As is my (some say annoying) habit, I often wander off in little ramblings of my past. These ramblings are usually triggered by some little event. I'm not sure what it was I dreamt last night, but it must have touched something in my memory centers, because I woke with images from my days with the Brendan monks swirling around in my head.

The image that was foremost in my brain this morning was a memory of one of my many trips with Brother Antonio. He was one of the younger monks, in his early thirties when I was working at the abbey. Being a young, articulate, and rather good looking man, Brother Antonio was designated as the Order's liaison with the world. Quite of bit of our map business would be dealt with over the phone (e-mail was still not common at the time). But fairly often, a representative of the Order would have to go out to meet the client. This usually happened when there were specific details of the area that we had to look at in order to do the map properly. We even had a team which would go out and do a full survey if there weren't reference maps available. This would, of course, entail an extra charge.

Anyway, Br. Antonio was the man to go out and meet with clients. As part of my apprenticeship, I was given the opportunity to accompany Br. Antonio on these field-trips. It was nice. We generally drove to our destination in the "company car"--a 1976 BMW 320I that had been donated by a local business man. It was a sweet little car.

One of these trips was to another monastic order--a very traditional and conservative order. By traditional, I mean middle-ages traditional. It was not something I was looking forward to, but it was part of the job. I had no idea what to expect. When we got there we were assigned cells (not rooms but cells; cold, hard and barren). The vast majority of the monks in this place were quite scary. The brother assigned to deal with us, however, was a rather pleasant fellow who had an easy manner and a sense of humor. He would make little humorous comments as we walked through the grounds or conducted business.

Now, when I said these monks were middle-ages traditional, I wasn't exaggerating. It turned out that these monks were flagellants--they whipped themselves to purge the sins from themselves, and punish themselves for having that sin. Now, this whipping wasn't severe, but it wasn't a token gesture, either. As it was explained to me, each monk gives himself 5 sets of 12 lashes--referred to as "hurts". They had some reason behind all of this, but I didn't hear what it was. Instead, I was listening to this really strange humming chant. It was a single chord that kept shifting, note by note, into another chord. Apparently it was some form of meditation, something like a Gregorian chant, only with out the words; only a loud, melodic humming.

When I asked our host what it was, he just smiled and said "That, my son, is what we call a 60 hurts hum"