Settling in

camp: "a place of temporary shelter, housing or residence often at a distance from urban areas" (Webster's Third Int'l Dictionary)

monastery: "a house of religious retirement or of seclusion from the world for persons under religious vows"


This is the first week of my "Anglican Year," a year to steep myself in the Anglican tradition of Christianity, past and present, in order to make myself, eventually, a better priest. My friend and former classmate, Art, now a priest at St. James, Monkton, MD, decided it might be better named, "AngliCamp." Now, he did mean this to be a bit of a put-down - we just graduated from the Div. School at the University of Chicago, where one popular area of study is of that of elitism, in which we both dabbled freely - but I found in his term some tough spiritual truth as well. Sure, living here reminds me in some ways of my week at Camp Blackhawk, a little Baptist church camp in western Illinois, when I was 12. Here at Seabury, we have a little chapel, a dining hall, lots of students, faculty and staff living on site, bells that ring at certain times, heck, we even have a playground. But a camp is also a place where you go to spend time away - whether on the Appalachian Trail or in your backyard. Sometimes it's a place you make to dwell in when there isn't another place to sleep. Sometimes you make camp because you want to live and sleep somewhere different, just for a while.

I'm here at Seabury on my way to becoming ordained as an Episcopal priest - which should happen, if all goes well, about a year from Christmas. I'm living apart - "on the block," we say here - going to chapel almost every day to pray the psalms, living and studying among a very particular group of people, and ready to start studying both ancient and present things to do with a particular way of worshipping God, making church, and being in community. So, I have moved into a cozy cinderblock sort of monastic cell with my cat (watch out Julian of Norwich), and I have begun to study more intimately the nature and details of my tradition.

I suppose I always wanted to be a monk. Not a nun - sadly, in my experience nuns always seemed more likely to be teaching school or making caramels, wearing veils with crazy wings and wimples, and cross and petty. I've wished I could be more like Thomas Merton, who was a writer and lived in a Trappist monastery where the monks did farmwork, wore no-nonsense white habits, ate a meager diet that almost malnourished them, and otherwise lived a tough life. Trying to be close to God should be hard work. Although I'm not wishing for malnutrition, here, so much. I just like the idea of that focus on pursuing an awareness of the presence of God, alongside working with my hands, studying, living alongside other people, and finding a deeper understanding of myself within that kind of rhythmic life - regularly going to prayer, meals, work, leisure, sleep. In reality, I suppose it might bore me to death, but sometimes it seems absolutely sublime.

So, here I am, at Anglicamp - camped out in Evanston, steeped in things Anglican, and being somewhat monastic about it all. Stay tuned.