Abbey of Gethsemani

Walking away from the monastery…


To a forest filled with religious statues, or icons, scattered about haphazardly (I suppose)…




Statue of Mary speckled in shadow…






I have to wonder how the tree did this…




A little further on, just a pleasant diversion in a day that was the hottest I’ve ever spent there…


Returning to the grounds, which are singularly beautiful…








See the crosses just above the path? That is where the monks who have passed are buried. On my first trip to the Abbey, over a decade ago, one of the monks told all of us new retreatants that the Dalai Lama had been there recently and draped a shawl around the cross perched over Thomas Merton’s gravesite…later that week I was wandering around and came to this cemetery and saw a white (if I remember right) piece of cloth with gold-colored trim wrapped loosely around a tombstone. I hadn’t realized they had left it there.


An amazing place…