Monastic Laundry

"All too often, a kind of workaholism takes over and makes of religious life a series of tasks to be performed and duties to be undertaken." -Br. Robert C. Berger, FSC (a teacher of mine at Manhattan College), in the Spring 1994 Review for Religious 5/2/94 Dear Diary,      I have been living at Chaminade High School for 10 months and three days. Does it feel like it's been 10 months and three days? Yes, but I now realize that though it is a short period of time, I'm thankful for every minute of it--both good and bad. John reminded me today to keep my head on straight and don't go to extremes--between cynicism and over pietistical bullshit. He was straight with me and I thanked him for it. It is but another thing for me to keep in mind and remember always.       Organization is something I need right now. With tests coming, I have to buckle down and get to work. With God's love and help, which I know I have, I'll do great on my tests and I'...

I wasn't supposed to be there when it happened. My Assistant Novice Master probably scheduled me to be somewhere in the high school nowhere near the brothers' house that day at that exact time. As things happen though, there I was. I ran up the main stairs of the monastery toward my bedroom on the second floor, perhaps to grab something quick from my room, and as soon as I reached the top of the landing and turned right, Joe came toward me from my left. He was carrying a large box filled to the brim with things, so I instinctively asked him, "Hey, need some help?" Some words slip from our lips and disappear forever, while others are etched into history. These words I spoke in that moment without thinking were something closer to the second kind, and they were destined to haunt me in the days and weeks ahead. (And hell, years too, I guess. Hence this entry.) "No, I've got it," he said, smiling curtly before continuing along his way. I didn't wonder wh...

 [Housekeeping note: no post here next week. Check back again on Wednesday, November 11th.] By this point of my life, 18 years old, I knew. I knew the one thing I started dreading in 7th grade and began to slightly accept by 9th grade was not ever going away. I knew I wasn't into girls. The thing is (don't laugh), by choosing to live a life of chastity, I honestly thought about it more in terms of giving up the females I wasn't into rather than the males I was into. A life with no heterosexual love? Pfft. I can do that. I know this seems illogical, but doing anything with another guy was an impossibility anyway, as far as I was concerned. This was the early 90s, and things were extremely different (and much more difficult) back then. As a thoroughly naive teenager who up until that point assumed his homosexual leanings would either disappear on their own or at least agree to stay bottled up inside him forever and ever, the stubborn yearnings of my libido genuinely took m...

I come from a very large family, so moving into a household with 33 other people wasn't as big a jump as it would be for some others. Even so, being physically away from everyone all of a sudden, with several layers of communication silence stacked up between us as well, was not easy to get used to. Here are a few examples of the ways my family and friends acknowledged this wall that went up between us. Remember, this was before email, so I sent and received many actual letters back then instead. The dates you see are the date they wrote the letter, not the date I received it. July 2, 1993 letter from my mother:    Three days have passed since you entered your new life, and I'm so anxious to hear from you. Are you adjusting to your new schedule and chores? Daddy and I were very impressed with the residence and residents. I was telling everybody about some of the rooms--yours, the parlor with parrot and cockatiels, the dining room, and of course the beautifully large living ro...

It was late August 1993 when the inevitable finally occurred. I'd only been living in the monastery for about six weeks, but this was a small eternity, so leaving home with just my fellow young brothers was quite an unusual experience. Our destination? Manhattan College in Riverdale, New York, the place we'd be attending school for the next four years. Joe, two years older than the four of us who had just joined the order, helped us out so much our first year, as he'd already gone through everything we were still experiencing: all the nerves, all the newness, and everything else that came with joining a conservative Roman Catholic monastery as a teenage boy. Since Joe was beginning his junior year of college and we were each beginning our freshman year, he was a true "big brother" to us all. He drove us up to the college, showed us where we needed to park each day, and then introduced us around campus whenever he could too. Now you've gotta remember, ...

I first walked the hallowed halls of Chaminade High School on a tour while I was still in the eighth grade. I wasn't sure where I wanted to go to high school at that point, only that Catholic school seemed a certainty. I remember the day I received my acceptance letter to Chaminade though, as the prestigious high school was at the very top of my list, not least of all because my closest friends from grade school were already committed to going there. As I discussed in a previous blog , my time as a student at Chaminade was sadly short-lived, as I failed out at the end of my very first year there (failing is anything below 75, so a 73, a 74, and a Fail in my Pass/Fail music course sealed my fate). Though they allowed me to take two summer school courses at the school that summer, I eventually had to say goodbye to the place forever –or so I thought. Just three years later, now a graduate of Kellenberg High School in Uniondale (run by the same religious order), I was back again...

This week's blog is made up of several letters my family and friends sent me during my first summer in the monastery. The dates are when they actually wrote the letter or card, not when I received them. I'm also including, for the FIRST TIME since I started this project, something I wrote on the day I joined the Marianist community at Chaminade High School. Please don't read too much into the ellipses below. I've only edited out unnecessary chit-chat, and focused instead on conversations pertaining to my new vocation.   Excerpts from a going-away card my friend Brendan gave me: June 20, 1993 As I write this, the old baseball analogy comes to mind. There are two outs, it's the top of the 9th, and you're at bat. Sean, hit a home run. Do well in school, don't take shit from your fellow Brothers, and most of all, always be happy. I don't care how many degrees you have or how much money you make in life, the only thing that should count i...

I was 18 years old. I was a good kid, smart and fiercely dedicated to serving God too, but still just a kid. A teenager! I had graduated from Kellenberg High School so recently, I hadn't even gotten my yearbook yet, but suddenly I'm posing for pictures with my friends and family members wearing "the suit". Welcome back to the blog! If you're just joining me here for the first time, please click the title at the top to go anywhere you want. I'm telling this story in chronological order for the most part, but you can start reading the blog entries anywhere you'd like, including this one right here. Since my closest friends at the time had just graduated from Chaminade High School, and they were all taught by the same men I now lived with, prayed with, ate with, and even drank with, this situation was unique to say the least. They'd seen these monks day in and day out for the last four years of their lives, always dressed in the same simple black s...

Get yourself a trade, our elders used to say. Education can only get you so far. You need to have practical real-world skills too, if only as a backup plan. Our parents and grandparents learned this lesson for themselves, and that's why they kept repeating it over and over again in our youth. Learn how to fix people's pipes, they'd say, tune up their cars, cook their meals, get their power on, or even mend their shirts–just find work you can do well, and then stick to it. In the months after I joined the monastery, I was immersed in a litany of cool jobs I never in a million years thought I'd learn how to do. And while I can't honestly say I've retained all the info I learned back then, I'm grateful for all I have remembered ever since. I learned how to paint rooms, lay carpet, re-tile bathrooms, install hand dryers, sew vestments, set up wood and kindling for a fire, decorate rooms, run electrical lines for new classrooms and chapels, drive a stick shi...

I went through a lot of needless crap in my years as Brother Sean, but none of my worst moments there were ever the fault of my fellow young brothers. We were caught up in that crazy life together, after all, and just trying to do our best under some very difficult circumstances. Though our individual friendships sometimes strained, the bonds that united us were so much stronger than any differences in opinion, and I'm forever grateful for the many good times we shared back then. Before I joined the Marianist community in Mineola (pronounced Mini-oh-luh), the brothers' recent track record for new recruits wasn't very strong. There were a bunch of brothers who'd graduated high school in the 70s and 80s, and one two years ahead of us who graduated in 1991. Four of us joined my year, 1993, another joined two years later, and one joined three years after us. Of the seven who joined between 1991 and 1996, only one is still there. I may be mistaken, but I don't ...

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 ...

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 ...