Monasteries Everywhere

Papa Rooster forwarded me a fascinating interview with Dr. Bradley Nassif, an Orthodox evangelical professor who teaches at North Park College in Chicago. He has an exciting vision for evangelicals and Orthodox learning from one another, which he discusses in the interview.

This quote resonates with the type of "monastery" we want to found, one in which most members will live a "mixed life" of daily worship together and work in the world:

[There is] a need to help parishioners integrate their faith with the workaday world of everyday life. I try to do this by offering weekend seminars in our churches entitled “Desert Spirituality for City Dwellers.” When I worked as a Honda salesman, I found myself in need of integrating faith with the marketplace. I ended up viewing my job as a spiritual arena where I would die to self and grow through all the various tasks I did throughout the day. Making 20 phone calls a day became an exercise in ascetic discipline; responding to a rude customer became an opportunity to grow in patience; working with a joyful heart gave witness to the Resurrection of Christ in my soul. I began seeing my daily tasks in a new light. I transformed my vision of work into a spiritual cause. That’s what I mean when I say we need to help people connect the dots between Scripture and what they do at work and home.

Others who are thinking of their homes as monasteries:

Ann at The Sacred Everyday:

I am waking, keeping watch for God here in the midst of this family life. In the constant din of a family of eight, I too am learning a life of vigil, seeking signs of the God who comes to do the soul work in this house of religious retirement, that we may co-labor with Him. If monastic life is about living in a watchful community of love, then fling our doors wide open again—Welcome to this humble monastery of Love. (whole post here)

Mental Multivitamin:

Be an alien in our culture's "hardening phase," when its form is preserved but its content is lost. Be like a lonely monk, gathering scraps of what is best about about us for the civilizations that follow after our dark age. (whole post here)

Rod Dreher, author of Crunchy Cons:

I think Alasdair McIntyre is right when he says that our culture has fragmented so much we can't even agree on what right and wrong is as a community anymore. That can cause us to despair, but we need to look to what St. Benedict did when the Roman Empire broke down, retire to whatever our modern equivalent of monasteries are and try to rebuild culture, to not only preserve our religious, cultural and moral values, but keep them alive for a time when there is more cohesion in the culture.

I have no illusions that I'm going to be able to change America by what I believe, but I can change my family. I can change my parish. I can change what Edmund Burke called the "little platoons" of which I am a part. And I think that's enough. That's got to be enough because that's what I have control over. And maybe other people will see by the examples we live—I'm not talking about withdrawing and becoming neo-Amish—but by making these small changes, by living a good, virtuous life every single day, we can effect a more lasting change, a change that comes from deep within. (whole interview here)