Monastic Laundry

I've got a whole bunch of crazy stories to tell you, I promise. Dozens of personal diary entries and letters to share too. We'll get there soon! But first, it's important I keep setting the stage. I want you to see how wildly different this world was for me, and through these first few blog entries, I hope to paint a larger picture of what my life there was like. There were truly so many fascinating parts of being a monk. Many of them I look back on now with great amusement too. But the schedule? Well, as you might guess, it wasn't easy getting used to. Here's what my day generally looked like for the summer of 1993. I think this will help put everything else into better perspective going forward. What follows is my best recollection.  Monday to Friday:   6:30 AM    Morning Prayer and Mass 7:30 AM    Breakfast 8:45 AM    Meet in School For Work      (Lunch Break 12:30-1:15 PM)  5:00 PM    Finish Work  6:20 PM    Meditation and Evening Praye

Chaminade High School and I share a sometimes bumpy but ultimately rewarding past. The very short version of the story, which I'll mention here briefly, is that I attended the school my freshman year before promptly failing out. I was crushed, and my life was over, as far as I was concerned. My three best friends went to Chaminade, and several more besides, so I felt like a total failure not just in school but in life as well. My friends were still on the inside, and I was now on the outside, no longer allowed to attend classes there. I was only 15 years old, a smart but very fragile kid, so the trauma of failing out scarred me good. Fast forward only three years later though, and that same shy boy who'd failed out and was told he could no longer be a student at the school was now about to live there, with plans to possibly teach there one day too. Talk about a quick turnaround. The inspirational story I'd one day tell my students was already half-written in my head.

Once I knew I'd be joining the brothers who live and teach at Chaminade High School, I promptly received a two-page Word document outlining exactly what clothes I would need to bring with me when I moved in. I was really excited by the list too! My mother, though? Yeah, not so much. She took one look at the very long list, provided to us sometime in the end of May or early June, and her eyes bulged out with shock. It was clear we had a lot of shopping to do, and she personally had a lot of money she'd need to spend besides. As I'm one of eleven children and my parents were far from wealthy, the upfront costs were staggering. Though I no longer have the actual list, it read something like this: Two black suits, two black ties, five white long-sleeve Oxford shirts, five white short-sleeve Oxford shirts, two black belts, two pairs of black shoes with laces, a pack of black cotton socks, a pack of white undershirts, a pack of underwear, a few casual shirts, a few

Okay. So before we go any further, I think it'd be helpful at this early stage of the blog if I first explained to you exactly what a brother is. This should serve as a helpful primer going forward. Basically, a Roman Catholic brother is a man who dedicates his life to God, lives in a community with other men (usually called a monastery or a brothers' house), and who takes the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Some orders require other vows or promises, but these are the basic but challenging few. The easiest way to understand this kind of a calling is to look at the life of a nun. A nun, or a sister, is very much the same as a brother or a monk, except they are women who live in a convent. Their vows are usually the same, their lives are often the same too, and they choose different ministries depending on their religious order (teaching, working with the poor and homeless, or serving in various other church ministries). Nuns wear a religious habit, which as yo

My name was Brother Sean, and I lived at Chaminade High School in Mineola, New York from June 29, 1993 to July 19, 1997. I was a Marianist Brother, a member of a Roman Catholic religious order called the Society of Mary. Over the course of many blog entries I'll share here, I will take you through my time as a monk. I'll share with you many of my diary pages from that time too, letters I exchanged with family, friends, and teachers, and help you understand what my time there was really like. I have written about my experiences as a monk several times before, most notably in a fictional book inspired by my time at Chaminade called Outside In , but until now, I have never shared my full story, warts and all. It's time. It's time now for me to share my life, and in some ways, respectfully, the lives of others as well. My aim is not to defame or hurt anyone, but simply to share my truth in the context it deserves to be shared. My exit from the monastery was quick