When Dom Gabriel Sortais (the Abbot General) came here for a Visitation, he talked about a little holy card someone had given him: A clown in his dressing room putting on paint before the mirror as he gets ready for his act. And he says, smiling, "Who doesn't put on a little paint?" "Qui se ne grise pas un peu?"

William Shickel was here on retreat recently. He's from Loveland, Ohio, and was the designer for the church complex over thirty years ago. His visit brought back memories.

The choir monks and juniors and novices spent most of the 1960's redoing the monastery. The Brothers carried on the regular work. It was hard, noisy, dirty manual labor, but we ended up with a handsome scriptorium, chapter room and refectory. Not to say the rooms of the monks and other areas. Since the church was next, Br. Clement and Br. Giles suggested to Dom James that perhaps it would be wise to hire a designer and have it all done commercially. Otherwise it would take too long and since monks meddled effectively in such projects, they would be sure the final product was worthy.

On the advice of the editor of Liturgical Arts Magazine they hired Shickel for his answer to their one query: "What do you think of Shaker art?" He said it was his basic inspiration. "Then you're our man. We want something simple, honest, authentic."

When he saw the church Shickel knew he had a gem. But the gem was covered with lath and plaster to make it something it wasn't. So he gathered a host of photos of Cistercian abbey churches in Europe and told the monks: "You can have something like that if you remove the plaster. A beautiful woman doesn't need paint."

It took a lot of discussion, but the monks agreed. Shickel got a gold medal from the Cincinnati chapter of the American Institute of Architects and another from the Ohio state chapter for his work. It was not that they were into Cistercian architecture: they  knew good design when they saw it. And Shickel didn't create it. It was already there. Only the steeple didn't fit and that was coming down anyway, and Dom James had already built a new one.

At least some of you know who Robert Mitchum, the actor, is. He of the droopy eyelids. Many years ago he was arrested for smoking marijuana and given 90 days. The reporters were waiting for him when he emerged. "How was it, Mr. Mitchum?" "Just like Beverly Hills," he said. "Without the riff-raff.." That sounds like a wise-crack, but it was an astute observation. If prison and prisoners are anything, it is that both are brutally honest. Politician, doctor, plumber, lawyer, sailor, addict, even priest, you may have been. Here you're just a public sinner, a felon, a crook. Here is no camouflage.

Prisons are like monasteries, not for having walls, and poverty and celibacy, obedience, and a common table, and work and cells, even solitude. But because they are cruelly honest. Human frailty exposed. But alas, there is no healing love, no love of Christ, of one another. And it is love that makes the monastery, not the structure.

And the monastic life is honest. In Beverly Hills one hides in wealth, in pleasure, in power, in coming and going, clothes and parties; one's career and one's fame hide the reality beneath. Sinners all and no one adverts to that. Paint hides all that. Actors all, surrounded by stage scenery. Remote from reality.

All are sinners, and to admit it, submit ourselves to healing love and respond to that love in Christ and one another. In the face of utter reality.

This is not to say a Cistercian style is a must, that there is no other way. No. We had our turn. A new generation has theirs. But you ought to know where we are coming from. The utter sincerity of our buildings, genuine, authentic, real — helps us to cultivate the same with ourselves and with one another. We need not pretend we are other than we are, and we can do that in the power of grace — God's love for us.

So the answer to the question: "Who doesn't put on a little paint?"  We don't. That's why we saw no need to make a Cistercian church look Gothic, even poor man's Gothic, American Gothic in plaster and lath.

Fr. Louis (Thomas Merton) complimented Shickel on what he'd done: "I just want to tell you what a splendid job I think you have done in our abbey church... I particularly like the interior of the church — bright, simple, clean-cut, no nonsense and perfectly in accord with the spirit of our life..."

Now with Advent, a new year, the second millennium, we are off yet again for the authentic — not in mere architecture, but in the architecture of the spirit, authentic Christians, authentic monks, in an authentic monastery. We try again or die in the attempt.  Amen.