The question every man has to ask himself...

RA 105: "Should I become a Georgian Orthodox Monk?"

Last weekend I awoke to the abbott looking down at me on my office floor. He was saying my name. As my systems came online, I tried to take a mental inventory…

• Why was I on my office floor…?

• Am I dreaming…?

• What time was it…?

• What did I miss…?

The only thing I knew for certain in that instant was that I wasn’t wearing pants.

Fortunately, I was in my sleeping bag on top of an air mattress.

It all started coming back to me.

My boys were sleeping in my room/cell. It has two comfortable beds. The girls were in another room. The air mattress would have taken up more than the available floor space. Plus, teenage boys smell weird. I had made a logistical retreat to my comparatively spacious office.

“Where is the mower key?” the abbott was asking. “I’m going to cut a strip out to the pond.”

Ah, right. We had a baptism that day. Kind of a big deal. They usually cut a swath through the field to get to the baptismal part of the pond shore.