The days I spent at Clear Creek were incredible. In fact, it really provided a time for spiritual growth. You don’t get serious stories about my spiritual growth and whatnot because I’m trying to sell those to reputable magazines.

Here’s what you get: me almost killing monks.

Here’s the thing: you people should know by now my stories are totally factual. Yet still, I get people who tell me I have to be making this stuff up. If you think this, go ask Jimmy the Hand. He was there.
You see, when you go to Clear Creek you have the opportunity to work with the monks. They go into the fields; you go into the fields. They tend the sheep; you tend the sheep. Whatever work the monks do, men are invited to assist them. As you can imagine, this is manly, Bonanza type work. They’re not doing much filing or collating at the monastery.

Anyhow, Jimmy and I get assigned to help a couple monks split logs. We’re out, you know, in the woods, and the one monk says, “You’ve done this before, right?”

And I said, “Umm…I’m from Philadelphia.” That’s civilization, you know. We don’t make log cabins; that’s Pittsburgh. I mean seriously, I’m not a backwoodsman. If you want a backwoodsman, go bother Dale Price.
So the monk says, “Well, you’ll have stories to tell when you get home.”

He was right!

I’m there, all splitting wood and stuff and feeling like Paul Bunyon, when the monk comes over. He says, “You know, I really enjoy splitting wood. Would you mind if I did that for a while?”

So what do you tell, tell the monk no? Of course I gave up the sledgehammer (we were driving these metal wedges into the logs to split them) and he gave me this three foot long board. My job was to measure the logs that were split and put them in the right wood pile. Apparently, they had different sizes of wood for different things.

Everyone’s happy now for maybe five minutes. Jimmy and the monk are splitting and I’m measuring the wood they split. That ended when I tripped over a rock.

I start stumbling backwards and fling my arms out to catch my balance. That’s when the board I was holding flew out of my arms and starts spinning through space. It’s slicing across the work area, like a sidearmed an axe, right at the monk.

All I could think was, “Aww snap! They ain’t never gonna let me be an Oblate now!”

Right before the board plunged into the back of his neck, the monk bent down to pick up something. It missed the top of his head by maybe an inch. He looks at the board which is now embedded into a nearby tree, turns around and says, “Well, that could have been much worse.”

The next day I was sent to paint far away from the woodworking.