blue cloud abbey

FATHER DAN DIES

Father "Dan" Daniel Madlon, OSB, a founding member of our community, died unexpectedly on June 24, 1998. At the age of 91, he was the oldest of our confreres.

Father Dan was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on April 8, 1907. He attended the minor seminary at St. Meinrad and entered the novitiate there in 1927. He professed solemn vows in 1931 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1933. He taught elocution and Latin for one year after his ordination. Then he was assigned to St. Paul's Indian Mission at Marty, South Dakota. The greater part of his priesthood was spent on reservations in North and South Dakota. He was always a "field man" attending to the pastoral needs of the people. For three years he was assigned to Blue Cloud. Father Dan referred to this period of his life as "my incarceration." When he assisted in parishes of the diocese on weekends, he asked the people to pray for his deliverance from Blue Cloud. Eventually, these prayers were answered. He returned to the field. His last assignment outside the monastery was at St. Michael's on the Ft. Totten Reservation in North Dakota.

Father Dan mastered the Dakota language well enough to edit a paper and compile a hymnal. His Dakota Hymnal has been used for many years. A week before his death, Father Dan attended the Catholic Sioux Indian Congress on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He was known as "Dan, the Congress Man" because of his faithful attendance at this annual event. His Indian name was Zicha Tamaheca which means Lean Squirrel.

In recent years, Father Dan had fewer responsibilities on the reservations, but in no way did he consider himself retired. It came as a surprise to him when he was called back to the abbey at the age of 88. Although he was unsteady on his feet, he got to where he wanted to go and pursued his interests: carpentry, photography and swimming. He liked watching nature programs on TV, and no one disturbed him when he fell asleep with the remote control in his hand.

Father Dan came home to the abbey soon after an incident which earned him fame. On a windy day, while crossing the narrows on his way to town from the reservation, he slid into Devils Lake and had to be rescued from his submerged car. "I was only trying to get a closer look at the waves," he said. Water was also involved when Father Dan was called to his eternal home. He died of a heart attack in the Jacuzzi. We ask the members of the Swiss-American Congregation, other Benedictines and friends to remember Father Daniel in their prayers. His funeral and burial were on June 29, 1998.

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HERMITAGES AND VOCATIONS

Fr. Abbot Thomas, several monks, associates and our employee Howard LaMee have been working through the summer on two small cabins that will be used as individual hermitages. Each cabin is sized for one person, and features a finished wood interior. For those who want the experience of a retreat in solitude, the hermitages will have no telephone or electrical connections. They will each have a water tank and space heater. We expect that the cabins will be available for guest use by this autumn. Although they can be moved to different locations, the first spot chosen for the hermitages will most likely be near the lower lake east of the abbey . Additional information on solitary retreats is available through the abbey's retreat and guest program.

The associate and candidate programs saw quite a bit of activity this summer. A total of ten men visited the abbey at various times for vocational visits or as associates. Hopefully, by the time you are reading this, Novice Michael Peterson will have professed Temporary Vows, and three new novices will have begun. The new novices are Steve Bierle, Leon Smith and Brooks Rakos. They will join novices Don Miller and Fr. Doug Johnson, who recently passed their mid-year evaluations. We are very thankful that increasing numbers of men are willing to investigate monastic life. The three newest novices are all in their mid-forties, which is a bit older than newcomers have been in the past. The maturity and life experience that comes with greater years will hopefully assist our novices as they enter this new stage of their lives. As always, we continue to ask your prayers for their perseverance.

More information about the abbey and latest events is always available at the Blue Cloud Abbey site on the World Wide Web: http://www.bluecloud.org

We can also be reached by electronic mail: abbey@bluecloud.org

We always welcome communication from our friends and benefactors.

By Fr. Matthew

DAKOTA SIOUX NAMES
By Fr. Stan

Dakota (Sioux) People do not give a name to a person; they find and name the personality in the person. In former generations, before regulations outlawed the old religious practice, they waited till the personality had developed and had shown itself. A new-born girl was always WINONA, ‘unnamed daughter’; a new-born boy was CHASKE, ‘unnamed son’. There were seven steps in the naming ceremony. At the proper time it was arranged by an Uncle or a Grandma.

Our Benedictine Missionaries were named in the old way. The Church, where the Missionary served, watched him or her and waited. After a time, a minimum of a year, so life could go full circle, the ceremony was arranged.

The first monk in Dakota Territory came in 1876. He was remarkable for his personal austerity. No season, no hazard, prevented his going to any family or to any camp that called for him. His step was soft. "He bent not even the grass on which he walked," so the people said. He was Abbot Martin Marty. They named

him ITE TAMAHECA, the ‘ascetic’, the THIN FACE. Following him other men showed their zeal. Father Sylvester, in wagon or buckboard or Model T, from Crow Creek to Yankton to Fort Totten to Turtle Mountain, was always on the trail. Like Jesus "he walked among men".

The people today beg for a man like him, one who visits. Father Sylvester was TIKDISNI, ‘never at his own house’.

Hospitality is, as for Benedictine monks and nuns, an outstanding virtue among Tribal People. "What we have is yours. We share." WAHANPI WASTE WIN, ‘the woman whose soup is good’. Mrs. Eisenman (Fr. Sylvester's mother) gave more than soup. It was her smile that made the welcome feel good.

Tribal people ‘see through’. In their silence they are perceptive. Father Cletus was a man always smiling. He was agreeable to a fault and took on any demand or request. Everyone

felt welcome and respected. But, some things are beyond even the powers of the priest. When Father Cletus was called to leave Crow Creek, the people had a ceremony to show their respect for him. TA WACIN WASTE, they said; ‘his ‘I want to’ is good’. They saw through his often ‘unfinished business’.

Father Ambrose was the Boys’ Prefect. That meant that daily he was with the boys everywhere except in the classroom. He was as much a boy as the boys were, testing and teasing and playing jokes. They seldom outdid him. After a while the parents made him one of theirs, HOKSINA PESTO, ‘a sharp boy’.

Sister Susan was the teacher of the lower grades. The little ones flooded her room with scientific finds, like bird’s eggs and bugs and nests and fallen leaves and pretty rocks. In everything she, and they, found the print and the presence of God. Her eyes were the smiling kind, the mirror of the soul, ISTA HAHAPI WIN, ‘laughing eyes’.

Native People are not stoic. They are simply alert. They ‘see through’; they see God.

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