Let’s be more timely about this – say it’s observing Advent. You get a wreath with candles, a devotional of some sort, and mark out your plans to have a daily focused time of celebrating the season. You miss a night, maybe two nights. That’s probably all it will take for our friend to come and visit. “Pitiful,” he says.

Well, it happens to all of us. Unless you have someone standing over your bed, making you do something, or in your living room, forcing you to observe, observe! We will miss days here and there. We will not be perfect in our observance. We should resist the desire to make up for what we’ve missed by doing extra next time. We should work, with God, on sensing when guilt for things like this will come knocking and just not answer the door. Putting ourselves in a tizzy about things like this will only help to make us miserable and can eventually wear us out.

It’s the rhythm of life. We fall. We stumble. Our hair isn’t perfect. We forget to take out the trash. Oh well. And I’m not trying to diminish the need for and the value of discipline or disciplines. They are important. We need to continue to embrace them, but not by beating ourselves up. So, if you miss a night this Advent, OK, you missed a night. God is still alive and you very likely still love Him and He can’t stop loving you. Pick up and keep going tomorrow night.

A new Church year is almost over and a new one beginning. Advent begins on Sunday. The rhythm begins over again. Why is this fun again? OK, no one said anything about fun. This would be a problem for people these days, and Christians along with everyone else – too much focus on everything curing my boredom. We have the attitude that if I don’t “feel like” I’m getting something out of it, whatever it is, then it isn’t worth it. This is deeply unfortunate. We behave and think like small, unformed children when we do this. We’re not getting it.

Things can be boring and still form us in the way that we should be formed. I’ll say that again in another way:  we can feel as if we’re “getting” nothing at all from a particular season or practice, and actually be “getting” more than we need. Whether or not we experience any seemingly positive emotional response to the liturgy, or prayer, or anything like that, really means nothing. Using emotions as a guage as to whether something is worth giving yourself to is dangerous.

So, here’s an encouragement for us all:  to put ourselves intentionally into the Christian rhythm of life, into the liturgical season we are about to enter. Await the coming of the Messiah. Live inside of Advent. Allow that rhythm to form you. Don’t worry about being bored or not being entertained enough. Don’t buy into the lie. Happy Advent.

There is certainly nothing inherently evil in such a life. I live a lot that way myself. That’s not my point. What I want to talk about is how we might intentionally alter that default rhythm toward the Kingdom of God, toward a certain way of living a Monastic life “in the world.” This is about both underlying attitudes and practices. As always, our attitudes will dictate at least our desire to act in certain ways. We may not always succeed in living out our desires, but if an inward attitude is there, this is more than half the battle.

Most of the practices we can adopt into the rhythm of our daily lives are fairly simple. We can always find reasons why we can’t or shouldn’t do these things. We don’t have time. We’re too busy. One more thing will overwhelm me! I understand these thoughts. I’ve had them myself. But seriously, we’re talking about things like daily liturgical prayer. You don’t even have to make it up, it’s right there, written out for you. Even if you only commit to praying once a day, it doesn’t take long, and is well worth the intentional turning of your focus toward God for a few moments of the day. Not that I’m some living example of this, but it’s actually possible to do this a few times a day.

So, there’s prayer. Meditation is another monastic practice that can be woven into our daily rhythm of life. Chewing on some concept or word or short Scripture quote. This can be done anywhere actually – walking, sitting, lying down, in the shower, etc. Lectio Divina – the meditative reading of Scripture – is something we can do. That may take a few more minutes and is best done somewhere quiet. Most of us find time to read something here and there. We can certainly add some spiritual reading in there – maybe the Fathers, some monastic writings from the old mystics, something like Thomas Merton. We need not engage in this reading like some kind of hard-core theology student, as “study,” but so that we can glean what wisdom we can for life.

I’m sure I’ll talk more about monastic practices in the world more. I just wanted to introduce the topic. Have a great 3rd week of Advent.

What I was, in a way, railing against, was/is the notion that anyone who is not called to, in a Catholic context, Holy Orders or to the consecrated Religious life, especially the Monastic life, is somehow not called to be holy or as holy as their habited siblings. This is one of those creeping lies that has made it’s way deep inside the Body and has, unfortunately, taken root.

Objectively, we should know this isn’t true. We know through the Scriptures and through Sacred Tradition that we are all called to be one with God, to be in deep, transformational union with Him in Christ. We know that the Married life is just as holy and legitimate as any life that includes a vow of celibacy… don’t we? I’m not sure about that one. The Tradition could probably used a little bolstering on that matter. Committing yourself to remaining a virgin or to celibacy even if you’ve already had sex, cannot be viewed as inherently more holy than those who are called (read, have a Vocation to) being in union with another person through the Sacrament of Marriage. Are we actually saying that there is a Sacrament, given to us by God, which is by its very nature, defective or designed for those who are called to be weak? God help us!

All of us who are members of the Body of Christ – Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox – live inside the One Great Vocation to be fully and completely transformed into the Image of Jesus Christ. We are ALL called to be deified, to be recreated, made into truly Human Beings. Some are not called to be half-holy and others to stand above them and others still, above them. This kind of thinking is sickeningly other than Christ-like.

Of course this does not mean we are all called to live inside that One Great Vocation in the same way. That’s another issue that flows out of what I was just talking about. The way we all end up answering that call and how God may lead each of us to fulfill that call is something to figure out I suppose. These are the kinds of things I want to talk about here. I hope whatever I say may be helpful – by His Grace.

You might look at this as the rise of a super laity class. The early monastics were not, for the most part, clergy. We could talk about the rise of the clerical class too about now but I’ll hold myself back. Early on, it was more a matter of a group of relationally connected Christian people – normal people – coming together in order to intentionally live in a way that more effectively facilitated the kind of real transformation that Jesus came to initiate.

Now certainly, not everyone is going to, or should, live in the same way. Even all those who are incorporated into Christ will not live or pray in exactly the same ways. And that’s OK. It should be OK. There are elements that we all share, and should share. There is a core Way, Truth and Life that has been given to us all. I’m not sure, though, that there was ever meant to be an “uber” class of super Christians who live in what we call monasteries.

Simply in being a Christian, we are all answering the collective call to be uber-people. What I mean to say is that all people, in Jesus, are being called back to the fullness of real Humanity, to be Humans as Human beings were created to be. Some have not been called to stay back “in the world” and remain half-Human while a few chosen ones are called to be separate and experience that fullness that Jesus came to bring us. This is effectively how we have come to see it though. This is deeply unfortunate. I’ll say it’s more than unfortunate. This attitude is demonic.

I believe there is a devil, an enemy who does not want us to know our potential. I’m not talking about demons behind every bush. I’m talking about subtle attitudes introduced into the Body of Christ which go unnoticed. They sound strangely right. Sometimes they are slowly injected over long periods of time. I’ll be clear that I’m not talking about what many would assume here as maybe something like “liberal” ideas or anything like that. I’m talking about things like – well, an idea that some Christians are actually called to be more holy than others – that some are inherently better than their siblings because they wear habits and don’t have sex. More thoughts on this later.

p.s.: Happy Advent.