Reading Thomas Moore’s Meditations: On the Monk Who Dwells in Daily Life, I am compelled to explore my own meditations on the subject and to put forth my reflections on a Neo-Monastic Movement—of sorts—within the Church and, as a broader spiritual movement, outside of the Church. The subject of Moore’s meditations is easily discerned by the book’s title, in simplest terms: how can one incorporate aspects of monastic life into one’s daily life? In the book’s second meditation, Moore suggests that “Maybe it’s a mistake to think of the monastic life as a withdrawal from the active world; we might see it more as an alternative to the hyperactivity that is characteristic of modern life.”
The negative side-effects of modernity and its devotion to technology, to the cult of politics and the church of social media—all while the economic equilibrium of late-stage capitalism continues its precarious dance on the tight-rope of wishful thinking—have progressed into a full blown spiritual epidemic. I am reminded of a scene from the film You’re Gonna Miss Me, a documentary about the mentally ill rock musician Roky Erickson, in which Roky is at home with his mother (who also suffers from mental illness) and he is scrolling through the radio dial, static and mariachi music giving way to talk radio and then to more static, all while sitting in front of a television set which is blaring cereal and shampoo commercials at full volume. In the next room his mother is sitting in front of her own television set, which is tuned to an entirely different channel; the cacophony of sounds swirling in the ether inspiring a feeling of total madness. I remember thinking as I watched the film, “If he wasn’t crazy already, this environment would drive him crazy!” When Thomas Moore talks about the “hyperactivity of modern life” I think of all the noise—the “information”—being streamed from smartphones, iPads, and television sets into the atmosphere of our every day lives, and I think “it’s no wonder the world’s gone mad.” We need an alternative.
Here in our home, which we affectionately refer to as the Church of the Family Flower, we live under our own monastic Rule. The alarm is set for 4:30am and my wife and I dutifully, and happily, rise from our slumber with the sign of the cross, and make our way to our respective altars for morning prayers and meditations. Candles and incense are lit and with rosaries and prayer beads in hand we kneel to pray. After my personal prayer routine, while my wife transitions into yoga, I make my way into the kitchen to prepare a simple breakfast of steel cut oats for the family. While our boy gets his last bit of sleep in and my wife showers and dresses for work—she teaches at the Waldorf school where our boy attends kindergarten—I head into our study to read and write. We all have breakfast together somewhere in the vicinity of 6:30am. My wife and I drink our green tea and the boy goes in for raw milk. After seeing them off to school, I grab by walking stick and take a short stroll around the block to get my blood moving.
That’s how we do our mornings at the Church of the Family Flower. What we don’t do is touch our phones, turn on computers, and we absolutely do not own a television. We have a fantastic vinyl collection and usually listen to old gospel, folk or country music over breakfast. The boy watches no television and he gets no screen time. He listens to vinyl (Pink Floyd and the Beatles are his favorites) and he does “500 piece” puzzles which are marked for ages 12+, but, at 4 years old, he finishes them with no help from me or his mother. We go on walks together. He helps out with cooking and cleaning when he is in the mood, and when it comes to working in the yard and tending the garden, he is always in the mood to help. We pray together before dinner and after dinner he likes to perform a “concert” for me and his mom. At bedtime he asks for a blessing as he is being tucked into bed. I make the sign of the cross on his forehead and ask his guardian angels to watch over him in his sleep. There is always time for a bedtime story. There will never be a video game console at the Church of the Family Flower.
My wife and I close out the night reading from our extensive library, sharing conversation, writing in our journals, attending to our studies; or else I play the piano, doing my “poor man’s Randy Newman” routine, while she does some evening yoga. We return to our altars for bedtime prayer and meditations, before laying down together at the end of the day. We make our own bread, ferment our own kimchi, wildcraft herbs from the forest and make our own tinctures. We have a small garden, we make all of our own meals and we invite friends to dinner instead of asking them to meet us at an overpriced restaurant. We do what we can to live a life connected to the sources of our sustenance. We venture out into the community to meet up with friends over a cup of coffee or tea, we take pilgrimages to sacred sites on Saturdays and we go to church on Sundays. We donate clothes to the local Catholic Worker House when we can and we are dead set on organizing a weekly meal for the homeless, which we hope to have off the ground before summer.
We do all of this because we want to live a life of meaning, of charity, of love; a life bursting with intention and hope, grounded in Source, filled with Spirit, and reaching upward into an ever greater union with the Most High. We do all this because this is what “being Christian” means to us. I am not proposing that you live the way we do, that you follow the Rule of the Family Flower—everyone has to find their own way home—but I am suggesting that you live intentionally, that you watch your diet (food and information) and that you consider “… an alternative to the hyperactivity that is characteristic of modern life.” I am suggesting that you pick up your cross. Your mental health depends on it—your spiritual health depends on it—and this world depends on you.
The Christian Drifter 