiritual depth even as the storm rages all around.

To be continued…