Jack and I have discussed making a substack of letters from a Catholic to an Orthodox, and back again. I’m fond of letters and I like to think I’m fairly good with it. An email isn’t a letter, but it also isn’t not.

I correspond sometimes with a monk I met at New Skete. He’s a very talented writer and a deep thinker. It took me almost two months to respond to his last note. This is that response:

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Thank you so much for your deeply thoughtful response.
When I was younger I worked as a furniture maker and carpenter. I had many teachers and all but one of them went home to a living place very much "in process".
Unfinished walls, raw insulation, half a railing, a dining table on saw-horses, raw copper pipes, on and on. A carpenter spends every day thinking very deeply and working with great intention to make a client's place beautiful and finished, so to come home and continue to do that can be a bit challenging. Combine that with the weight of the fact that it's your place, and must therefore show off the best of your work, and the fear of beginning can really seep in.
I still do carpentry work but only for myself, my friends, and my family. I never do it for money, though I'll sometimes sell a trinket or some such.What I do do for money is write, a lot of advertising copy, but mostly emails to other people about advertising copy they'd like me to write, or something to that effect. I think my emails are quite good as far as emails go in the realm of corporate professionalism.

I don't enjoy it all that much, it's fine, but it's not exactly what I choose to do for fun.

So when I do have an email that would be a pleasure to respond to, like yours, I fall into something not unlike the pitfalls of my previous mentors of craftsmanship. At least that is the long-winded version of why it took me almost two months to find the time to respond to you.

I have been fascinated by all the different ways in which a person can approach this life in Orthodoxy.
From the strict diet of historical work advocated by that friend of mine I described, who indeed is a fan of Fr. Seraphim, to someone like my grandfather, an Anglican, who read almost exclusively contemporary work alongside the gospel. Both of those paths are superior to how I imagine the online discourse so many young people fall into. I'll give credit though to the Orthodoxy subreddit which is almost uniform in its refrain of "talk to your priest."

It is this heuristic of obedience that I find at once most comforting, thrilling, and difficult about the faith I'm still just beginning with, a year in. Granted, after many years of searching and much reading.

My knowledge of Christianity being a mish-mash of cultural heritage and lay-theology until the past year, I was pretty surprised to learn that my priest's perspective that it is best to be a strictly non-violent pacifist is in the minority. Amongst the largely protestant and slightly less prominent but still more than Orthodoxy, Catholic, culture of Vermont, this perspective is virtually non-existent. Even within our church some people (younger men, generally. We are actually in the same town as a military academy) sort of laugh it off.

While moving some furniture with my best friend, who is Catholic and was instrumental in my own conversion, we discussed the topic a bit. He made some really compelling points from multiple angles, I think had I a mind to listen and to have my mind changed, he could have changed it. But I didn't. First, I feel pretty convinced that it's best to practice non violence. Hypotheticals of home and family defense give me pause, but for matters of warfare or justice? It seems obvious, at least to me. Second, my priest and spiritual father is a strongly outspoken advocate for such a lifestyle and I have a huge amount of respect for him. I'm helping him redesign a slide-deck presentation that he gives all inquirers at our church about this very subject, but that's another conversation entirely.

Clearly I do not feel particularly torn up about obeying my priest in this instance, I agree with him. It's easy. But I'm confident that given time and further inquiry there will be things I don't accept as easily, but must. This I would imagine is something more of a challenge for you and your brothers. Though I don't really have any idea what monastic life is like, not really, and I wouldn't pretend to.

I suppose what I'm wondering is how you balance the deepening of your understanding through reading and prayer and conversation, with the obedience required by being part of an institution like the Orthodox Church, a monastic or not?

etc.
Can you tell I was trying to sound more clever than I am?