Ora et Labora

The abbey church. This is where the action is.

I moved to Oklahoma to accept a job at St. Gregory's University in Shawnee. SGU is a tiny, conservative Catholic university founded by Benedictine monks. The student body is around 400 (give or take), with maybe another 100 people who are employed in some capacity by the university. To give you an idea, the Philosophy and Theology Dept have three tenured faculty, including the chair. My title is Grant Secretary, an entry level position serving under the Director for a federally funded grant program designed to recruit and retain native American students at the university.

The school includes in its mission an adherence to Benedictine principles and promotion of the Catholic faith, both of which are far cry from the missions and behaviors of the more famous Catholic universities in the US. The campus is small, tight-knit, and peaceful. It is free from the weird ideological secular ideas promoted as fact but aren't, and is generally a decent place for a Catholic like myself to start his career. I intend to stay employed here as long as possible.

Saint Kateri Tekakwitha

On the campus is a monastery where a group of Benedictine monks live and pray. A few of them are students at the university, and a few are professors, including the chair of the math department, who at times teaches theoretical courses in that field that I can't even comprehend. The monks offer the Mass daily, reconciliation twice a week, and the various prayer hours daily, all open to the campus. The distance from my office in the main building on campus to the monastery church would take maybe 2 minutes to walk in order to attend the Mass.

Pope St Gregory the Great,
 American Eagle Outfitters Model

The university is named after St Gregory the Great, who is typically depicted with the Roman Missal in his hands and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove near or on his person. The saint was Pope in the 6th century and is generally regarded as one of the indispensable figures in Church history for standardizing the liturgy. Beyond that his contributions are unknown to me, largely because I've been lazy about learning about key figures in the history of the Church. I should probably fix that since he is at least partially responsible for how I earn my living.

The monks have served the people of Shawnee since long before the town was settled. The community was granted permission by the tribal leaders of the Indian Territory in the earl-mid 19th century to establish a monastery and facilities for the education of all peoples in the area, white settles and natives alike. The monks treated these kids and peoples equally. It is fitting that the university they would later found would receive federal funds to promote higher education with the local tribes, which is being done in partnership with the major tribes in the area, as Native peoples in the US tend to have the lowest rates of college graduation in the US, and the highest rates of poverty.

As an aside, it's been wet, rainy and humid as well as sunny since I've gotten here. In a lot of ways it's like Portland, other than thunder being a pretty regular feature of life.