The Sometimes Silent Treatment

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“I SAY, ‘GOD, THIS IS HOW I FEEL TODAY, and you’d better take care of it,’ ” says Father Paul Mark Schwan, who has spent over half his life at the Abbey of New Clairvaux. So much for my idea that it will be hard to relate to the Cistercian Trappists in Vina, about 110 miles north and a two-hour drive from Sacramento.
    These monks can be talkative when conversation is desired. Granted, they use their indoor voices, and a visitor can opt for a silent retreat, but if you want to talk, you can talk. Always busy, the monks subscribe to a work ethic defined by constancy and balance, not stress or mass production.
    Schwan offers perspective: “The work … may not get done today or tomorrow, but someday it will get done.” Laboring daily in Vina’s sweltering summer heat, the brothers maintain the monastery’s three main sources of income: walnuts, plums to make prunes, and grapes for wine. The area’s fertile soil breeds enormous walnut trees; in a harmonious contrast, rock gardens of ferns, calla lilies and Japanese maples punctuate the monastery’s central grounds.
    The monks’ seven daily prayer services are open to the public, and every day begins with prayer at 3:30
a.m. The monks’ chants are transfixing, once you align yourself with the soft-voiced ebb and flow of the prayers. The time between the final prayers of the night and the first of the morning is dedicated to silence. A visitor can attend the prayer sessions and socialize with other guests or remain silent, taking long walks through the prune orchards, around the sparkling koi pond, into the private chapel and along the nearby Sacramento River.
    One of New Clairvaux’s most aesthetically impressive endeavors is the ongoing reconstruction of a medieval chapter house, to be built from the stones of an 800-year-old Cistercian monastery that originally stood in Spain. The stones were imported by William Randolph Hearst, who wanted to use them to build a castle in Wyntoon, Calif., near Mt. Shasta. Hearst was unable to proceed with his plans and donated the stones to Golden Gate Park, where many sat unused for decades. When completed, the brothers’ project will bring the stones’ journey full circle.  
    The abbey has only eight guest rooms. For a three-day retreat, a $50 room-and-board donation is standard, but you pay what you wish. In the dining hall, you’ll eat what the monks eat, a simple vegetarian menu. Leland Stanford tried and failed to make wine on this land, and the monks have been more successful. Yet surrounded by visitors who come just for the wine, you may find yourself asking, “Do these boisterous tempranillo-swirlers have any idea what’s on the other side of that wine-producing building?”      MARION ANTHONISEN

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