Religion-beat work is complicated, in part because of the many different ways that believers use the same words when describing their lives. The word “charismatic” has a rather different meaning in a Pentecostal flock than when Baptists — or maybe most Baptists — use it to describe preachers.

Here at GetReligion, we frequently note the challenges faced when journalists from other beats cover complex stories that are baptized in religious language and imagery.

That brings me to a feature that ran the other day at The Washington Post with this headline: “Monks in New Mexico desert dedicated to hospitality reflect on two years without guests.”

There is much to praise in this piece, along with a few word choices that would be challenged by insiders in specific religious traditions. Also, I should note that the author of this piece is Chris Moody, a CNN veteran who is a former student of mine at both Palm Beach Atlantic University and the Washington Journalism Center.

It’s rather hard to critique and praise the work of a talented former student! However, I know that many GetReligion readers will want to see this feature. Plus, I love New Mexico and, early in my religion-beat work, I wrote similar pieces about monasteries in North Carolina and later Colorado.

Let’s start with the overture, which is long, but shows the larger context of this COVID-tide story:

CHAMA RIVER CANYON, N.M. — Hidden in this canyon of crimson sandstone cliffs encompassed by miles of federally protected wilderness, the Monastery of Christ in the Desert seems like an ideal place to ride out a pandemic.

For more than 50 years, a small community of Benedictine monks has quietly lived, worked and worshiped here in a cluster of off-grid adobe buildings along the banks of northern New Mexico’s Chama River. Considered the most remote Catholic monastery in the hemisphere, it can be reached only by a 13-mile single-lane earthen road that winds through the canyon. Abiquiú, the closest village — population 151 — is 25 miles away. Groves of cottonwood and willows line the river where bald eagles hunt for rainbow trout. Black bears, coyotes and cougars prowl the pinyon- and sage-scented Santa Fe National Forest, which surrounds the monastery.

Despite the difficult journey, outsiders have flocked to this serene abbey for decades in search of spiritual renewal.