A Walk With a Monk Up a Mountain

Originally written June 20, 2006

Today is a day I will remember forever. In my life, this is saying something, because I have been blessed with so many memorable moments. However, I am not sure I've ever experienced anything like this.

I am in Salt Lake City, staying in a room above the valley, looking down at the basin filled with sparkling city lights. This city is built around a mormon temple; the architecture, the city's feeling, the city's people reflect this fact. Hiking on the mountain, sitting quietly on campus, or eating down in the valley, I have felt an overwhelming sense of peace here.

I am visiting Utah for a conference on alcoholism and other drug dependencies--the conference subject matter alone has been heavy and eye-opening and real and salient. I've witnessed interventions, absorbed the most fascinating and relevant lectures of my life; I've watched my new friends cry, admitting things to themselves they never realized before. I have been a participant and an observer. I am learning. But I will never forget tonight.

Tonight I went to an al-anon meeting. What went on there is a long, personal and convoluted story, so I'll move on. Afterwards, I was approached by a man who acted as if he had known me all his life. Did I know him? In a way.

He looked like a student, had a name badge like everyone else, but he was wearing long black robes and had a shaved head. He called me by name, and wrapped me in a long, strong hug. Who is this man? I'd seen him earlier and wondered what the hell he was doing wearing such warm clothing on such a hot mountain day. I must admit, a string of judgements had gone through my head. Just another lesson in why I shouldn't judge so quickly.

We talked about our lives outside the conference hall for several minutes, until my new friends came to find me. As we stood outside, the man asked me if I'd like to go for a walk up the mountain. Much to my surprise out of my mouth shot a 'yes.' So, instead of heading to the rental car with my girlfriends, I took a walk up the mountain with a monk.

Why in the world, I wondered, would a monk I had just met ask me to walk with him? He could have spoken to any of the 150 people in the room, but he found me. What would I learn from this man?

He was in his late thirties but looked 21. There was no small talk.

What is love? He asked me.
What is God? I asked him.
What is God? He asked me.
What is love? I asked him.

And to my surprise, the monk listened to me. A man so devoted and yet so human wanted to hear what was in my head. And even more surprisingly, I listened to the monk. Unlike other experiences I have had with organized religion or people in general, I knew from the onset that this man was not there to convert me. Nor was he there to pity me, to prey on me, to proposition me, or to court me. He had no ulterior motive but to connect, to have a conversation, human to human. This man was real. His humanity and struggles and tenderness unnerved me, unscrewed me, enlightened me.

How could I be so ignorant to think that a monk was somehow different, somehow above the struggles of the first step? How could I be so shocked when he said the word damn and spoke candidly about conjugal love? How could a monk, who had experienced life in the presence of popes and churches and monasteries, call his own head a 'bad neighborhood?'

"Oh my God!" I said (oops...maybe not a good idea to say that in front of a monk), " you are just like me!"

Tonight I walked up a mountainside with a Roman Catholic monk in a city populated by over 91,000 mormons. I learned more in that hour about life, about other people, about myself, than I can quantify. And also, I made a new lifelong friend, I think.

Tonight I understand with incredible clarity what a friend of mine always says: Namaste. (I recognize that within each of us there is a place where Divinity dwells, and when we are in that place, we are One. The Spirit in me meets the same Spirit in you). To me, this is love.