Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Monks and Monasticism

  • The Eremitic Option

    Monks come in two kinds, the cenobites and the eremites or hermits.  The cenobites live in community whereas the hermits go off on their own.  Eremos in Greek means desert, and there are many different motives for moving into the desert either literally or figuratively. There are those whose serious psychological conditions make it impossible…

  • Monasticism and the Monks of Mount Athos

    In April of 2011, 60 Minutes had a segment on the monks of Mt. Athos.  It was surprisingly sympathetic for such a left-leaning program. What one expects and usually gets from liberals and leftists and the lamestream media is religion-bashing — unless of course the religion is Islam, the religion of peace – but the segment in…

  • The Ever-Increasing Frenzy, Tension, and Explosiveness of This Country

    Try to guess when the following was written, and by whom.  Answer below the fold: Ever increasing frenzy, tension, explosiveness of this country. You feel it in the monastery with people like Raymond. In the priesthood with so many upset, one way or another, and so many leaving.  So many just cracking up, falling apart.…

  • Unseen Warfare

    Tully Borland on monastic militants Related: A Partial Defense of the Monastic Life

  • A Warning

    Apropos of my last entry, a warning to those may be thinking of heading for the desert.  The following observation from a November 2009 post, "Demons of the Desert." The desert fathers of old believed in demons because of their experiences in quest of the "narrow gate" that only few find. They sought to perfect…

  • My Time Away: Where I Was and What I Did

    A reader sent the following about half-way through my digital fast and blogging hiatus. . . . I was hoping that when you emerge from it you might have some practical wisdom on how you went about it. What has your daily schedule been like? Have you struggled with the nagging urge to check everything…

  • Monkish Haiku

    Avoid the near occasionOf unnecessary conversation.

  • The Several-Storied Thomas Merton: Contemplative, Writer, Bohemian, Activist

    An outstanding essay by Robert Royal on the many Mertons and their uneasy unity in one fleshly vehicle. There is of course Merton the Contemplative, the convert to Catholicism who, with the typical zeal of the convert, took it all the way to the austerities of Trappist monasticism, and that at a time (1941) when…

  • Should Monasteries Pay Property Tax?

    Two Greek monasteries refuse.

  • At the Monastery

    It is delightful to be able to traverse an outdoor or indoor space without feeling obliged to greet or even acknowledge the passersby.  This one can do at a monastery without fear of being taken as anti-social or unfriendly.  For silence is the 'default setting' at the monastery whereas noise and idle talk are the…

  • Merton Quotes Evdokimov

    Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 308: Evdokimov demands a virile ascesis, not simply gentlemanly retirement into leisure.  The monk does not build his monastic city 'on the margin' of the world, but instead of it. [. . .] He frankly regards monastic chastity as a refusal to procreate and to continue the…

  • A Partial Philosophical Defense of the Monastic Life

    The suggestion was made that I give a little talk to the monks of Christ in the Desert, a Benedictine monastery outside of Abiqui, New Mexico.  I thought I would offer a few words in defense of the monastic life, not that such an ancient and venerable tradition needs any defense from me, but just…