Father Gregory

Introduction

 
Professed solemnly in 2006,
I am a monk of Portsmouth Abbey,
Portsmouth, Rhode Island, USA.
 
I was ordained priest in 2015. 
I taught Christian Doctrine to our sixth-form students til last year.
Then I retired after 52 years of teaching.
Too bad.
I was still tweaking it
 
For 14 years I was part of our annual pilgrimage to Rome.
Each June for two weeks we took 35 student/pilgrims to the Eternal City.
I found this out:
Students never age.
I did.
My legs wore out.
 
I serve my community as Novice Master.
I’m school Chaplain too.
 
My patron is St. Gregory the Great.
He is my hero.
I never liked the name Gregory, though.
To me it seemed like the name of a blockhead.
But he made it clear that if I didn’t use his name he’d never speak to me again.
So here I am;
Another blockhead named Gregory.
 
 

Butternut Lake

 
In 1951 my parents moved the family from Minneapolis to the remote North of Wisconsin.
There they purchased an uninhabited hunting lodge on 13 acres of beautiful forest on Butternut Lake, four miles west of a small paper-mill town called Park Falls.
 
In the grandeur of the north woods and the high drama of the seasons they instilled in me and my sisters a deep sense of security, adventure and wonder, combined with a sensible attitude toward life’s priorities. For us children it was an idyllic upbringing.
My sisters and I still agree that it was a unique and marvelous childhood.
 
It was shortly after World War II.
My parents were young and deeply in love.
They were vastly relieved that my father had returned safely from war.
They were a source of confidence to each other.
My father was on the way to becoming very wealthy with his cabinetry business in that booming post-war economy.
His business was getting orders for miles of display shelving for a new kind of store: they called it a supermarket.


Father Gregory's Parents

We moved to Wisconsin quite abruptly.
Years later I asked my father why.
He said my mother didn’t want to raise her children in the city.
She wanted to bring them up in the wilderness hinterland of northern Wisconsin.
He told her that if they were going to do that, they’d better act fast.
Because if they discussed it, they’d never do it.  
Within a month we had the Studebaker packed and headed north.
 
They knew there would be little demand for my father’s skills in the north.
Any work he would find would of low income.
So my father taught me to fish and to hunt.
These were not sports for us or any of our neighbors.
We depended upon our garden crops and game for our sustenance. 
My mother taught my sisters preserving and canning, sewing and knitting.
Only years later did my sisters and I understand that our parents were city kids.
They were learning all these things for the first time.
And then they were teaching us.
 
Over time and as finances permitted, my father transformed the lodge into a home.
He installed plumbing, electricity, paneling, insulation, and a new roof.
And with incredible patience he taught me these crafts.
We even dug a basement and put the building on a foundation.
Not for a moment did this strike me as unusual.
 
Our audacious parents decided that for the first year we would live the lodge just as it was.
We spent the summer cleaning and looking forward to a year of high adventure.
As the seasons progressed we acquired new skills, mostly from neighbors.
These included lighting and trimming kerosene lamps,
Keeping an outdoor toilet immaculate,
Splitting endless cords of firewood wearing snowshoes
and retaining a constant fire in the huge stone fireplace all through a winter that reached 45 below zero.
 
As the weather grew cold lots of bats found refuge in the lodge with us.
We kept the population down using a technique figured out by my mother:
badminton raquets.
By spring we were bat-free.


Butternut Lake
 
My sisters and I went to St. Anthony’s grade school,
and later Lincoln high school in Park Falls.
We attended Sunday Mass at St. Anthony’s.
 
One cold, sunny Easter Sunday morning as we drove home from Mass we found an abandoned fawn on the forest road.
We and took her home and revived her.
We named her flag for the long white tail she flew as she ran with my dogs Luke and Rube.
She could outrun them when she was a month old.


Father Gregory's Childhood Memories - Home, Sisters, Fawn and Pets

First Holy Communion

 
My first Holy Communion was a pivotal event for me.
I was seven years old and in second grade and like the rest of my class, understood very well what was happening.
Our education was superb.
Every child anticipated first Confession and Communion with excitement.
It left me in a state of exaltation.
I can still recall the aroma of the pages in the prayer book we were given.
It brings me right back.
It was at this time I resolved to become a priest
 

Prayer

 
We were a Catholic family and actively involved in parish activities.
My mother had a fervent French-Canadian Catholic soul.
This she kept lightly concealed beneath a mildly sarcastic Swedish façade.
 
My father was a convert.
He went off to war a Methodist.
When he left my Mother asked him to make her two promises.
One was to return to her safely.
The other was to do it as a Catholic.
He did both.
.
At home during the summer my parents often hosted priests from Milwaukee.
They were on a North woods vacation at the parish.
We never had a motorboat so I volunteered to row them around the lake as they fished.
I spent many relaxed hours with quite a succession of priests during those summers.
Most I found less than inspiring.
But they all interested me.
I don’t think I interested them much.


Rome:  Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica with student pilgrims
 
My parents were firm in their determination that their children have ample unsupervised free time during the summers.
We were not expected to get full-time summer jobs.
“We didn’t come north to get rich” my father used to say.
I am still surprised that I was left completely free to spend long days off in the forests with my dogs hunting or exploring.
I was immensely grateful that I didn’t have to join Boy Scouts or Little League.
My friends envied me as they complained bitterly about these kinds of activities.
 
I mention this great favor from my parents for good reason.
It was at this time during one summer when I began to experience moments of deepest silence.
I was aware of being absolutely pervaded by a  Being infinitely greater than myself.
These left me deeply marked with joy.
I understood from the beginning that this Presence was the Lord.
It was also clear to me that this was a kind of prayer.
In particular I was very aware that these experiences were setting me in some particular direction.
I wonder how a child can know such know things like that?  
 
I felt no curiosity about these times
Strange to say,  they seemed perfectly familiar.
They had no outward effect and never interfered with my activities.
I had no desire to investigate them further.
Nor did I care to discuss them with anyone.
There were no words for them anyway.
 
The effect of these times was of peace and boundless confidence in God.
I’m sure these would not have begun without the solitude my parents courageously provided.

Brunnerdale

 
Immediately after graduating from St. Anthony’s grade school I went to Brunnerdale Seminary near Akron, Ohio.
I planned to begin minor seminary in the autumn.


I loved seminary life.
Especially was attracted to the Divine Office, silent prayer in the Chapel, and meals with a reader.
Years later I realized that what I so loved in seminary were the monastic features.


Brunnerdale Seminary

But I soon realized I had no vocation as a parish priest.
I was a normal boy of my age except for one thing.
An intense spiritual life had come to be folded seamlessly into my nature.
The life of a priest/pastor was the only one I knew of that might correspond.
And that held no appeal for me.
So after two weeks I left puzzled.

Education, Family Life, Career

 
In the Fall I began High School.
As I entered fully into a very active life, my participation with the Church became uneven at times.
But my faith remained quietly steadfast.
Over the years through thick and thin, the rhythm of coming and going of the Lord remained constant.  Their regularity remained oddly independent of shifts in outward events.  
 
Degrees in Fine Art from Beloit College, the University of Wisconsin and Michigan State University followed.
I enjoyed a successful and exceedingly enjoyable career a Sculptor.


Sta. Agnese, clay original, 38” x 38”

I taught Sculpture and Drawing at Humboldt State University in California, Alma College in Michigan and Southern Connecticut University.
 
Years as husband and father of three children were spent under very difficult, sometimes tragic circumstances.
A long succession of really heroic advisors assisted me along the way.
Situations altered over time and new challenges constantly presented themselves.
Forward movement always required that I, in some way, change and grow.
 
One day a brochure arrived in the mail.
It was titled “Oblates of St. Benedict”.
It came from a place called St. Procopius Abbey in Illinois.


St. Procopius Abbey in Winter

I paid a visit and was delighted to learn of monastic life.
In particular I was completely taken by the Divine Office.
I asked to become an Oblate and was accepted.
Fr. David, my Oblate director taught me to pray the Office privately.
 
Later I transferred my stability to the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Connecticut.
It was a monastery of nuns.
There my work as Oblate involved the restoration of a colonial blacksmith shop on their land.
For 21 years I operated the shop.
I taught a long list of ironworking students including two of the nuns.
I came to know monastic life very well.

Portsmouth Abbey

 
By 1996 I was living alone.
I was employed at Holy Apostles Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut.
Here something peculiar happened.
It was a Wednesday evening.
I was waiting for my sandwich to heat in the microwave.
The thought came to me: “Go to Portsmouth.” very clearly though not in words.
 
I thought of the city of Portsmouth in England.
And I wondered why on earth should I want to go to Portsmouth.
The next morning I thought of Portsmouth Abbey.
 
I called the Guest master, Fr. Philip, and arranged a visit.
My youngest child had just married and moved away.
I had recently been granted an annulment.
I had not yet given a moment’s thought to the future.
 
Only when I arrived did it occur to me that I might become a monk.
I repeated the visit three times, applied and was accepted as a Postulant.
 
Once the Abbot asked me who recommended I come to Portsmouth in the first place.
I answered: “I think it was God”.
 

Lourdes

 
In 2013 the Abbot asked me to accompany a group of our students on the annual trip to Lourdes.
This kind of thing doesn’t appeal to me very much. 
So I said I didn’t really care to.
He continued: “But will you?”
I answered: “Sure”.
 
On the evening of our last day at Lourdes I went to the Grotto to pray.  
Out of the blue an urgent impression came upon me: “Why aren’t you a priest?”  
I had the clear impression it came from Our Lady.
I’d been perfectly content to be a simple monk.
Until that moment I had not given ordination a thought.
Almost immediately it happened again.
Then it came a third time.
I became a little distraught.
I only calmed down when I promised Our Lady to ask the Abbot as soon as I returned.


Lourdes Grotto, Our Lady of the Snows National Shrine (Belleville, Illinois)

I did as I promised.
The Abbot replied in vintage Benedictine style.
He told me to go back the following year to see if she’d ask again.
I did, and she did.
I promised again to ask the Abbot.
But thought to myself:: “What If the Abbot turns me down?”
If he did I’d sure stay clear Lourdes; that’s for sure.
 
I was ordained in 2015.
So I can return to Lourdes peacefully someday.


Ordination

A Last Thought

 
Benedictine Nuns are smarter than Benedictine Monks.
They are also holier.
 
I once heard one say this:
 
            “Why did I come?        Him”.
            “Who do I seek?           Him.”
            “Why do I stay?            Him”.
 
I can’t say it any better than that.
So I won’t try.