I'm excited about this Jack. I am hoping it will render me happily redundant ;-)
I think that it is very clear whether you are a friar or a frier (geddit?) and that you know that too. I wish you much luck with the trip to the monastery!
Happy Pascha! I hope you and your family are having a beautiful day! Thank you for reading my initial foray. There is definitely a good view of the night sky here, which is a great recommendation. It is also quiet. The liturgy is beautiful and so is the chanting. Whatever comes next this week has been a blessing.
More on this when I reluctantly return to icy embrace of the machine.
Beautiful writing Jack! To fully enjoy reading Paul’s and now your Substack, including all the enticing appendices and recommended authors, I suspect I may have to give up my day job. But that may be where God is leading me. All the best on your journey - I understand you want certainty about your life’s plan, but as Robert Burns tells us, “the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft a-gley”.
Thank you for your kind comment. I am writing now from the monastery kitchen. The internet here is very slow. Like going back to the ancient days of dial-up. The horror! The past five days have been beautiful and also the longest I’ve gone without the internet in I don’t know how long. This is not to my credit.
I hope to write more about this week when I am back down the mountain to “civilization”. Which I am not really looking forward to. As beautiful as it has been here, certainty yet eludes me. Still, a hazy direction in the fog may be opening up.
I'm so glad you mentioned this to me. I love seeing the photo of your wooded place of prayer. Now about the fast food -- a hardware store or something would be less traumatic.
Clara- It really is a pretty good spot to pray. Too cold to do so today. Hopefully I can go back tomorrow.
I was encouraged by friends to interview at the fast food joint. I agree, some small town, privately owned hardware store would be much more palatable.
I don't know if I am called to be a monk. Being uprooted in the world (and fast food) is becoming less and less desirable, and less interesting. My time up at the monastery was profound in many ways. I am still meditating on what it meant, and how it fits.
Since I invited you to have a look a my page, I'll have to forgive you for not returning the attention :)
I had actually looked at your profile a couple of times to make sure you didn't have a page of your own, because if you did I didn't want to miss it. So here I am, happy that you ended up starting one. Let's journey on!
I hope it isn't bad form to comment on a post nearly a year old. I came to your Substack more recently and have really enjoyed and resonated with everything I've read thus far. I found myself curious how it all started.
"My problem, which is hardly new, is that I want to figure things out, to be certain, to know where I am headed."
It's as if you've been reading my imaginary diary. I go through these cycles of needing and searching for certainty and the dispelling of all ambiguity until I realize it's a pipe-dream. 'We see through a glass darkly...". Then I try to return to myself and, as you said, stop going out to the forest to pray with only goal of finding that unassailable certainty and what I should be doing and realizing that prayer is the way. Until, of course, I come full circle again to the felt need for certainty and repeat the process ad nauseam. I find myself currently in the arc of the loop that calls me back to myself, back to the present moment and inner stillness before God. I suspect that's in no small part due to the season of Great Lent and it's focus on my own repentance and return modeled by the Prodigal Son. The song "Ulysses" by Josh Garrels is a frequent flyer on my playlist.
Thanks for the conversation you're having here and the aid it's offering in my own journey.
I'm excited about this Jack. I am hoping it will render me happily redundant ;-)
I think that it is very clear whether you are a friar or a frier (geddit?) and that you know that too. I wish you much luck with the trip to the monastery!
Paul-
Christus Resurrexit!
Happy Pascha! I hope you and your family are having a beautiful day! Thank you for reading my initial foray. There is definitely a good view of the night sky here, which is a great recommendation. It is also quiet. The liturgy is beautiful and so is the chanting. Whatever comes next this week has been a blessing.
More on this when I reluctantly return to icy embrace of the machine.
Beautiful writing Jack! To fully enjoy reading Paul’s and now your Substack, including all the enticing appendices and recommended authors, I suspect I may have to give up my day job. But that may be where God is leading me. All the best on your journey - I understand you want certainty about your life’s plan, but as Robert Burns tells us, “the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft a-gley”.
Thank you for your kind comment. I am writing now from the monastery kitchen. The internet here is very slow. Like going back to the ancient days of dial-up. The horror! The past five days have been beautiful and also the longest I’ve gone without the internet in I don’t know how long. This is not to my credit.
I hope to write more about this week when I am back down the mountain to “civilization”. Which I am not really looking forward to. As beautiful as it has been here, certainty yet eludes me. Still, a hazy direction in the fog may be opening up.
I'm so glad you mentioned this to me. I love seeing the photo of your wooded place of prayer. Now about the fast food -- a hardware store or something would be less traumatic.
Clara
Clara- It really is a pretty good spot to pray. Too cold to do so today. Hopefully I can go back tomorrow.
I was encouraged by friends to interview at the fast food joint. I agree, some small town, privately owned hardware store would be much more palatable.
Thank you for reading! -Jack
Great post! From Benedictine monasteries to fast food—that pretty much covers the universe, I’d say, from the sublime all the way down.
I don't know if I am called to be a monk. Being uprooted in the world (and fast food) is becoming less and less desirable, and less interesting. My time up at the monastery was profound in many ways. I am still meditating on what it meant, and how it fits.
Hmm...sounds like something perhaps to write about?
Yes, I think it is. I am working on it now. I am curious where this all comes out.
Since I invited you to have a look a my page, I'll have to forgive you for not returning the attention :)
I had actually looked at your profile a couple of times to make sure you didn't have a page of your own, because if you did I didn't want to miss it. So here I am, happy that you ended up starting one. Let's journey on!
I hope it isn't bad form to comment on a post nearly a year old. I came to your Substack more recently and have really enjoyed and resonated with everything I've read thus far. I found myself curious how it all started.
"My problem, which is hardly new, is that I want to figure things out, to be certain, to know where I am headed."
It's as if you've been reading my imaginary diary. I go through these cycles of needing and searching for certainty and the dispelling of all ambiguity until I realize it's a pipe-dream. 'We see through a glass darkly...". Then I try to return to myself and, as you said, stop going out to the forest to pray with only goal of finding that unassailable certainty and what I should be doing and realizing that prayer is the way. Until, of course, I come full circle again to the felt need for certainty and repeat the process ad nauseam. I find myself currently in the arc of the loop that calls me back to myself, back to the present moment and inner stillness before God. I suspect that's in no small part due to the season of Great Lent and it's focus on my own repentance and return modeled by the Prodigal Son. The song "Ulysses" by Josh Garrels is a frequent flyer on my playlist.
Thanks for the conversation you're having here and the aid it's offering in my own journey.