We’re all monks, it’s just that some of us have wives and houses to take care of, and children too. Some monks raise dogs, some brew beer, some don’t talk, some have families. I think that is the right way of looking at things. 

It’s been a few weeks since I was at New Skete and I’m surprised by how much I miss it. It is not the most aesthetic monastery, nor the most ascetic, but the people there are committed, singularly so in a way that nobody I know is. It’s a place where you can really feel like everybody’s on the same page. I’m sure somebody could pick apart a theological difference to get upset about, but that person isn’t me. 

I aspire to be a fool, to be dumb. Jack suggests that Kierkegaard said that the Gospels are easy to understand, much of the work we do is helping ourselves misunderstand it in order to make our lives easier. I think most of that is true. I think mostly it is true. C.S. Lewis suggests that we know morality is a universal constant for many reasons, but one of them is that we instantly know the moral thing to do, regardless of how bad it is for us. We know it, and any justification or thought we apply to the situation is usually to give ourselves distance from the right choice. 

We can’t help but apply the cruel mathematics of utilitarianism to every situation we come across, and that’s a bad thing to do. I don’t think we should do that. 

I sent Jack a meme a few weeks ago that we both like, here it is:

I need to paint my house next summer, and I need to build a proper woodshed, and I need to finish Roby’s room and so many other things. That or I need to move. Or maybe I need to do all of those things and also move. They’ll never all be done, that’s for sure and that’s probably a good thing. Imagine being finished with your work? That sounds awful.