For a few years now, your friendly neighborhood Merry Monk has been pretty stressed. Most of the angst has centered around debt and a ticking time-bomb mortgage. Add the disruption of having our home on the market for over a year plus the regular demands of work and family, and in many ways I imperceptibly started to become untethered.
However, with the recent sale of my house and resulting elimination of all debt (except for the very sane and manageable low fixed-rate, principal and interest mortgage on our new townhome) this season of my life has come to an end. As a result, I’ve had some time to reflect.
Looking back, it’s obvious that I’ve leaned hard on the spiritual discipline of celebration. The Merry Monk gatherings and my once-a-month parties/jam sessions have been a big part of that. But as I’ve been getting my house in order, I’ve realized that it’s time to add in regular practice of the other disciplines to balance things out.
This doesn’t mean The Merry Order has stopped it’s wandering from pub to pub, just that we’ll be getting back to something I like to call spiritual experimentation. Many find the spiritual disciplines intimidating. They don’t have to be. Exploring the peace and joy of the disciplines is what spiritual experimentation is all about.
Starting in August, we’ll highlight one discipline per month on TheMerryMonk.com and invite you to experiment with that discipline and share your experiences on the blog. In addition, we’ll have our monthly gathering at my place this month. We’ll talk about some of this and then make plans to head out to a local pub the following month for our regular practice of the discipline of celebration.
The discipline this month…solitude. More on that soon. Until then, may God bless the Hell out of you.
