I am not called to be a monk, but I believe I am called to live a monastic life.

Married Monasticism

By Hunter Sharpless


I.

Within just a few square miles of my apartment complex you will find multiple shopping centers—flat-roofed stripmalls lined with mobile phone stores, beauty stores, electronic stores, sprawling parking lots paved over and again with different colored asphalt, a patchwork of blacks and grays and crags; you will find a number of car dealerships—BMW, KIA, everything in between; and you will find grocery stores, hardware stores, bowling alleys, and Burger King. There are neighboring apartment complexes just like mine, a branch of an evangelical megachurch, dry cleaners, movie theaters, a modern-looking Wendy’s, and boutique stores without bounds. Just across the interstate, by a CarMax dealership, a gargantuan driving range is under construction. Multiple stories. Maybe a bar and lounge area.

II.

The earliest monks lived in caves. It was the 4th century and they saw John the Baptist—worms, rags, and ambles—as their father, as well as Christ Himself—who wandered the desert, fasted for a month, and practiced celibacy. It was important to the monks that Christ began his ministry only after the desert. The desert is quiet and not only quiet but still. The desert forces you to notice life, which to the poor observer might not exist but to the well tuned eye and ear is all around. The desert is where God spoke to Abraham. The desert is where God spoke to Moses. From the desert, God plucked Israel. There are no BMWs in the desert.

III.

I am married. My refrigerator is full of gumbo, chicken korma, and tonight I plan on cooking a ginger- and cinnamon-spiced pork shoulder with sweet potatoes in my large Dutch oven; I never go hungry. And my apartment is full of nearly every technological device one could wish for. Hundreds of channels on the TV, not to mention more and more on Netflix. Bose speakers, laptops, every kind of kitchen appliance. The coffee I drink, on which I am nearly physically dependent, alone probably costs more than a monk’s daily rations. I have so many possessions, in fact, that, like a hermit crab when he has overgrown his shell, I must soon shed this place and rent or buy a bigger one.

IV.

They ate very simply, keeping little gardens outside their caves, or maybe subsisting off cheese and bread and water. Their caves, or as they called them their “cells,” were, as you can imagine, not filled with the day’s newest technologies. In the “Verba Seniorum” there are little parables about how to live the monastic life, like this one: A certain brother went to Abbot Moses in Scete, and asked him for a good word. And the elder said to him: Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything. One imagines no television in these cells.

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