I guess i am okay

@professionalPerspective60 sheesh i totally forgot I made this posting.

I left the monastery; I had enough of the hypocrasy , and the self righteousness that some of the monks were displaying. We were to live humbly, yet we were being over served food by a catering company, because the people that could cook were too lazy to speak up, and step up and do the cooking. Cooking for yourself was no longer an option. Senior monks, when i first got there, were bad mouthing constantly one elderly and dieing monk because it turns out from the Abbot i learned that he was not well liked in his younger years and was passive aggressive. An then all i saw was everyone treating him as if he was nothing more than a burden they could no longer bare. I felt sorry for him and did anything i could to help him when i could. I was expected to follow rules that the senior monks no longer followed themselves and i resented that and felt nothing but confusion. I would ask for help and dirty looks or given sarcastic answers. The Abbot never listened to anything I had to say ever, he actually thought we had a conversation on our first meeting. In reality it was him rambling on and on an on, and when i tried to interject he merely kept talking as if i was interupting.

What i did not understand when i first got there was that the seminary on the property was the monasterys primary focus, I thought it was run independently by another diocese and that those monks who taught there only did so every so often. The seminary is a needed entity but in the life of a Monk it becomes a giant distraction when you have students who do not respect the rules of the monastery and go where they please, and an Abbot who does not enforce the rules as to not rock the boat. I was also aggravated at how money was being wasted left an right, lavish fund raisers being spent to fund the seminary and maintain the monastery and barely anything done to help the poor. A bakery on the premises that was no where near OSHA standards , and providing free bread to the poor, was being left in disarray when money was being allocated to up date the monastery to hopefully one day build a lavish library, and other needless attractions to spruce up and modernise the premises. The mass, became progressive and politically correct on for a lack of better terminology ethnic days, instead of keeping the mass focused on Christ, Southern Baptist gospel music would be sung and the presiding priest would make sure to iterate how the USCCB allowed for such music as if to justify the grandstanding for black history month, and for some kind of Chinese fesitval they parade a giant parade dragon up and down the main isle. Now im not against heritage by any means, I am though against taking a place of worship and turning it into a theatrical stage to pander to a few people out of the month. Sadly I learned in a few short months that this was not the monastery i was hoping for, there was barely anyone i would have seriously considered a friend, and they rarely inquired into who i was as a person. They only assumed to know me. Though I also learned upon my return home, that this is where i need to be, my family needs me here, and i needed them close by too.

There were parts of the monastic life i did enjoy, which was mainly the times of silent prayer, when the outside community was not around and it was actually silent. I made another mistake in life is all i did by going to that monastery, and in the end my faith in the Church is now cracked. An I am in turmoil trying to figure out how to put a lot of bad experiences with the Church not just this one moment in time at this monastery, behind me. Though when the general publis is allowed to roam monastery grounds meaning the off limit parts, and the seminary students are allowed to do the same, and as a religious person I do not have any where to privately pray, everything else falls apart, and only becomes worse with tons of problems inside the community that can not be addressed, due to individual leaders personal pride.