Free To Explore

Now community. Now solitude. Now ascesis. Now physical labour. Now prayerful reading. Now silent prayer. Now liturgy. Now meditation. Now sacraments. Now life in the natural world. Now spiritual risk.

Each are exploratory aspects of the contemplative life.

Each pushes beyond common social limits.

And each is deeply personal and unique.

It should come as no surprise that these may be exercised as easily both inside and outside of a sanctioned institutional and communal setting. There is no boundary to a universal truth. To step out in self-denial wherever you are means just finding the inner ground of our being where God is present to us in our daily, natural creatureliness. Whether as a member of a cenobium or as a solitary, as a rootless pilgrim or as an established labourer, the call is always the same: Behold, the bridegroom comes! Be watchful, be ready. Formal institutional membership is not required. Salutary reactions are common among the professed. Mechanical assumptions still exist that to put on an official religious habit and retire to a diocese or cloister and to embrace a complex set of observances somehow guarantees a deepening of the spiritual life. It most certainly does not. We need to stop fooling ourselves. Nobody draws close to God by the routines of an exclusive set of practises and ideology. It more often segregates people into a hateful, abusive, and destructive hierarchy.