I was on the way to my office at the monastery when I noticed the hose snaking across the courtyard. I set the handful of gear down on the path—phone charger, noise-canceling headphones, headlamp, water bottle. The usual kit of my morning routine. One doesn’t simply walk across the monastery grounds—it can be an excursion, and if you forget something, you’ll hit your step goal for the day.
I rolled up the hose and think, What a Dad thing to do.
Going down the hallway, I shut doors left open or ajar, close a window because even at 6:30 AM, the rising heat of the Oklahoma prairie dictates the winner of the fresh air vs. cool interior debate.
The thermostat outside my office, which I’d just noticed the other day, precisely on the one-year anniversary of my time here, said it was 83 degrees. I left it alone. Fr. Basil was here, and he Dads even harder than I do about this place. The power bill alone is horrifying.
I fired up the Keurig machine and looked out my window as the machine warmed and burbled. That window faces due north - Polaris is visible above the orchard outside my office window. I wondered if the herd of deer had stayed in the orchard last night.
Someone, probably Seraphim, is pounding out his unique rhythm on the semantron, which is basically a propeller-shaped plank of wood used to call the monastery to prayer. It looks like a piece of driftwood. Perhaps it is—I don’t know. Maybe it’s a chunk of hickory that’s just been weathered and pounded into a simulacrum of driftwood. Every single day here, I learn some new Orthodox factoid and affix it to a vast and incomplete mosaic resolving into something beautiful, if frequently incomprehensible. It could be that it’s just a piece of wood from Home Depot. It could be a fallen branch imported from the Garden of Gethsemane—which may be the only allowable material for semantrons. I never know with these things, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Literally everything in a monastery is consecrated for God’s use. All the procedures, policies, etc., have a thousand-year tradition behind them.
I’m plugged in to this place. It seems like yesterday when I arrived and dropped my backpack onto a plain chair in a plain cell and wondered, How has it come to this? Now, in addition to being the lawn guy, kitchen mopper, trapeza reader, and hose-roller-upper, I frequently serve as tour guide, showing people around the place, explaining things, and trying to assuage visitors’ trepidation about being in such a strange and holy place.
For me, it’s just home. (My youngest, who now insists on being called “Elizabeth,” absolutely hates that I have the monastery in Google Maps as, “home.”)
Yes, I feel terribly guilty for not going to the service this morning. I want to go. In the huge kit of things I wrestle with these days are the words,
“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”
I may yet abandon all the work, obligations, and responsibilities of my outside life in order to seek this Kingdom, but I’m not ready yet. I believe like I’ve never believed in the last 50 years, but as of right now, it seems that I’ll be here forever if I don’t rebuild my “empire.” That means I use the sliver of time I have in the morning.
As beautiful as this place is, I have four children who need me. I need to get back to them.
The coffee is ready. My prayer rope is in hand. I head out to the path for my own personal service. It’s no Divine Liturgy, but it’s what I can manage right now.
After that, the creative work. After that, I read at trapeza. After that, the day job.
In a mosaic, an image resolves from many tiny stones. Chip, hammer, place, repeat.
As always, your eyeballs on these words mean a ton to me. I feel the need to apologize—it’s been a couple of months since I last published here. It’s been…busy. I’ll tell you about it ASAP.
New subscribers: Thank you! It’s great to have you here. I’m switching things up a bit, so if you find that it’s not the cup of tea you were expecting, I understand. To be completely honest, I feel like I’m along for the ride at this point. Let’s see which chute God sends us down…