Page 4 - PROOF!v2

By his own admission, young Danny Lane - known today by his monastic saint name, Claude – was an unusual child. Born in Spokane in 1953 to a family of German Catholics from Russia, he rst discovered religious iconography while still in elementary school, lea ng through borrowed books on Russian history.
“It was the aesthetic part that attracted me at rst,” he remembers, “the linear quality, the formalism, the ethereal expressions on the people’s faces.” He was so struck that, naturally, he attempted his own icons, drawing on pieces of wood with a Bic ballpoint. “I could get some real ne shading with those pens,” he laughs.
When most boys his age were looking forward to becoming remen or astronauts, Lane remembers wanting to be an iconographer when he grew up. He also liked the idea of monasteries and the mystery inherent in the life of a monk – though not yet fully understanding how the two disciplines t together, let alone what they were and how they might come to fruition. Encouraged by a grandmother who was then undergoing something of a religious revival (and whose own father had studied art and design in St. Petersburg), Lane was inexplicably drawn toward something he didn’t quite comprehend. e closest thing to art he knew was the collection of kitschy gurines at Halpin’s. And there was no monastery in the area.
It was as a high school student at Mater Cleri Seminary (now home to Northwest Christian) in Colbert, Washington that Lane felt the doors of perception nally open. And open wide. “ ose years at Mater Cleri were very formative for me,” he explains. “You’re there, living with very intelligent, cultured, good men – the priests who were assigned to work and teach there – and you can’t help but learn. e opera, the symphony, art shows...Father Anthony King in particular was a big in uence, encouraging me in my art and actually commissioning work from me.”
It was at Mater Cleri that Lane met Gary Zodrow, two years his senior. Zodrow, who worked part-time as the school’s librarian, noticed Lane looking at books one day in the diminutive art section. e two struck up a conversation and became fast friends – and Zodrow used his position to get Lane some much-needed art supplies. “I could draw,” says Lane, “but I didn’t have anything to draw with. When you think about it, I have a lot to thank Gary for.”
Zodrow graduated from Mater Cleri in 1970 and was accepted by Gonzaga University’s Bishop White Seminary, where he began studies in the fall. He and Lane remained close, however, even when the latter moved with his family to Plummer, Idaho during his junior year in high school. Lane returned to Mater Cleri the following year, graduating in 1972. While both had considered joining Mount Angel Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in the Willamette Valley south of Portland, Oregon, it was Lane who perhaps heard the call
to monastic life more clearly. For Zodrow, who was expected to remain in the Spokane Diocese as a priest, it was a tougher decision. “Spokane’s bishop at the time didn’t have much use for religious monks,” explains Lane, “and he wasn’t happy with the prospect of Gary leaving.” Lane, on the other hand, had only just nished high school, and was therefore an unknown quantity. And he was ready to go.
“Gary was going to do the sensible thing,” says Lane, “and nish seminary rst. en he would decide. A er all, he’d already put in two years. But during that summer of ’72, we were lying on the grass in a park on the South Hill one day, and I said, ‘I’m going. Yeah, you could wait – but if you do, you’ll be two years behind me.’ at did it.”
Lane and Zodrow ew down to Mount Angel on the same day to join the community of Benedictine monks. “ e irony,” recalls Lane, “is that in 1972 there was a lot of interest in joining the monastery. ere must have been as many as twelve men in our class alone, though we would joke later that it was because one of the fathers was in the habit of driving a bus through downtown Portland, opening the door, and shouting, ‘Anyone want to be a monk?’”
Together, the two friends were accepted into the community of monks, received and adopted their saint names (Dan became Claude; Gary became Nathan), and made their solemn Benedictine vows of obedience, stability, and conservio morum, or conversion of morals. ey were thus bound to the monastery for life.
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