Tag Archives: Monastic

December 11th, 2008

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Once again..it’s been a while…

From last Spring until now has been largely positive. I believe, in part, due to the attitude I adopted above. I don’t mean this to be an arrogant statement, and I don’t mean to rob anyone else of credit. In fact, I’m a little embarrassed to say it because all it really represents is me stepping up to a base-line, mature attitude.

Letting go of “the prize” has proven to be a good thing all around. I don’t think “love is dead” anymore, but I sure don’t recognize it as the love I’ve been striving for. I’ll take it, though.

I’m doing my level best to stay focused on a “Holy, Terrible, Internal Resolve” and Brenda, I hope, will choose to come along in that effort. But that is her choice.

My “resolve” orbits a few scraps of experience and knowledge which don’t as yet form any solid whole. They may never from a solid whole…I don’t know.

JESUS CHRIST and His Gospel is the nucleus. I am more convinced than I have ever been that this Gospel is the center of and source of all Truth.

MY IDENTITY has solid quality to it that it has never had before. I know who I am and I’m becoming increasingly comfortable with it.

MYSTISCM

SIMPLICTY

SILENCE

SOLITUDE

CREATIVITY

RELATIONSHIPS

If I had to force these things into a temporal expression of some kind, it would look like a monastery. I can think of no other word to better describe it. “Finding” the Northumbria Community last Spring (coincidence?) and blending this new monasticism with the co-housing concept has brought two large puzzle pieces together.

Good stuff. I feel alive.

January 9th, 2008

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Small practices support large principles.

Choices create ideals.

Long term change is built upon a series of moments.

Bridges of great span are held up by narrow pillars.

A life of following Jesus is constructed of moments.

After 8 days of fasting I find that I have a greater capacity for love. I am more patient, less concerned with self, able to appreciate the moment more, more like “myself” it seems. My mind seems to automatically travel to the “deep places” without ignoring the shallows…and yet I no longer live in them.

The “practice of fasting” (the small practice) somehow supports, manifests the large, VERY large principle of Christ-likeness. No surprise, really, at least theoretically. However, it seems to be a surprise in a personal sense.

There is a balance somewhere between a practice (e.g. fasting) becoming hollow and in-effective, and it gaining any true value in and of itself. I used to think that this balance space was very wide, like a teeter-totter a mile long. But this fast is helping me see that the distance between hollow practice and idol is only inches. Therefore it is very difficult to find the balance point, and it required moment to moment attention to maintain balance.

Jesus walked this out in the form of maintaining his “Jewishness”. He observed the Sabbath (the RIGHT way), attended the feasts (for the RIGHT reasons), etc.

Moments, moments, moments. Choices, choices choices.