Musing on What I'm Reading

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One of the fun things about books is that reading one often leads to another, or influences my perspective on other things I’m reading.

Case in point is two of the books I’m reading. The first, My Badass Book of Saints, I started a couple of weeks ago. The author, Maria Morera Johnson, writes about various holy women – not only canonized saints – and how their examples apply to her own life. I’m enjoying the book because Johnson’s writing style is so engaging that it seems more like a discussion with her, and also because the women she writes about are ones I, too, would like to emulate.

All of which I brought with me as I started reading Monastery Mornings, the story of Michael Patrick O’Brien’s boyhood among the monks at Holy Trinity Abbey, the now-closed Trappist monastery in Huntsville.

Longtime Utahns might enjoy O’Brien’s historical references to places like Andy’s Chuck Wagon and “Two Bit Street” – then the nickname of Ogden’s 25th Street. Catholics who were in the area at the time will probably have their memories jogged by names like Father Thomas Meersman, who for years had television and radio programs on Sunday mornings; and Frank Roe, who was principal of St. Joseph School for a few years. Some of the places O’Brien writes about, such as Ogden’s Rainbow Gardens and Gray Cliff Lodge, are still operating. What interested me most, however, were the monks featured in the book. The author describes many of them, and the impressions they made on him as a boy growing up without a father.

O’Brien was fortunate enough to visit the monastery often. He spent hours helping the monks with chores like boxing cartons of eggs for sale and, when he was older, working in the monastery bookstore. Along the way he made friends with the monks, and the book is filled with the lessons they taught him. At the end of Ch. 14, when he tells of one of the monks who left the monastery to get married, O’Brien writes, “It was a vivid lesson about how we all try to find happiness and serve God and each other in unique ways and in different places, about how we stumble, fall, and get up again as we walk along our own individual rocky life paths. Maybe this is why the gospel warns us about casting stones at others?”

O’Brien seems to have found mentors in the monks. I’m glad he’s shared his memories in the book, but I mourn the fact that the monastery has closed and there’s no longer the opportunity to have my own similar encounters – although I know that, as a woman, I wouldn’t be allowed the same extended contact. Then again, as an adult I might be able to glean lessons from conversation in ways that a child could not.

I’m also glad that Johnson wrote about the women who inspire her, because from her I not only got a fresh perspective on some saints I already admire, such as Joan of Arc and St. Teresa of Avila, but also because I learned about some amazing women I’d never heard of, such as St. Christina the Astonishing and St. Rita of Cascia.

For those who are interested, we here in Utah have the opportunity to meet both authors. Michael Patrick O’Brien will have a book signing for Monastery Mornings on Saturday, Aug. 21, 3-5 p.m. at Magdalene Religious Goods, 836 East 3300 South, Salt Lake City. The store also carries copies of Maria Morera Johnson’s book, My Badass Book of Saints, and Johnson will be the keynote speaker at the Diocesan Council of Catholic Women’s 2021 convention, which will be Sept. 11-12 at the Sheraton Salt Lake City Hotel.

Marie Mischel is editor of the Intermountain Catholic. Reach her at marie@icatholic.org.