Monk Mode

Spending a little down time at the monastery: Week 1

Please forgive me: I’m mostly just trying to catch my thoughts with this one. I guess that’s the point of the newsletter. In the beginning I thought I’d taken enough hits to be able to dispense some advice and encouragement to men in similar crucibles. I thought the hard part was over. Turns out that was incredibly naive. So, here I am at a monastery in Oklahoma trying to sort things out.

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Life begins early here at the monastery. For me, that’s usually around 4:00 AM, although usually not by choice. When I open my eyes in the morning, it’s like I can already hear Mom & Dad up and shouting.

Actually, that’s less of a metaphor than I was going for…

However, it’s a sacred time, those moments before daybreak, and for the last six days I’ve been here, every morning begins as though God spilled a cauldron of hot, molten yellow iron across the horizon, just on the other side of the trees on the edge of the property. It oozes between the treetops and ignites the clouds, if there are any.

That molten sunshine brings the heat. I don’t think a single one of these mornings has started cooler than 80 degrees. That’s Oklahoma in late July, apparently.

I try to get a walk in, but after a disastrous attempt to walk around the pond on Morning #1, I scrapped the long prayer walk for the relatively short walk around the monastery itself. Why disastrous? Well, maybe that’s not the right word. Nightmare would probably be better. 

There is plenty of space to get a one-mile walk in. It’s my bare minimum for a prayer walk. I can do a whole rope in less than half a mile, and then it’s “freestyle” prayer or day planning after that. But my system requires a one-mile minimum for maximum prayer/planning “effectiveness.” Plus, it’s exactly the right distance for my coffee to remain at a drinkable temperature in the mug I use, even in winter time. 

However, the mile+ path I attempted goes around the pond. The pond is dotted with trees whose branches are low enough for spiders to spin webs from branch to field grass. I discovered that in the dark on Morning #1. Silky strings criss-crossed my face and alighted on my hands. The first time it happened I chucked my coffee straight into the air and almost showered myself with it. 

I didn’t realize the true horror of it until later in the day when I took the path again. What I saw, in the late dawn light, was horrific - HUGE spiderwebs stretching 10-15 feet high, with quarter-sized field spiders residing in them. There were at least half a dozen of these man-catchers crossing the path I’d intended to take. If I’d soldiered on, I’d have had at least one of them on me.

I thought I’d beaten arachnophobia…

Fortunately, as one might expect, morning prayer time is covered INSIDE the clean and orderly monastery. So, that’s where you can find me in the morning for the time being. Right where God intended me to be, apparently.