Christ in the Desert

I've just returned from a wonderful weekend in New Mexico, which included a visit to the Benedictine Monastery of Christ in the Desert several miles down an unpaved Forest Service road in the Chama River Canyon north of the tiny town of Abiquiú. Below are photos from my iPhone of the monastery in the early evening following Sunday Vespers and of the chapel, designed by the Japanese architect and woodworker George Nakashima. The monastery's founder, Father Aelred Wall, OSB once remarked that "A monastery is not a refuge, not a solution to problems of adjustment. Monasticism is a head-on collision with reality, and the more silent, the more solitude, the more head-on it is." Here's a sign of hope amid our troubled world: Christ in the Desert has seven novices.