During a recent weekend in Alfred University’s spring semester, first-year student Hana Tadessa found herself in the crypt of the Mount Saviour Monastery, in Pine City, NY, listening to the monastery’s resident Benedictine monks chanting the early morning prayers of Vigils. A statue of the Virgin Mary was a centerpiece of the room, and Hana felt a combination of peacefulness and weirdness.
Students Abby Sexsmith, Karla Barzallo, and Hana Tadesse join Benedictine monk Brother Bruno at the Mount Saviour monastery, near Pine City NY. The monastery is one of several religious retreats visited by students in classes taught by Chris Yarnal, visiting instructor in religious studies for the Division of Human Studies.
The music was lovely. But Hana, who’d been raised in the Pentecostal tradition in her home in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, found the artwork disconcerting. “When I was growing up,” she says, “statues were discouraged as idols.”
But the weirdness dissipated in the communion of students Hana had joined for the weekend, a retreat organized by their instructor, Chris Yarnal, visiting instructor in religious studies for the Division of Human Studies in Alfred University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Yarnal has been escorting his students to monasteries and religious retreats in the Southern Tier, most recently as part of his class Creativity and Spirituality. In addition to Mount Saviour Monastery, he has taken his students to the Abbey of the Genesee, a Trappist monastery near Piffard, NY; the Center for Solitude, in Belmont, NY; and the Bhakti Marga Paranitya Narasimha Temple, a Hindu monastery in the Elmira area.
Yarnal teaches a variety of courses, including World Religions, Religion in America, Birth of the Christian Tradition, and Judaism and Islam. While some of his classes introduce students to the basic theologies of different faiths, he describes Creativity and Spirituality as more of an exploration of the ways in which human creativity overlaps with spiritual impulses. Many of his students are majoring in art and music, he notes, and their interactions with residents of the religious centers encourage questions that probe the nature of art and spiritual experience.
“It’s all part of that searching process,” Yarnal says.
Chris Yarnal, visiting instructor in religious studies, Division of Human Studies in Alfred University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has been escorting his students to numerous monasteries and religious retreats as part of his classes.
For Alfred University senior Jorge Pina, religious studies and his major in philosophy are natural fellow travelers. “Religion and philosophy go hand in hand,” he said, “especially in how they involve contemplation.”
Jorge, also a student in Yarnal’s Creativity and Spirituality class, joined the class on a visit to the Bhakti Marga Paranitya Narasimha Temple this semester. “Very cool,” he says of the monastery, where the class was introduced to basic tenets of Hinduism and shown around the vividly decorated buildings.
Abby Sexsmith, another student in Creativity and Spirituality, found in the visits an opportunity to reset – emotionally and intellectually. “I think the most enjoyable part was the chance to try something different and get out of the groove of college for a while,” she says. “There was a dedicated prayer discipline (at Mount Saviour) that led to getting a little disconnected from the world. Afterward, it was a little hard re-adjusting to the pace of college. Many of us didn’t want to do stuff on our phones anymore. The visits make you aware of the mindless activities you do every day.”
Sophomore Louis Dickey met Yarnal in the 2025 fall semester, taking Yarnal’s Introduction to Religions of the World. “He saw I was interested in religion in general,” says Louis, a joint art and dance major. “He contacted me a couple weeks before the Catholic monastery visit and asked if I wanted to join the Creativity and Spirituality class.”
Sophomore Louis Dickey meditates during a visit to the Bhakti Marga Paranitya Narasimha Temple, in West Elmira. Louise also enjoyed his recent visit to Mount Saviour monastery, which he described as an opportunity “for reflection and living in the moment.”
Louis’ visit to Mount Saviour Monastery began with settling into his room on a Friday night, then joining the monks for Vespers prayers. The next morning, most of the class was awake at 4:45 am, in time for the morning prayers of Vigils. During the rest of the day, the students explored the grounds of the monastery and later joined the monks again for evening prayers in the crypt, which included being blessed by holy water.
The Benedictine monks, Louis notes, passed their time in silence, and he found the quietness a “nice change… a time to be present, to get off my phone and absorb nature. It was a chance for reflection and living in the moment, rather than past or future. We should be doing more of that anyway.”
Louis adds he occasionally speaks out loud in the night, in a prayerful tone. “I won’t pray so much. I’ll say ‘Amen.’ It’s talking to a higher power.”
He says he has “enlightening realizations” at the monasteries: “One of the best times of my life. It’s eye opening, and I’m going to do it again.”
