an absurd monk

Day 31 – accountability?

Normal start to the day. I am going to miss this time of silence and solitude to pray.

Yesterday I was reading about “vows” from an Anglican religious perspective. The author made the point that it includes “accountability”. In the anchorite tradition this is through a confessor. In a modern context it is through the ministry of a spiritual director and the bishop.

All the anchorite guidance literature speaks at length about confession and penance. While it speaks of the sacrament, and the obedience due to the priest, it is speaking about being accountable to someone for your actions. Yes, in the end that is God. But I am answerable now to the people into who’s care God has placed me.

So I have been thinking about the ministry of a confessor and spiritual director. They need not be the same person and there is no need to make their ministry into a fetish. (I think the ministry of the confessor in the medieval literature is a fetish – blind obedience with mechanical impassive use of the sacrament grace.)

Anyway, I have been thinking about that this morning. Jesus be with you!

Day 30

A very different start to the day. I slept in! I allowed by alarm to wake me and then I took my time getting up. I wish I could say I did some praying and meditating but I looked at my social media and read the headlines in the paper.

I had a good prayer time and some interesting insights during my meditation. I need to think about my future and what shape it will take. I have some ideas but I am not sure they are God’s. But that will work itself out in time. Or not, which makes no difference at all.

My normal streamed Mass did not happen this morning. So I watched Mass from a London “shrine church”. Since I have returned to the Bible Study, I find it harder to listen to sermons. It is not my context, nor my life, but sometimes I wonder if the preacher has done any work on the text. In case you have not guessed, I dislike platitudes. Where is the challenge? Where is the call to action?

I have been reading an article in the book, Anglican Religious Life: A well kept secret. It is a take on vows that I really like – or maybe, with which I identify. Vows linked to love and as a public expression of love. A working out of relationship!

So there you go! Way too much information. The routine of the day has given me freedom to let my mind and heart soar.

May Jesus bless you today!

Day 29

I had the worst sleep I have had in years last night. I had nightmares most of the night – screaming people with lots of tension. So I got up before my alarm, said good morning to the car, prayed, and meditated. I did not have time for a streamed Mass today as I had an appointment.

When I check my email this morning I had a nice surprise. My past is working itself out. And in the process the future is becoming clearer. So I went to my appointment with a much brighter world-view.

I found some books today that I have been looking for. One is about Anglican religious life, a few collected works, and a couple prayer books.

I am extremely tired at the moment but I will battle through this afternoon.

Day 28 – vocation?

I am writing in the evening, after Evening Prayer, as the day has super packed with “stuff”. I started as usual with feeding the cat, prayer, and meditation. We had church online today – too many people effected by Covid – so I could do it from home.

Church today was God’s answer to a number of questions. The sermon asked one simple question, “Where is your focus?”. Oh wow!!! And then we had this song:

So where is my focus? I know where I would like my focus to be. I am resolved to be open to Jesus in all contexts. I am resolved to seek intimacy with Jesus above all else. And I think that I am called to a life alone, praying and meditating, and reading. I also think that I am called to write or use my life alone for the “upbuilding of the church”. What all of that looks like I do not know!!!

So the time of this experiment is almost up. I am really sad about returning to my normal life. I would simply like to continue. God will provide a way. And this time has been pure gift!!!

things eternal

O God, the protector of all who trust in you,
without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy:
increase and multiply upon us your mercy;
that with you as our ruler and guide
we may so pass through things temporal
that we lose not our hold on things eternal;
grant this, heavenly Father,
for our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Common Worship

I wanted to share the above collect from Common Worship – the collect for this last week. Every day I have been struck by the line: “we may so pass through things temporal that we lose not our hold on things eternal“. It is the struggle of all followers of Jesus: to live in this world without being part of this world.

I think theologians have tried to bring balance to this paradox in various ways. But in the end both are gifts from God: the temporal and the eternal. The call is to see the eternal in the temporal and thereby bring the temporal into the eternal.

I like Common Worship more everyday.

Day 27 – freedom?

Today is an important day. But, as is now traditional, it will pass in solitude and quiet. I did my usual things this morning: feed the cat, pray, and meditate. I had to get some items ready for church tomorrow. But before that I did another Covid test – still negative.

I have been thinking a lot of freedom. Freedom is a necessity for love. With out free choice there is no love for the other. So freedom, in what ever form it comes, is about the ability to chose another. Or, freedom to love.

I think the modern idea is the opposite: freedom from responsibility. There is a sense that freedom is the human right to “do what you want” and thereby making it right. When I cannot do what I want, I am no longer free – I am enslaved. Freedom does not, however, remove the consequences, nor the responsibility for my actions.

I am not sure I have a real understanding of freedom yet. I think there is a sense in which the anchorite life, especially in the anchorite guidance literature, is all about being free for Jesus. Removing the temporal to focus on the eternal. The anchorite of old knows they are on the threshold but their focus is on the eternal Word. So it is freedom to be present now with Jesus.

Anyway, what would I know!

Day 26 – all is gift

I was awake well before my alarm. So I prayed a little in bed. Then fed the cat, prayed, and meditated. I listen to a podcast today in which the presenter mused on the saying, “All is neutral”. He was trying to say that I reaction to an event is the thing we can change and not the event itself. So the event is neutral – neither good or bad.

I was thinking about that during meditation this morning. And something bothers me about that saying. Everything is not neutral because everything is made by God to be good. So I was thinking that the saying should really be, “All is gift”. Often hard to see from this side!

And I was adding into the mix that was my meditation this morning this quote:

Vocation is a gradual revelation—of me, to myself, by God—it is who we are, trying to happen.
Evelyn Underhill

I really like the idea that God is showing me “me” through my vocation. Now what is my vocation is a completely different question. But that too is a gift!

Enneagram Type Nine

I watched a series yesterday about “Becoming a Mystic”. Maybe a better title would be “How to live more like a follower of Jesus”? One of the things suggested is to do the hard work of self-discovery. (Like, for example, live like an anchorite for a time and read lots of books.) So this morning, in an attempt to meet “me”, I did the Enneagram test, which I have not done previously, and I am Type Nine.

Now all of that means nothing to me. So I went where I normally go for insight, Amazon. I found some books that I can read for some more insight. I even found one that discusses vocation.

So there you go!

Day 25

I was awake well before my alarm today. I did consider sleeping in, making this a day of rest, but I did not. I enjoyed the silence for half an hour and then got up, feed the cat, prayed, and meditated. I tried to watch the live-stream of the Mass today but I was way too distracted for it to be helpful for me. So I just had breakfast instead.

I read the online advice from our government on isolating when one is a close contact. Looks like that unless a test comes back positive, I can go outside provided I wear a mask. That is good news (in one way) since my parents (who have Covid) need more medication soon – not today. I am happy to drive there and help them out. But today I am staying inside, reading.

A theme has popped up again and again in my reading: God’s love as “eros”. Ok that might sound a little strange because we are conditioned to hear that word in a negative sense. But “eros” means to desire intimacy with another. And that is, above all, the aim of the Christian life: intimacy with Jesus. God desires intimacy with me and desires me to desire intimacy with him. Wow, too much desire!

There is way of seeing the above in Kierkegaardian terms: the movement of faith. Self-giving (love) leads to a desire for intimacy (love). Abraham surrenders Isaiah to receive him back.

Anyway!?

interior penance?

1430 Jesus’ call to conversion and penance, like that of the prophets before him, does not aim first at outward works, “sackcloth and ashes,” fasting and mortification, but at the conversion of the heart, interior conversion. Without this, such penances remain sterile and false; however, interior conversion urges expression in visible signs, gestures and works of penance.
1431 Interior repentance is a radical reorientation of our whole life, a return, a conversion to God with all our heart, an end of sin, a turning away from evil, with repugnance toward the evil actions we have committed. At the same time it entails the desire and resolution to change one’s life, with hope in God’s mercy and trust in the help of his grace. This conversion of heart is accompanied by a salutary pain and sadness which the Fathers called animi cruciatus (affliction of spirit) and compunctio cordis (repentance of heart)
Catechism of the Catholic Church

There is so much of the above to think about and meditate on. I like that penitence is interior looking for an external sign. So, being Anglican, “all may, some should, none most”. The importance is the conversion of the heart – the wholehearted turning to Jesus.

I have created a PDF for the Common Worship “The Reconciliation of a Penitent” which I think should work for Anglicans. I like that the Common Worship order has an Act of Contrition which is not there in other orders. (Happy to be corrected!)