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Reflection: “What is a monastery?” By David Buttrick I had a great time on my Monastic Life Retreat! Before I visited Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey, I had been living on a small organic vegetable farm for several years.  I was eager for a journey.   I wanted to learn about life in a Christian monastery.  I enjoy new experiences and learning about different cultures but I also wanted to see if some of the values I had learned were also cherished by the monks.  After all, from what little I knew about monasticism both Western and Eastern, I’d heard that regular periods of manual labor served not only to finance and support the community physically, but also as a kind of moving meditation; a way of losing one’s self-consciousness through discipline, service and interaction with the natural world.