Hill Abbey: St. Ambrose @ Summer Hall

I spent the last two weeks in July in Idaho at Hill Abbey. Hill Abbey is run by Wes Callihan (Schola Classical Tutorials) a former teacher, now friend, from whom I took Great Books and Rhetoric in high school. Every year he invites students to stay with him for two weeks in a semi-monastic setting reading through one of the early church fathers. This summer we read through a selection of Ambrose of Milan’s work. Our daily schedule went something like this:

7AM – Morning prayers & gardening
8AM Breakfast & showers
9AM Reading
12PM Trappist hour (an hour of silence and solitude in which to meditate)
1PM Lunch & Free time
3PM Reading
6PM Trappist hour (an hour of silence and solitude in which to meditate)
7PM Dinner & evening prayers & music/stories/bonfire

There were a number of things I appreciated about Hill Abbey; four come immediately to mind.

First, I immediately began to love the morning chores. The gardening drove the sleep from my head and set a meditative pace for the day.

Second, reading Ambrose was a good challenge to my own doctrinal arrogance, and an excellent reminder that Reformed Protestantism, although perhaps the true heir of the early church, is a relatively recent development. Ambrose made me face the fact that I'm not as clever as I think that I am. There are some essential doctrines which I believe but understand so incompletely that I can hardly defend my belief in them. And then there are some which I understand more completely, but have no idea how to defend from Scripture. It's an uncomfortable position to be in, because it leaves no room for pride.

Third, reading Ambrose as a group was a huge help--and what a great group! I often felt like the least intelligent point in our circle (or irregular hexagon, to be needlessly precise). Everyone's comments and the discussions which interrupted our reading helped to fling particular passages off the page and into concrete experience. The passages in Ambrose that I remember and understand best are ones which received some acclamation, explanation, or growl of skepticism.

Fourth, the Trappist hours were precious. I think that if I could only take one experience away from Summer Hall, it would be the Trappist hours. I was surprised to find how many pre-soaked ideas I had--thoughts that I had meant to consider, but hadn't had time or space to do so. I was also surprised to find how difficult it was to cultivate ideas like one cultivates a garden, in contrast to my usual habit of gathering ideas from the wilds of inspiration as I wander haphazardly through the world. Inspiration is easy--as easy as finding a fruit tree in a forest. Cultivating ideas, on the other hand, takes far more effort, but yields a greater intellectual crop. The current circumstances of my life allow me little silence and solitude, but having seen their benefits, silence and solitude have now become priorities, and I can't imagine living a serious intellectual life without them.