I'm never going to be a farmer. I will have made a success of it if I manage not to get myself killed by a farmer. Many of the brothers here at New Melleray grew up on farms and are a little bewildered by the candidates entering the monastery these days, most of whom are quite handy with a computer and who can't tell a radish from a turnip. I would be one of those. Usually, when a guy enters the monastery, he's put to work with Bro. Placid in the garden for about two years. I say, I hope I don't get killed by a farmer. If a body turns up, Placid might be suspect number one. He's been very patient with me, amazingly patient - like the time, a few years ago, when I completely destroyed two trees he planted back in the 1980's. It was snowing hard that day, and I was working with one of the newcomers, using a pick up truck to get to an orchard where we were supposed to do some pruning. We had parked the truck to get the needed tools out of Placid's shed, came out of the shed a few minutes later with our tools - and the truck was gone. The two of us stood there a little dazed while snow flakes decorated our face. The truck was - gone? How could . . . then we noticed tire tracks in the snow, so we followed those. It didn't take us long to trace them to the truck which, evidently, had taken a drive, by itself, backward down a hill for about two hundred feet, and on the way taken out two trees before it came to rest in a ditch. I had forgotten to set the parking brake. We should have been concerned, said an Act of Contrition, or maybe prayed to the Blessed Mother, but one of us got the giggles and, maybe because of nerves, it set the other one off and once we started, we couldn't stop. We were laughing so hard on our way to the truck that I fell twice. Sizing up the situation I suggested: "We'll pick up the broken branches; haul them off into the woods across the road . . . and maybe Placid won't notice the trees are missing!" I get good ideas like this when I've done something stupid, feel nervous and can't stop laughing. We finished the work period and evening fell. A day passed, and another day, and a few more. The monks attended to our daily rounds of prayer, manual labor, and spiritual reading. A monastery is a quiet place, and really, really quiet under ten inches of snow. A monk's thoughts close in on those frigid winter days and huddle close to you. I knew Placid was aware that two of his trees had disappeared. Weeks passed and he never said a word about the trees. At another monastery, this might have been handled differently. At my monastery, certain incidents like this one, just recede into silence. I don't say this is the right way - it seems to be our way. I think of all the incompetence, all squeamish avoidance of responsibility, and plain silliness there is in the world, and I wonder: where does it all go when judgment is exacted and accounts are balanced with God? Where does God put all the stupidities and lame choices we make when its time for humanity to be restored and made noble again? I look at the space in the snow where those trees used to be and I'm thinking I can see the place where all our stupidities go; the place people like me hide from the accuser who hates us for the redemption won for us by Jesus Christ.

Father Raphael