Life of Simplicity: Off-Track, and then On-Track Again
"This simplification [of a solitary's life] is a matter of making decisions; this way but not that way. But the decisions have a certain inevitability about them. Certain sacrifices have to be undertaken and choices made. It is rather like pruning a tree; in order that the tree may bear good fruit the branches must be pruned. But it is not just the dead and decaying wood that has to go but also good burgeoning shoots, full of possibilities. It is a matter of deciding the priorities in one's life."
--Eve Baker: Paths in Solitude.
Topics in this post: Simplicity of surroundings; "brother" monks versus "choir" monks; learning from other people's beliefs while avoiding cafeteria-style spirituality; Internet addiction and my sleep schedule; "Into Great Silence" (film about Carthusian monks); joining my schedule with my apprentice's; caring for my mother; "sabbath" schedule.
*** 9 June 2008
I went downstairs yesterday in search of Doug and glanced in one of the rooms that's empty presently because it's between tenants. What I saw was this:
A bed covered by a quilt.
A Colonial-style wooden dresser.
A Colonial-style wooden night-stand.
A floor lamp.
A long wall-mirror.
Wallpaper.
That was it. There's a table out in the entryway that the tenant can use for a desk, and I suppose it had a chair. But the room reminded me of the title of an article I'm reading currently: "A Guide to Creating a Minimalist Home."
I was immediately envious. It's not just that the tenants have most of the best furniture in our house. It was that the room was supremely uncluttered (at least, till we get our next tenant). I wanted to go up and unclutter my bedroom at once.
However, it was above one hundred degrees upstairs, so I restrained my impulse. Later this summer, I hope, after I finish the daily chores at my mother's.
*** 10 June 2008
I'm concerned about how little progress I'm made this month in my proofreading and publishing. Now that I'm only going over to my mother's apartment every other day, I ought to be getting more done than I am. I've reworked my schedule - yes, again - so that I spend ninety minutes a day on proofreading and sixty minutes on publishing (preferably offline).
I've also added more time for meditation.
I glanced recently at Robin Bruce Lockhart's Halfway to Heaven: The Hidden Life of the Sublime Carthusians. He has some interesting things to say about the lives of the so-called "brother" monks:
* * *
As opposed to the Fathers, the Brothers spend much of their time of out of their cells, attending to the vital business of keeping the monastery running. Food has to be prepared and cooked, the vegetable garden and orchard tended, grass cut, trees felled for firewood . . .
A Brother will spend up to seven hours a day on his particular duties, which are termed obediences. . . . Clearly, because of his duties the Carthusian Brother is unable to spend as much time in his cell in prayer as does the Father, nor need he spend quite so much time on the offices and in church. Nevertheless he devotes his whole day's work to God and his monastery which is, for him, God's dwelling place. He will pray silently within his heart while at his work, which is so arranged that it is almost always carried out in solitude and, for the most part, in silence. . . .
Every year, each Brother makes a 'retreat' from his obediences and remains in the peace and solitude of his cell for eight days - which may be either eight consecutive days, or divided into two periods of a few days each. On Sundays and solemn feast days, and one further day per month if he so wishes, a Brother will remain in his cell for most of the day in recollection.
[Footnote:] 'Recollection' is a term frequently used in the monastic world, and denotes the expulsion from the mind of all distracting thoughts and the collecting together and concentration of one's entire thoughts on prayer.
* * *
Mr. Lockhart goes on to quote the Carthusian Statues: "Interior recollection during work will lead a Brother to contemplation. To attain this recollection it is always permissible while working to have recourse to short and, so to speak, ejaculatory prayers and even sometimes to interrupt the work with brief prayer."
The Trappists (a different order of monks) used to have a similar system of dividing "father" monks (called by the Trappists "choir" monks) from "brother" monks, but Frank Bianco records in Voices of Silence: Lives of the Trappists Today that this system was essentially abolished after Vatican II. The aim after Vatican II was to allow the brothers to attend the same services as the choir monks, but many of the brothers felt betrayed, believing that their particular charism had been denied.
One choir monk told Mr. Bianco:
"The brothers were separated from us in most things. They had their own sleeping quarters, their own scriptorium. They had their own spiritual formation program, a continuing thing, unlike ours which ended when you made solemn vows. Every time the choir monks went to church, the laybrothers met to say a special breviary they had, or the Paters and Aves - ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys.
"If they were out in the fields when the bells rang for a choir office, they'd stop and pray their Paters. They'd come up into our section of the church at night for the Salve, after we chanted compline.
"I think the changes after Vatican II took a lot of starch out of [the brothers]. Most left. I think they really loved the old life-style. They had very deep values, a real sense of camaraderie, and probably more solitude than we did. The old work routine must have functioned as a prayer form for them."
One of the laybrothers of that time said about the change, "What they did was take away our vocation. They made us get rid of our brown habits, 'invited' us to come to choir, and they allowed us to work less. Who the hell asked them, anyway? We came in here because we wanted a simple life like the old brothers had."
A former abbot commented about this change, "We missed the boat. Manual work was the laybrother's equivalent of choir. . . The monk who wants to stay out in the fields and plow till the sun sets is saying vespers in his own particular way."
He added, "It might do some of us a lot of good to ride a tractor when the sun's setting, or listen to an engine purr after we've tuned it. I know there've been times I've stood back and looked at a room I've just painted and the sense of me re-creating fills my soul. I wonder what praying in that way does for the worker's self-esteem, to know he has grown, that he has increased the universe by giving. I wonder what it would do for the brother who teaches another to do those things and who grows in our esteem by that sharing."
After reading all of the above, I've concluded that the brothers, not the choir monks, are my models. I'd been feeling uncomfortable till now because the typical monastic schedule I'd heard described - centered on long periods of prayer and contemplation - wasn't my schedule. But that image of the laybrothers pausing in the midst of their plowing to say a few quick but heartfelt Hail Marys - that's what my schedule is like. Pausing briefly to meditate, and then continuing with my writing-related work, which is a form of meditation in itself.
*** 11 June 2008
After reading a book that translated every Christian speaker's reference to God into a reference to a Higher Self (which the author defined as "the deepest aspects of the whole personality"), I found it refreshing to turn to Essential Monastic Wisdom: Writings on the Contemplative Life, and find the editor, Hugh Feiss, writing, "Although this book is not addressed specifically to Catholics or Christians, no effort has been made to hide the Christian matrix of Benedictine monasticism." That, I believe, is the proper approach to interfaith and interphilosophy relations: dialogue based on an acknowledgment that genuine differences lie between different belief systems.
I deal with this issue on a daily basis, since I'm not a Christian hermit or a Christian monk, yet I use their lives as patterns for my own. I want to learn from their traditions, but not in a slavish way that fails to take into account the differences between their beliefs and mine. At the same time, I don't want to toss out a time-honored tradition just because it isn't immediately clear whether it will have a positive effect on my life. My general rule is that, if it isn't clearly opposed to my beliefs (as reciting the Nicene Creed would be, for example), I'll adopt any feature that appears to me to be integral to the tradition of Christian eremitism and monasticism.
I still worry a lot - perhaps more than I should - that I'll be regarded as creating a cafeteria-style spirituality, picking and choosing the bits I like. I try not to. For example, right now reciting a Psalm daily doesn't seem to be adding much to my life, but the reasons why aren't clear, so I'm not going to jump to the conclusion that it's the wrong practice for me. It may well be that I'm encountering resistance because it's a higher-level activity that I need to grow toward. The only way to learn whether that's true is through continued practice.
Similarly, once my old parish church switches over to its summer schedule, when the Evensong service centers on the chanting of Psalms by the congregation, I may end up attending Evensong weekly, just because I think that chanting the Psalms with other folks would be good for me.
But I don't have to ask myself whether I should attend a weekly communion service. It's a given that the practice of taking communion is not compatible with my beliefs and therefore should not be part of my discipline. (Though when I do happen to be at an Episcopal church when communion is being given, I go up to the altar rail for a blessing.)
So I try to keep myself open to more challenging eremitic practices, while at the same time keeping myself from "whoring after other men's gods." It's a difficult balancing act.
*** 26 June 2008
Ten days home from the fan fiction convention, forty hours on the Internet. I finally just had to put my foot down tonight and say, "Enough."
Which isn't to say that I've gotten no work done in that time. I updated my Website did a bit of editing and publishing, and did a gratifyingly large amount of fiction-reading. But I've been averaging five hours of leisure time per day for the last three days, most of that Internet time. I'm feeling all rattly with Internet addiction.
What's discouraging is that I achieve the most amazing stretches of sleeplessness when I'm online. I've been up now for eighteen hours and don't feel sleepy. There've been times when I've been awake for more than twenty-four hours without feeling sleepy, because I was online during that time. Yet the moment I get offline for a long stretch, I'll be lucky if I can keep awake for twelve hours a day. Darned high-low-high cycle.
Well, now I know what a major break from my regular schedule (i.e. the convention) does to me. Thank goodness I only have two more major breaks planned for this year: an out-of-state visit to my apprentice, and another fiction conference a few days after I arrive home. For practical purposes, I can consider it a single break.
*** 26 June 2008
Sure enough, on the first day after I've gone offline, my low cycle has kicked in with a vengeance; I've been awake for six hours so far today, and only sheer force of will has kept me awake for the past two hours. I'm wrapping things up for the day after I write this entry.
I don't feel moody, though, and the dark cloud of sleepiness has its silver lining: I need to get my sleep cycle back onto an "awake during the day" schedule if I'm to finish needed chores at my mother's home. (She may be leaving the convalescent hospital next week.) Also, a local friend whom I haven't seen since Christmastime (that's what I mean by me not having much of a real-life social life) wants to spend a day with me at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.
Tomorrow, I'm hoping I won't be quite as sleepy and will be able to get more editing and publishing work done.
*** 27 June 2007
I've been watching Into Great Silence, off and on, since I checked it out of the library a couple of weeks ago. As I mentioned in an earlier entry, this film about Carthusian monks simply follows them on their daily routine, with no narration to explain what's going on. I've watched about one hour of the film, and so far the only dialogue (other than in religious ritual) has come when a monk was talking to the monastery's cats. He gave them a teddy bear to play with.
My mother (who saw the film in the theater in March) found it very moving. My father (who reads seventeenth-century Anglican writings for fun) grew bored after an hour. It's definitely a film I'd want to watch in small doses, and I'm glad that I read up beforehand on the Carthusians, so that I understand the distinction between the fathers (who stay in their cells most of the time) and the brothers (who do most of the work around the monastery). In part of the section I watched today, a brother delivered meals to the cells of the fathers (through a little slot in the door). A bell rang for services. The brother promptly dropped to his knees, resting his arms on the windowsill in the cloister. He didn't get up from his prayers until the bell rang again.
The fathers wear black robes, while the brothers wear blue denim robes. I find that enchanting.
I'm increasingly sure that the monks I identify with are not the fathers, spending nearly all their time in prayer and study, but the brothers, who fit prayer into their workday.
Meanwhile, my apprentice is continuing to have severe problems with his daily schedule. "Schedule? What schedule?" is the way he put it. I made a joke about how, if I were there (he lives out of state), I'd be watching over him to ensure that he stuck to his schedule.
Then I thought, "Why not?"
So we're going to try a system whereby he calls me whenever he's about to begin a new task ("including having panic attacks," I told him). If he finds himself drifting off his schedule (either because he's neglecting his work or because he's being a workaholic and not giving himself leisure time), we'll talk through the cause.
This requires me to adjust my sleep hours to his. Currently, he sleeps from midnight to six a.m. and from noon to six p.m. my time; living in the Southwest, where the afternoons are unbearably hot, he takes a long siesta. (I pause to discover that "siesta" is Spanish for "sext": the same "sixth hour of the day" - that is, three a.m. - that is celebrated by a liturgical hour.) I've never tried to stick to a regular sleep pattern - well, not since I left for college - and so I'm not sure how that will go. Nor do I know whether or not this system will have a positive effect on him. Of course, if it doesn't, or if it gives him the boost he needs to stick to his schedule on his own, then I'll abandon my supervision. But I think that, if the sleep part works out, it will have a positive effect on me. I've found that I tend to stick with my schedule when I'm advising my apprentice on his - I feel like a hypocrite otherwise - and I've found (through the situation with my mother) that when I have to adjust my schedule to fit slightly with someone else's, it helps me to get work done, because I know that there are certain times of the day when I won't be able to get work done.
Speaking of which, my mother may come home from the convalescent home this week. I've penned her into my schedule for . . . well, for the rest of her life, frankly (which could be for a couple of decades more; my grandmother lived to the age of ninety). My mother talks about only needing help for the short term, but she's on the waiting list for an "independent living home" - which is apparently a way of saying that the home has no facilities to help her with her physical problems. So it looks as though Doug and I may be serving as her assistants for the long term. Thank goodness that Doug hasn't spoken a word of complaint about this (well, aside from our mutual, good-natured grumbling). He really is a saint when it comes to family duties.
This all gives me a fraternal feeling with my apprentice, since he (and his mother, before her death) has been caring for his father for a decade now.
*** 29 June 2008
The first day on my new joint schedule with my apprentice went well - at least it did for me. I haven't checked with Jo/e yet to find out what impact it has had on him emotionally, but he has stuck to his half of the schedule all day. As for me, I was dead to the world when I awoke at six a.m., but I dragged myself up. (Only the thought of not wanting to let my apprentice down would have gotten me out of bed.) Breakfast woke me up - food often does that. From that point on, things went smoothly, though I woke up halfway through my six-hour siesta and couldn't get back to sleep.
Tomorrow (since Doug has sort-of agreed to take care of Mother Matters every other day - not that it's highly relevant while she's still away from her apartment), I'm spending the morning at home. I think I'll start the day with a bit of gardening, and then I'll browse through the cookbooks I borrowed from the library a while back, looking for easy soup or casserole recipes to broaden our daily fare. When it's past nine, I'll make the medical-related calls I've been putting off for months because I have a severe phone phobia. Making those phone calls costs me the same sort of emotional energy that soldiers reserve for going into battle.
In the evening, my schedule will be the same as today's was: proofreading and light editing.
Later: Just talked to Jo/e on the phone. He's pleased with how the day went, so we're going to continue with this.
Also, I spent more hours today on my core writing-related activities than I have since the first day of May. Hurrah!
*** 3 July 2008
Another Internet addiction entry, which subject I'm sure is boring everyone to tears by now:
My first time online under my new schedule wasn't entirely a success - I meant to spend one hour online and instead spent two - but I think I can resolve the problem by making it an iron-clad rule that I not read and compose replies to posts or e-mails when online. I think that picking up my e-mail and Friends pages the previous day, and composing replies to all but two long personal letters on that day, really did help to cut back on my online time. So if I can just confine my once-a-week online visit to downloading or searching for pages that I've already decided on beforehand, as well as posting and e-mailing any messages I've prepared beforehand, I should be able to spend only one hour a week online, except in the busy periods right after I have a new book out.
And heaven knows I need that restriction. There's nothing like trying to follow a schedule faithfully to alert you to the fact of how little time you have. For the past three days, I've spent over eleven hours on activities in each twelve-hour day; taking into account that I don't record things like bathroom breaks and chats with Doug, that means I've been slightly late in getting to bed. I need to figure out better how to manage my time (I say for the ten zillionth time).
However, the new schedule of splitting my day into two six-hour shifts is working out splendidly, as are the telephone calls with Jo/e - because honestly, if he weren't awaiting my call each morning, I wouldn't be able to drag myself out of bed. Yet I seem to be getting enough sleep; I don't get tired till the end of each six-hour stretch. I've gone from not being able to get more than about eight hours of work done on my offline days - if that much - to filling nearly every minute of a twelve-hour with activities. Splendid.
*** 3 July 2008
I've worked out a holiday schedule which, on reflection, I've decided I'll also make it my "sabbath" schedule - I really do need one day off in the week to devote to activities I don't have enough time for regularly.
The whole day (except for any time I spend on holiday celebrations) is devoted to personal correspondence, simplicity activities such as meditation, and leisure activities, including my weekly visit online. That will free up another morning in the week for housework.
After fiddling around a bit, I decided to make my sabbath be on an evening followed by the morning, simply because it's safer to pick up my e-mail and Friends pages and compose responses to them in the evening, and then sleep before going online the next morning. My evening schedule after the sabbath would follow my regular daily schedule.
I've found in the past that taking a day off from my regular schedule helps to recharge me. The problem I've had in the past is that I tried to make that day off be an outing, which threw my schedule so off-kilter that I had a hard time getting back into the regular swing of things. Also, quite honestly, given a choice between visiting a museum and answering personal correspondence, I'd rather do the latter.
RECENT SIMPLICITY READINGS
Brother Benet Tvedten: "The View from a Monastery."
Janwillem van de Wetering: "The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery."
Rolling Stone article about a Buddhist singer.
Anne Turner (with illustrations by Wendell Minor): "Shaker Hearts."
Richard Ammon (with illustrations by Pamela Patrick): "An Amish Year."
Adele Ahlberg Calhoun: "Spiritual Disciplines Handbook."
Donald B. Kraybill, Steven M. Nolt, and David L. Weaver-Zercher: "Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy."
Thomas Merton: "I Have Seen What I Was Looking For."
Kathleen Kenna (with photos by Andrew Astawicki): "A People Apart" (Old Order Mennonites).
Phyllis Tickle: "The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime."
Marsha Sinetar: "Ordinary People As Monks and Mystics: Lifestyles for Self-discovery."
Hugh Feiss (editor): "Essential Monastic Wisdom: Writings on the Contemplative Life."
"Into Great Silence" (film about Carthusian monks).
Elaine St. James: "Inner Simplicity: 100 Ways to Regain Peace and Nourish Your Soul."
--Eve Baker: Paths in Solitude.
Topics in this post: Simplicity of surroundings; "brother" monks versus "choir" monks; learning from other people's beliefs while avoiding cafeteria-style spirituality; Internet addiction and my sleep schedule; "Into Great Silence" (film about Carthusian monks); joining my schedule with my apprentice's; caring for my mother; "sabbath" schedule.
*** 9 June 2008
I went downstairs yesterday in search of Doug and glanced in one of the rooms that's empty presently because it's between tenants. What I saw was this:
A bed covered by a quilt.
A Colonial-style wooden dresser.
A Colonial-style wooden night-stand.
A floor lamp.
A long wall-mirror.
Wallpaper.
That was it. There's a table out in the entryway that the tenant can use for a desk, and I suppose it had a chair. But the room reminded me of the title of an article I'm reading currently: "A Guide to Creating a Minimalist Home."
I was immediately envious. It's not just that the tenants have most of the best furniture in our house. It was that the room was supremely uncluttered (at least, till we get our next tenant). I wanted to go up and unclutter my bedroom at once.
However, it was above one hundred degrees upstairs, so I restrained my impulse. Later this summer, I hope, after I finish the daily chores at my mother's.
*** 10 June 2008
I'm concerned about how little progress I'm made this month in my proofreading and publishing. Now that I'm only going over to my mother's apartment every other day, I ought to be getting more done than I am. I've reworked my schedule - yes, again - so that I spend ninety minutes a day on proofreading and sixty minutes on publishing (preferably offline).
I've also added more time for meditation.
I glanced recently at Robin Bruce Lockhart's Halfway to Heaven: The Hidden Life of the Sublime Carthusians. He has some interesting things to say about the lives of the so-called "brother" monks:
* * *
As opposed to the Fathers, the Brothers spend much of their time of out of their cells, attending to the vital business of keeping the monastery running. Food has to be prepared and cooked, the vegetable garden and orchard tended, grass cut, trees felled for firewood . . .
A Brother will spend up to seven hours a day on his particular duties, which are termed obediences. . . . Clearly, because of his duties the Carthusian Brother is unable to spend as much time in his cell in prayer as does the Father, nor need he spend quite so much time on the offices and in church. Nevertheless he devotes his whole day's work to God and his monastery which is, for him, God's dwelling place. He will pray silently within his heart while at his work, which is so arranged that it is almost always carried out in solitude and, for the most part, in silence. . . .
Every year, each Brother makes a 'retreat' from his obediences and remains in the peace and solitude of his cell for eight days - which may be either eight consecutive days, or divided into two periods of a few days each. On Sundays and solemn feast days, and one further day per month if he so wishes, a Brother will remain in his cell for most of the day in recollection.
[Footnote:] 'Recollection' is a term frequently used in the monastic world, and denotes the expulsion from the mind of all distracting thoughts and the collecting together and concentration of one's entire thoughts on prayer.
* * *
Mr. Lockhart goes on to quote the Carthusian Statues: "Interior recollection during work will lead a Brother to contemplation. To attain this recollection it is always permissible while working to have recourse to short and, so to speak, ejaculatory prayers and even sometimes to interrupt the work with brief prayer."
The Trappists (a different order of monks) used to have a similar system of dividing "father" monks (called by the Trappists "choir" monks) from "brother" monks, but Frank Bianco records in Voices of Silence: Lives of the Trappists Today that this system was essentially abolished after Vatican II. The aim after Vatican II was to allow the brothers to attend the same services as the choir monks, but many of the brothers felt betrayed, believing that their particular charism had been denied.
One choir monk told Mr. Bianco:
"The brothers were separated from us in most things. They had their own sleeping quarters, their own scriptorium. They had their own spiritual formation program, a continuing thing, unlike ours which ended when you made solemn vows. Every time the choir monks went to church, the laybrothers met to say a special breviary they had, or the Paters and Aves - ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys.
"If they were out in the fields when the bells rang for a choir office, they'd stop and pray their Paters. They'd come up into our section of the church at night for the Salve, after we chanted compline.
"I think the changes after Vatican II took a lot of starch out of [the brothers]. Most left. I think they really loved the old life-style. They had very deep values, a real sense of camaraderie, and probably more solitude than we did. The old work routine must have functioned as a prayer form for them."
One of the laybrothers of that time said about the change, "What they did was take away our vocation. They made us get rid of our brown habits, 'invited' us to come to choir, and they allowed us to work less. Who the hell asked them, anyway? We came in here because we wanted a simple life like the old brothers had."
A former abbot commented about this change, "We missed the boat. Manual work was the laybrother's equivalent of choir. . . The monk who wants to stay out in the fields and plow till the sun sets is saying vespers in his own particular way."
He added, "It might do some of us a lot of good to ride a tractor when the sun's setting, or listen to an engine purr after we've tuned it. I know there've been times I've stood back and looked at a room I've just painted and the sense of me re-creating fills my soul. I wonder what praying in that way does for the worker's self-esteem, to know he has grown, that he has increased the universe by giving. I wonder what it would do for the brother who teaches another to do those things and who grows in our esteem by that sharing."
After reading all of the above, I've concluded that the brothers, not the choir monks, are my models. I'd been feeling uncomfortable till now because the typical monastic schedule I'd heard described - centered on long periods of prayer and contemplation - wasn't my schedule. But that image of the laybrothers pausing in the midst of their plowing to say a few quick but heartfelt Hail Marys - that's what my schedule is like. Pausing briefly to meditate, and then continuing with my writing-related work, which is a form of meditation in itself.
*** 11 June 2008
After reading a book that translated every Christian speaker's reference to God into a reference to a Higher Self (which the author defined as "the deepest aspects of the whole personality"), I found it refreshing to turn to Essential Monastic Wisdom: Writings on the Contemplative Life, and find the editor, Hugh Feiss, writing, "Although this book is not addressed specifically to Catholics or Christians, no effort has been made to hide the Christian matrix of Benedictine monasticism." That, I believe, is the proper approach to interfaith and interphilosophy relations: dialogue based on an acknowledgment that genuine differences lie between different belief systems.
I deal with this issue on a daily basis, since I'm not a Christian hermit or a Christian monk, yet I use their lives as patterns for my own. I want to learn from their traditions, but not in a slavish way that fails to take into account the differences between their beliefs and mine. At the same time, I don't want to toss out a time-honored tradition just because it isn't immediately clear whether it will have a positive effect on my life. My general rule is that, if it isn't clearly opposed to my beliefs (as reciting the Nicene Creed would be, for example), I'll adopt any feature that appears to me to be integral to the tradition of Christian eremitism and monasticism.
I still worry a lot - perhaps more than I should - that I'll be regarded as creating a cafeteria-style spirituality, picking and choosing the bits I like. I try not to. For example, right now reciting a Psalm daily doesn't seem to be adding much to my life, but the reasons why aren't clear, so I'm not going to jump to the conclusion that it's the wrong practice for me. It may well be that I'm encountering resistance because it's a higher-level activity that I need to grow toward. The only way to learn whether that's true is through continued practice.
Similarly, once my old parish church switches over to its summer schedule, when the Evensong service centers on the chanting of Psalms by the congregation, I may end up attending Evensong weekly, just because I think that chanting the Psalms with other folks would be good for me.
But I don't have to ask myself whether I should attend a weekly communion service. It's a given that the practice of taking communion is not compatible with my beliefs and therefore should not be part of my discipline. (Though when I do happen to be at an Episcopal church when communion is being given, I go up to the altar rail for a blessing.)
So I try to keep myself open to more challenging eremitic practices, while at the same time keeping myself from "whoring after other men's gods." It's a difficult balancing act.
*** 26 June 2008
Ten days home from the fan fiction convention, forty hours on the Internet. I finally just had to put my foot down tonight and say, "Enough."
Which isn't to say that I've gotten no work done in that time. I updated my Website did a bit of editing and publishing, and did a gratifyingly large amount of fiction-reading. But I've been averaging five hours of leisure time per day for the last three days, most of that Internet time. I'm feeling all rattly with Internet addiction.
What's discouraging is that I achieve the most amazing stretches of sleeplessness when I'm online. I've been up now for eighteen hours and don't feel sleepy. There've been times when I've been awake for more than twenty-four hours without feeling sleepy, because I was online during that time. Yet the moment I get offline for a long stretch, I'll be lucky if I can keep awake for twelve hours a day. Darned high-low-high cycle.
Well, now I know what a major break from my regular schedule (i.e. the convention) does to me. Thank goodness I only have two more major breaks planned for this year: an out-of-state visit to my apprentice, and another fiction conference a few days after I arrive home. For practical purposes, I can consider it a single break.
*** 26 June 2008
Sure enough, on the first day after I've gone offline, my low cycle has kicked in with a vengeance; I've been awake for six hours so far today, and only sheer force of will has kept me awake for the past two hours. I'm wrapping things up for the day after I write this entry.
I don't feel moody, though, and the dark cloud of sleepiness has its silver lining: I need to get my sleep cycle back onto an "awake during the day" schedule if I'm to finish needed chores at my mother's home. (She may be leaving the convalescent hospital next week.) Also, a local friend whom I haven't seen since Christmastime (that's what I mean by me not having much of a real-life social life) wants to spend a day with me at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.
Tomorrow, I'm hoping I won't be quite as sleepy and will be able to get more editing and publishing work done.
*** 27 June 2007
I've been watching Into Great Silence, off and on, since I checked it out of the library a couple of weeks ago. As I mentioned in an earlier entry, this film about Carthusian monks simply follows them on their daily routine, with no narration to explain what's going on. I've watched about one hour of the film, and so far the only dialogue (other than in religious ritual) has come when a monk was talking to the monastery's cats. He gave them a teddy bear to play with.
My mother (who saw the film in the theater in March) found it very moving. My father (who reads seventeenth-century Anglican writings for fun) grew bored after an hour. It's definitely a film I'd want to watch in small doses, and I'm glad that I read up beforehand on the Carthusians, so that I understand the distinction between the fathers (who stay in their cells most of the time) and the brothers (who do most of the work around the monastery). In part of the section I watched today, a brother delivered meals to the cells of the fathers (through a little slot in the door). A bell rang for services. The brother promptly dropped to his knees, resting his arms on the windowsill in the cloister. He didn't get up from his prayers until the bell rang again.
The fathers wear black robes, while the brothers wear blue denim robes. I find that enchanting.
I'm increasingly sure that the monks I identify with are not the fathers, spending nearly all their time in prayer and study, but the brothers, who fit prayer into their workday.
Meanwhile, my apprentice is continuing to have severe problems with his daily schedule. "Schedule? What schedule?" is the way he put it. I made a joke about how, if I were there (he lives out of state), I'd be watching over him to ensure that he stuck to his schedule.
Then I thought, "Why not?"
So we're going to try a system whereby he calls me whenever he's about to begin a new task ("including having panic attacks," I told him). If he finds himself drifting off his schedule (either because he's neglecting his work or because he's being a workaholic and not giving himself leisure time), we'll talk through the cause.
This requires me to adjust my sleep hours to his. Currently, he sleeps from midnight to six a.m. and from noon to six p.m. my time; living in the Southwest, where the afternoons are unbearably hot, he takes a long siesta. (I pause to discover that "siesta" is Spanish for "sext": the same "sixth hour of the day" - that is, three a.m. - that is celebrated by a liturgical hour.) I've never tried to stick to a regular sleep pattern - well, not since I left for college - and so I'm not sure how that will go. Nor do I know whether or not this system will have a positive effect on him. Of course, if it doesn't, or if it gives him the boost he needs to stick to his schedule on his own, then I'll abandon my supervision. But I think that, if the sleep part works out, it will have a positive effect on me. I've found that I tend to stick with my schedule when I'm advising my apprentice on his - I feel like a hypocrite otherwise - and I've found (through the situation with my mother) that when I have to adjust my schedule to fit slightly with someone else's, it helps me to get work done, because I know that there are certain times of the day when I won't be able to get work done.
Speaking of which, my mother may come home from the convalescent home this week. I've penned her into my schedule for . . . well, for the rest of her life, frankly (which could be for a couple of decades more; my grandmother lived to the age of ninety). My mother talks about only needing help for the short term, but she's on the waiting list for an "independent living home" - which is apparently a way of saying that the home has no facilities to help her with her physical problems. So it looks as though Doug and I may be serving as her assistants for the long term. Thank goodness that Doug hasn't spoken a word of complaint about this (well, aside from our mutual, good-natured grumbling). He really is a saint when it comes to family duties.
This all gives me a fraternal feeling with my apprentice, since he (and his mother, before her death) has been caring for his father for a decade now.
*** 29 June 2008
The first day on my new joint schedule with my apprentice went well - at least it did for me. I haven't checked with Jo/e yet to find out what impact it has had on him emotionally, but he has stuck to his half of the schedule all day. As for me, I was dead to the world when I awoke at six a.m., but I dragged myself up. (Only the thought of not wanting to let my apprentice down would have gotten me out of bed.) Breakfast woke me up - food often does that. From that point on, things went smoothly, though I woke up halfway through my six-hour siesta and couldn't get back to sleep.
Tomorrow (since Doug has sort-of agreed to take care of Mother Matters every other day - not that it's highly relevant while she's still away from her apartment), I'm spending the morning at home. I think I'll start the day with a bit of gardening, and then I'll browse through the cookbooks I borrowed from the library a while back, looking for easy soup or casserole recipes to broaden our daily fare. When it's past nine, I'll make the medical-related calls I've been putting off for months because I have a severe phone phobia. Making those phone calls costs me the same sort of emotional energy that soldiers reserve for going into battle.
In the evening, my schedule will be the same as today's was: proofreading and light editing.
Later: Just talked to Jo/e on the phone. He's pleased with how the day went, so we're going to continue with this.
Also, I spent more hours today on my core writing-related activities than I have since the first day of May. Hurrah!
*** 3 July 2008
Another Internet addiction entry, which subject I'm sure is boring everyone to tears by now:
My first time online under my new schedule wasn't entirely a success - I meant to spend one hour online and instead spent two - but I think I can resolve the problem by making it an iron-clad rule that I not read and compose replies to posts or e-mails when online. I think that picking up my e-mail and Friends pages the previous day, and composing replies to all but two long personal letters on that day, really did help to cut back on my online time. So if I can just confine my once-a-week online visit to downloading or searching for pages that I've already decided on beforehand, as well as posting and e-mailing any messages I've prepared beforehand, I should be able to spend only one hour a week online, except in the busy periods right after I have a new book out.
And heaven knows I need that restriction. There's nothing like trying to follow a schedule faithfully to alert you to the fact of how little time you have. For the past three days, I've spent over eleven hours on activities in each twelve-hour day; taking into account that I don't record things like bathroom breaks and chats with Doug, that means I've been slightly late in getting to bed. I need to figure out better how to manage my time (I say for the ten zillionth time).
However, the new schedule of splitting my day into two six-hour shifts is working out splendidly, as are the telephone calls with Jo/e - because honestly, if he weren't awaiting my call each morning, I wouldn't be able to drag myself out of bed. Yet I seem to be getting enough sleep; I don't get tired till the end of each six-hour stretch. I've gone from not being able to get more than about eight hours of work done on my offline days - if that much - to filling nearly every minute of a twelve-hour with activities. Splendid.
*** 3 July 2008
I've worked out a holiday schedule which, on reflection, I've decided I'll also make it my "sabbath" schedule - I really do need one day off in the week to devote to activities I don't have enough time for regularly.
The whole day (except for any time I spend on holiday celebrations) is devoted to personal correspondence, simplicity activities such as meditation, and leisure activities, including my weekly visit online. That will free up another morning in the week for housework.
After fiddling around a bit, I decided to make my sabbath be on an evening followed by the morning, simply because it's safer to pick up my e-mail and Friends pages and compose responses to them in the evening, and then sleep before going online the next morning. My evening schedule after the sabbath would follow my regular daily schedule.
I've found in the past that taking a day off from my regular schedule helps to recharge me. The problem I've had in the past is that I tried to make that day off be an outing, which threw my schedule so off-kilter that I had a hard time getting back into the regular swing of things. Also, quite honestly, given a choice between visiting a museum and answering personal correspondence, I'd rather do the latter.
RECENT SIMPLICITY READINGS
Brother Benet Tvedten: "The View from a Monastery."
Janwillem van de Wetering: "The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery."
Rolling Stone article about a Buddhist singer.
Anne Turner (with illustrations by Wendell Minor): "Shaker Hearts."
Richard Ammon (with illustrations by Pamela Patrick): "An Amish Year."
Adele Ahlberg Calhoun: "Spiritual Disciplines Handbook."
Donald B. Kraybill, Steven M. Nolt, and David L. Weaver-Zercher: "Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy."
Thomas Merton: "I Have Seen What I Was Looking For."
Kathleen Kenna (with photos by Andrew Astawicki): "A People Apart" (Old Order Mennonites).
Phyllis Tickle: "The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime."
Marsha Sinetar: "Ordinary People As Monks and Mystics: Lifestyles for Self-discovery."
Hugh Feiss (editor): "Essential Monastic Wisdom: Writings on the Contemplative Life."
"Into Great Silence" (film about Carthusian monks).
Elaine St. James: "Inner Simplicity: 100 Ways to Regain Peace and Nourish Your Soul."
I just checked your Buried Treasures and noticed that the link of Remyheart's "Pride" is broken. Here is another archiv for the story.
Thanks a lot for putting so much work into your rec page. I just started reading "Fleur de Lys" and enjoy it so far. I wouldn't have found this story without you.
Did you read Marquesate's new "Special Forces" series? It's set in the Afghanistan war in the 1980s and is about two enemies who - after hurting each other quite a lot - fall in love. Have a look!