Deer Park Monastery, Escondido, CA

The Nuns' Kitchen
The nuns have been eating all their meals up here at Solidity Hamlet because they’re making their dining area larger and putting in de-sanitizing equipment for dishes. Quite honestly, I like it, but not all the brothers are thrilled about them eating up here all the time. Sometimes it feels to me that there’s a competitiveness between the hamlets, what’s ours and what’s theirs. They think they cook better, we think our food is better. It feels like they’re careful about asking the brothers for help because they don’t want us to think they aren’t self-reliant, and the brothers are guarded about doing things for the sisters because we have our own work to do. If this perception is at all accurate, though, it’s friendly. There’s still a lot of love between the monks and the nuns, and that is the predominant feeling.

Normally, we share meals several times a week, either in our hamlet or down in their hamlet, but never three meals a day for an extended period of time. I don’t know why any of the brothers would object, it might just be an “our hamlet, their hamlet” thing. Their cooking teams have been joining our cooking teams, and their clean-up teams have likewise been joining our clean-up teams. Finances for food are separate between the hamlets, but they’ve been bringing up food from their kitchen to cook, and the feeling has been very cooperative and nourishing as a whole community. It seems that a lot of the monastics enjoy the co-ed looseness, but that may be one of the issues. Maybe they’re having too much fun. Maybe there is too much closeness going on, and the precepts are very explicit regarding the monastics’ interactions with the opposite sex.

I guess it is a nice feeling, and it’s OK to enjoy it knowing that it will end once their dining hall is finished. If it was a permanent arrangement, though, I can understand where problems would arise. I suppose once the work is finished, they will invite us down for a special inaugural meal. Even better if it involves pizza and beer.