Monastic Life in a Lay World ... Sort of

This reflection comes on the heels of the Christmas rush. Just a preview, I arrived at the Cathedral at 2 PM on Christmas Eve to assist with preparing the altar, and to prepare dinner for the clergy and choir, feeding the clergy and choir beginning about 7:45 PM to about 10:30 PM. Taking small breaks in between to say a quickie Vespers and complete the Service of Preparation for Holy Communion (which is truly a beautiful Eastern practice). Midnight Mass at 11 PM, and this goes on. The next morning I arise early (after a 2 1/2 hour nap) to say the Matins of Christmas and to feed the homeless, and the list goes on. Today was the first day I really had "off" per se.

The point isn't to regale you with "110 degrees up hill in 2 feet of snow", but it has caused me reflection on my life, which I consider to be semi-monastic. Those who know me well, know that I spend a lot of time at Church and reading theology and doing church things. Only recently have I taken up a secular-ish hobby (calligraphy - but then that leaps into church things too), hiking (which I do on occasion), but I spend a lot of my free time in prayer, service, or something similar. Now I'm contemplating starting the discipline of the Divine Office again and step by step (if I've learned anything it's not to just go full throttle into the whole thing), that is to say as many of the seven canonical hours each day as I can and build up. Some people call me intense, but this is something that makes me calm and gives me great insight. People wonder why I do what I do and why I'm so dedicated.

I feel very much connected and somehow fulfilled after these four days of service, and would love to do more. People ask if I ought to be a monastic, but I don't think so. As the Lord chooses to reveal more and more refined shades of what I'm called to do, I feel called to both as weird as that seems. I feel called to be a monastic, yet be of the world. That is, I feel called to minister to people around me, especially to the gay culture. I feel a call to a life fully dedicated to God, yet in that life also work in the public arena with regular people. I'm happy to be where I am on my journey and I think I'll keep going that direction, however, perhaps as time goes on my direction will be much more precise than it is now.

Pax Domini