Love in Dark Settings

Since December 2007 (after five years of considering taking this path), I've been endeavoring to living a life centered on simplicity. My primary model is the lives of Christian hermits, monks, and nuns (particularly the Desert Fathers and Mothers), but I also take inspiration from other people who have lived in simplicity.

My accounts of my life of simplicity are found in my Daily Life entries. They may contain references to spirituality and ethics. Sections of my Daily Life entry that relate to simplicity are labelled "Simplicity" after the relevant dates within each post.

"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.

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"The sacrifices others see [the monk] making are in reality no different from the athlete's recognition that certain elements detract from one's performance."

--Frank Bianco: Voices of Silence: Lives of the Trappists Today.

Topics in this post: Internet addiction, support for solitaries, stability, meditation/contemplation, liturgical hours, work, novelties, lectio divina and Vitae Patrum, Great Books and ethics, rigid daily schedules, seasonal schedules, social interactions, overwork and tiredness, the Psalms and Thomas Coverdale, Anglican chant, arguments against solitude, grace through trial, asceticism.

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"The life of the solitary is not an easy life, since there are no prescriptions for it and each day must be faced anew. The signs which say 'keep in lane' and 'when red light shows wait here' are of little relevance to one who is called to strike across country, equipped with a rather inadequate map and a compass one has not yet learnt to trust. From time to time the solitary seeks affirmation, reassurance that the path along which he or she is being drawn is genuine and not an illusion. . . .

"Sometimes no guide appears, and one is given no such reassurance. This is a test of faithfulness, of perseverance in the face of doubt and darkness. The early pioneers of the desert of course had no guides. They just went out into the desert, the place of desolation, and got on with it."

--Eve Baker: Paths in Solitude.

Topics in this post: cowls and habits and other clothes, (not) finding a community, lectio, the Desert Fathers (especially St. Anthony), stability, family obligations, intemperate speech, schedule.

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"Voluntary poverty can be the easiest step of all. . . . Gone is the struggle about this or that - all of it is forbidden. You own nothing. How much easier, how much simpler than our world of endless decisions between acquiring and not acquiring."

--Richard J. Foster: Freedom of Simplicity.

Topics in this post: Internet addiction, acquisitiveness, Carthusian monks, sacrifice, tidying my surroundings, schedules, skimming quotas, solitaries, rhythm versus novelty, library browsing quotas, travel quotas, Zen Buddhism and the arts, reading quotas, using simplicity as an excuse not to be simple.

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"There are two ways to get enough: one is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less."

--G. K. Chesterton.

Topics in this post: Internet addiction, accumulating possessions, support networks for simplicity, my Muse's effect on my schedule, mania's effect of my schedule, simplicity readings.

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"I said that these blindness games will be valuable to you as a writer. But their main value to you can be in another way. For writing doesn't depend as much on the images you see with your eyes, or the sounds you hear with your ears, as it does on your 'inner eye,' your 'inner ear,' the understandings you have inside you that you glean from all your senses, including your heart. The more you learn about your own inners, the deeper understanding you will have about yourself and about everybody. You'll be seeing with your heart, and then if you write it down, fine. The writing will be the richer. But the writing's not the most important thing in the world. The understanding is."

--Jacqueline Jackson: Turn Not Pale, Beloved Snail: A Book About Writing among Other Things.

Topics in this post: simplicity, Internet addiction, braille, blindness, self-publishing printed books, self-publishing e-books, authorship, scanning books, Christmas.

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