The Big Sur Monks

Our series on Ocean People turns to the monks of the New Camaldoli Monastery on the Big Sur Coast.  For 60 years a small community of religious men in the Benedictine tradition have perched and prayed in a remote cliffside complex overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  They devote themselves to a life of worship and contemplation, practicing a ministry of hospitality by welcoming retreatants, and raising money by selling their killer fruitcake.

Anyone who follows an intense spiritual disciple pays more attention to their interior landscape than the exterior; their devotion is to God not their natural surroundings.  But it’s hard to ignore the ocean from that cliff, and the monks have developed a special relationship to their ocean habitat.

I first got to know the monks of the New Camaldoli Monastery on the Big Sur Coast 15 years ago when a small group of us coast activists came together to challenge the US military.  At our first meeting the monks’ clean long white robes stood in sharp contrast to the dress of us Big Sur aging hippies.  But we shared the same concerns.

The US Navy had, without public notice, started flying bomber jets on daily test runs, very low and loud, from military base Ft. Hunter Ligget, inland neighbor of the monastery, along the coast and out over the ocean.  Not only were these flights a shocking intrusion into the peace of the monks and their many retreatants, but it was crazy to see one federal agency, the Navy, wreaking havoc on the long hard work of another federal program, US Fish and Wildlife’s decades long program, in that same Big Sur wilderness, to bring the giant California condor bird back from the brink of extinction.  Biologists were tiptoeing around nests while jets screamed above.

Talk about David and Goliath.  But we started holding rallies and attending many meetings, and generously the monks left their monastery to join in.  It took months, but we were ultimately successful in stopping the Navy’s flights, with the help of our Member of Congress Sam Farr.  I can only assume that the presence of those peaceful and persistent white robed monks had a huge influence on the various government bureaucrats. 

Later I met the monks again at another meeting.  These monks don’t just spend all day in contemplation, even though their great website is www.contemplation.com.   Like all religious leaders, they have to go to a lot of meetings.  This meeting was the Four Winds Council, a remarkable cooperative effort of four spiritually based groups who all offer hospitality in Big Sur’s vast Ventana Wilderness: The Esalen Institute, the Monastery the Essalen Nation of native people (which offers guided trips into the wilderness), and Tassajara Zen Center.  They each draw from different spiritual traditions, but they come together four times a year to share times of spiritual renewal; they had just been in a sweat lodge together.  They also share challenges; that day it was plumbing problems.  I was invited to share with them my Blue Theology ministry of ocean stewardship, and they enthusiastically endorsed it.

I have also spent explicitly “spiritual” time with the monks.  I love worshipping with them at their noon sung mass in the splendid chapel.  (I did that recently on a business trip down the coast, carefully timing the trip with a stop there.)  Some years ago I spent a restorative three days in their remote hermitage in solitary silent retreat.  My spirit is fed just visiting the great bookstore and taking in the view 1300 feet above the rugged coast.

But I also say a prayer of gratitude to them every day that our coast is silent from fighter jets and when I hear of more condor babies bringing this majestic bird back from extinction. That’s the monks’ ministry as well.

Copyright © 2017 Deborah Streeter