Unlike the soaring spaces of today's Catholic edifices, which are often brilliantly lit by natural light, this modest church is cave-like and medieval, finished in boulders and hand-hewn lumber interrupted by only a few nearly hidden windows.
The ancient and timeless effect at the abbey is reinforced by the sight of an elderly Trappist monk — one of only two left from the group that founded the abbey 60 years ago — dressed in a black, hooded scapular draped over a full-length white habit as he slowly walks through the fields surrounding the monastery or of a visiting Carmelite nun, covered head to toe in a flowing brown habit as she makes her way to the abbey's church.
And then there's Brother Paul Richards, dressed in worn jeans, short-sleeved shirt and a baseball cap. In charge of the monastery's online bread shop, he whizzes by in a red Jeep Cherokee from the busy Monks' Bread bakery behind the church to the newly repurposed storeroom a quarter mile away that is home to monksbread.com.
It's the online store's slow time, but you'd never know it by the speed of Brother Paul's movements. He nearly jumps from nut butter to honey to jam to flavored vinegars to show visitors specialty foods from local producers and products made by other Trappist orders that monksbread.com sells, along with its bread.
Some customers don't even request bread. Brother Paul explains that monksbread.com fills individual jar orders for the nut butter company in Nunda, which sells only cases through its online store.
Still clinging to medieval traditions, the cloistered monks in Livingston County are using 21st-century methods to make and market the bread that supports their religious order.
In the past few years, they've adopted British baking production standards, spending more than $100,000 on equipment and process upgrades so their goods can keep pace with the growing rigors required by Homeland Security and large-scale retail outlets.
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