Contemplative Integrity

The whole question of how to live a contemplative life outside of formal religious structures has always been vexing. Some claim that the only honest way to do this is to be a wage earner and to return at night to one's life of contemplative prayer. Others turn to some form of manual labour and handicraft. Others believe that establishing some sort of in-house manufactory will guarantee time for contemplative prayer. But each of these have clear disadvantages. Each of them have a distorted and pragmatic understanding that is not concerned with the essence of eremitical, apophatic life, but with one or another aspect of them. Poverty and labour are indeed essential to contemplative living, but those who wish to go and work at factories are concerned with appearing poor. The danger is in getting the direct experience of God lost in the corporate machinery geared toward on thing alone: profit. The same happens when a mindset for profit is brought into the sphere of one's physical influence through at-home manufacturing. And one must constantly be on the lookout for arts and crafts to become in and of themselves artsy-and-craftsy attempts at feudal-romantic notions of medieval monasticism, only to really rely upon income from benefactors who worship mammon themselves.