2 Entrepreneurs Help a Monastery Thrive

[Dale_M]

You’ve seen their ads in magazines, now you can read the story of LaserMonks.com:

The Rev. Bernard McCoy, the monastery’s superior, had the idea for LaserMonks.com. But the enterprise really took off when the monks turned it over to two entrepreneurial laywomen who originally came from Colorado to give them advice and never left.

“We feel we’re stewards of their business, and we really put bread on the table,” said one of the women, Sarah Caniglia, sitting in their impeccably organized office amid lighted candles and CDs of Gregorian chants. “I feel like the head of a family, but the boys are grown up and they’re never going to get married.”

Father McCoy, who at 42 already has a monk’s bald pate and fringe of hair, said: “Our life as monks is not set up to sit around and answer phones. We’re supposed to be a little removed.”

“We are professional pray-ers,” said Father McCoy, who wears a white habit, a long black smock called a scapular cinched with a leather belt and, on his feet, knock-off Crocs. Some days he wears a T-shirt that says, “Ask me about my Vow of Silence.”

This is not the only monastery to employ laypeople, but the monks and the women here have a surprising symbiotic relationship. The monastery had tried various self-supporting enterprises before: moving and rehabilitating houses scheduled for demolition, growing shitake mushrooms, developing a golf course and corporate retreat center.

nytimes.com/2009/06/02/us/02monks.html?_r=1

Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank has two websites where they sell stuff:

monastictreasure.com/

and of course

lasermonks.com

If you want to buy the Benevolent Biscuits for your dog, here is the link:
lasermonks.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=46304_47811