Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
I've lived in this monastic community for almost 35 years and have, from time to time, thought that I really knew my brothers. And in a sense, I did. But there was always more to know, more to discover, more to appreciate and to treasure than I ever realized at first. As well as much that was hidden, sometimes in plain sight. This became more obvious to me as I accompanied brother after brother through sickness, dying and death. What happened, almost inevitably, was an outpouring of appreciation from those who knew this brother in ways I never quite imagined. People spoke of how this one had saved their life or how that one had given them hope in a season of despair or helped them turn from addiction to recovery or spoke a healing word or helped them find or renew faith in a living and loving God. I hope such things will be said of me and of you. And they have certainly been said of our Brother William Johnstone Brown.
Brother Will was a man of many stories and anecdotes and of consistent and sometimes quite stubborn patterns of behavior. Anyone who ever stayed at Mount Calvary Retreat House in Santa Barbara when Will was resident there will remember him plodding down the Galleria with a tray of cups at 5:00 o'clock in the morning, making countless pots of coffee, and placing each cup in its exact location for, as he always said: “That cup lives there.” Michel Choban, a friend and frequent visitor wrote: “He [Br. Will] was part of every retreat, giving the introductory talk at most of the last 20 or 30 of them which spelled out the house rules, what they wanted from us, what we could expect from them. My favorite caution, mentioned once each year at the first Mount Calvary, up in the hills: Don't leave the doors open or the rattlesnakes will get in.” Good practical advice.
Michel continues:
“Although I know nothing about his inner life or about his life before he became a monk, and he must have had one, because he was over 50 when he took life vows, what I do know about him was what I saw, which was Will going about his life day by day, quietly, often humorously, working and praying, which is the Benedictine way.”
Will had a very easy way of making friends throughout his life, even and perhaps especially as he got older and older. He was, as most of you know, a trained horticulturist and was a docent at the Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens as well as a volunteer at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. A friend says:
“Will and I met during the middle of 2018 when I became an employee at the museum. I would sit with him and just listen, hanging on to every word he would say, and I would just imagine how he was as a young wild-eyed boy experiencing this great land back in the early years. He had a quiet demeanor about him, but don't be fooled because he had a great sense of humor as well. Will was really a gardener deep down and he loved nature so much and his walks were a testament to that love…. When I met Will he was 92 and I could not believe how healthy he was. And we would walk together occasionally, which was such a joy because I really got to see things from Will’s perspective…relaxed, with purpose and taking it all in while making every second count.”
Will was an immigrant to America. He left his native England in 1952 when he was 27 at the invitation of a horticulturist he had met at the garden of the Royal Horticultural Society. He ended up in the Deep South working at the Callaway Gardens in Georgia and then teaching horticultural programs at the Fernbank Science Center in Atlanta GA. He became active in the Episcopal Church and his beloved Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, while working at the university there. And then, quite by accident or Providence depending on your theology, he ran into a novice from the Order of the Holy Cross who, I assume, was there on a preaching mission. This chance encounter revived in Will an interest in the monastic life which began in his boyhood in Burton-upon-Trent. A neighbor was doing research on Mount Saint Bernard’s Abbey in Leicestershire, and that piqued young Will’s interest in the monastic life. It wasn't until he was 51, however, that he entered the Order as a postulant, not making his life profession until 1981. His was considered a very late vocation, and few could have imagined that he would be around and active and contributing to the life of the Order of the Holy Cross and to God's Kingdom for another 46 years. A late vocation yes, but not a short one.
In his years in our Order, Br. Will lived and served at our monasteries in South Carolina and Santa Barbara and in Berkeley where he was Co-Prior with his friend Dom Robert Hale at our small joint community with the Roman Catholic Camaldolese Benedictines. He lived for various periods of time here at West Park and even served for six months at our monastery in Cape Coast, Ghana, going there when he was in his mid-60s. People often referred to Will as the Energizer Bunny who never seemed to stop. I have a suspicion that he is still on the move. His friend from the natural museum history says of Will: “I can see him now, head down, walking stick in hand and walking with purpose right up to God and with his sense of humor saying, I'm here, sorry it took so long."
The human heart and mind are indeed a mystery. The gift of vocation or place or purpose in life is a mystery. Life is a mystery. And we rarely know much about each other, all things considered. But I do believe that Brother Will had an interior life that was rich, if very, very private. We, his brothers, caught glimpses of it in his love of beauty and art, of nature, of the liturgy, and even occasionally in our communal sharing. Those in his circle of friends caught hints of other facets of his character, as did those in his 12-Step Fellowship or his colleagues at the botanical gardens or natural history museum and the many, many guests and retreatants that he befriended and ministered with and to. It is only in the mind of God now that all those facets are held together, integrated, polished and illuminated with a Divine Radiance.
One of the great traumas of Will’s life was the loss in 2008 of Mount Calvary Monastery to a wildfire while living there for many happy years. The brothers had perhaps thirty minutes to escape the oncoming inferno and had to take what they could grab quickly and in the dark. All of Will’s books, papers, photographs, mementos of family and friends and all those little things that even monks hold on to that remind us of our place in the scheme of things were taken from him and from the other brothers residing there as well. To deal with his loss and grief, Br. Will joined a poetry therapy group and became a quite prolific writer. I want to share with you one of his poems which was published in the Mount Calvary newsletter which says much about grief and loss but also about our brother Will. It is titled, After the Fire:
Let go, let go of lots of things-
Of clothes, of books, of cherished things
Of pictures, souvenirs-
Of shaving brush—all gone,
All gone in flames of night.
And there was more-
Beloved house, so cherished
And refurbished—
So loved by many, near and far
For safety and refreshment—
And more in prayer and daily
Sacrament that feeds the heart
And soul—all is not lost in
Blackened ash for see
A rabbit hides when I appear
And chipmunk always sprightly
Runs over charred beams-
A bird flies out-and I
Walk up the hill to where the
Cross once stood.
I see Yucca Whipplei—Our Lord's Candle-
Now like pineapple--symbol of hospitality
And the new green leaves sprout from the tip
All is not lost—the sun still rises in the East and sets in Western skies-
“Only a house” I said when gazing on the ruin
A special house—but we and countless lovers
Are not lost in trust.
This poem reveals Will, close to his true being, sharing his grief, sharing his hope, sharing his faith in prayer and Sacrament and fellow lovers and above all in God’s mercy. Today we remember him with thanksgiving. We give thanks for Will’s long life. We give thanks for his vocation. We give thanks for his humor. We give thanks that he now stands in God's presence leaning into the very heart of God and being known finally and fully for who he is: a beloved child of God.
I close with words from the tribute Michel Choban shared: “I think of him as someone who found a way to live, work, and pray that was a true expression of the essence of who he was, perhaps, after all, of who he was born to be. Isn't that what many of us are working toward, that simple, true life?... So farewell, Will. I hope I will not forget you till I am forgotten myself."
May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen. May his memory be eternal!
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