I Figured Everything Out

Some changes coming, including a rebrand

Just over a year ago, I was kicked out of a monastery.

On the morning it happened, I woke to the sound of deer munching grass just outside of my cell window. A doe and her two fawns. Four days later I was looking out the ground-floor window of an Extended Stay motel, where the tweakers roamed the parking lot and every single vehicle was banged up in some way. Tulsa’s new premiere porno shop, “The Love Store,” beckoned from across the street. The hallways of the hotel smelled like wet, smoldering skunks.

It was such a hard life pivot that even I, with my second-guessing, skepticism, and pessimism couldn’t deny that it was a God-breathed milestone moment, and I ought to shut up and enjoy the ride.

As I think about it now, I realize that was probably the moment I stopped playing lip-service to the idea that “God is in control.”

My new neighborhood in Small Town, USA.

Why did I get kicked out? That’s a dumb story for later. Try as I did, I didn’t have any true hard feelings toward those responsible. In fact, I’ve been back a couple of times - once to help with the yard work, which was my obedience while I was there.

By luck and grace I found a new home that was just this side of intolerable. Small, affordable, with a great pool if you didn’t mind broken Modelo bottles. I may have been the only gringo in the complex, but at least the view out my bedroom window wasn’t a porno shop.

In the year after that departure from the monastery, life somehow became more monastic. I worked. I prayed. I prepared simple meals. I slept.

Repeat.

Day by grinding day.

The main difference between monastic life and post-monastic life has been the solitude. After I came back to Tulsa, I got the OK to work from home, which marked the end of even the most casual interactions with other humans.

In the monastery, I was never really alone - On any given day, you might cross paths with monks, travelers, the odd bishop or rock star. Meals, while silent, were still with other people. We on the kitchen staff (another one of my duties) could never keep silent, despite the increasing frequency of signs with ever-growing font sizes. (I blame my buddy and brother Seraphim, the iconographer.)

The place was crammed full of people on Sundays. I met some pretty cool people from around the country while I was there, including Lacey Sturm, of whom I was already a fan. (Totally fan-girled out, though. She’ll probably never go back to St. Iakovos for fear of running into Theodore the Weird Leatherworker.)

In my new place, before the custody schedule was ironed out, there were sometimes weeks where I might not have spoken to another person in real life. (Online chats were more like sending messages in bottles from a deserted island rather than human interaction).

Let me tell you - if you’re not called to it, and if you don’t have an propensity for it, solitude can drive you insane. There are so many reasons why we need other people - we’re simply made for community, for one. We need other people in various ways and degrees. We believing types take it to a whole ‘nother level: we believe we’re part of one Body. It’s more difficult to exercise the most fundamental part of our nature when we’re cut off from that Body - we can’t exercise charity. Love.

Solitude can force one deep within, and for many (most?) of us, that’s a horrible place to be, especially these days when so much of our lives are lived online. We see the front everyone puts up, and in our solitary moments wonder why we aren’t more like them. Worse - when we’re deep in ourselves, we lack the objectivity needed to discard bad thoughts and behaviors.

As with most things, the spiritual walk is done mostly in darkness and fog. You can see the winding path behind you, but almost never in front of you. So, when I think about the last few years of struggle, I can see the wisdom and practical value of it. In this midst of it, my prayers mainly when like this: “What the hell?”

I’d thought that the monastery would be maybe a three-month reprieve. The wife and I would take a breather and work things out. I’d finally get my career on track. The peace and solitude would be the Great Reset, and I’d come out stronger, wiser, and maybe even more financially stable.

Haha. No. In reality, it was less of a retreat and a preparation for another preparation. I know now that if I’d gone to live alone after the end of my marriage - going right from at least the appearance of a tranquil family home to bachelor pad - I would not have made it. Probably not, anyway. I don’t see how I would have survived the jarring delta-V of my life, but the last few years revealed that I have an absolutely psychotic substrate of optimism and - get this - resolve.

Who knew?

---

So, what’s all this about?

Well, for one thing, I’m back to writing. Hi, everybody. Sorry I’ve been gone for so long.

Another thing: an announcement: I’m changing the name and direction of this publication. Why?

Because I figured everything out.

I’m not going to make any promises about when and how much writing I’m committing to because my track record on that is awful. However, I will say that I’m committed to heaving the main topic of this publication - me and my feelings - off a cliff.

I started Rise Above during Separation 1.0 as a way to untangle all the reasons for how I ended up couch-surfing after I let my wife kick me out during what should have been our marriage and career reboot way out here in Oklahoma. I was working so hard! I’d always tell myself. And I was, but the work was more like juggling chainsaws. While on fire. Not terribly productive. No momentum. Burning.

Then things got worse and harder and so on and so on. I didn’t realize it at first, but my prayers were being answered. My only freestyle prayer at that point was Peter’s prayer: “Lord, help!” So, He helped. But not in any of the comfortable ways I’d been praying for.

Let’s just rip these scales off, shall we, Eustace?

The monastery, and then the Year of Solitude in Little Nogales, were the demolition phase. Now it’s time for the real rebuild. I know it’s that time because I can now acknowledge that I’m utterly and completely incapable of helping myself, and I don’t even mind saying so. More than that, I think I’ve squared that apparent contradiction between faith and hustle, which has torn me apart since at least 2007. You know what I mean - We believer types are called to give ourselves completely over to God, but at the same time we still have bills to pay and make a billion decisions every day.

We pray, “Lord, what should I do?” There never seems to be an answer. It makes us be even more “self-reliant.” Which results in more misery, and on and on it goes.

Hardly a recipe for love and the flowering of faith.

I guess the ultimate elevator speech for what I’m trying to explain is that God doesn’t usually give us what we ask for if we’re retarded.

---

Anyway, I did a lot of reading at the monastery. Life-altering, eye-opening reading. In places and environments that prevented escape or distraction when the wisdom of these books got too close to home. It was change or die.

None of my problems or psychoses are unique. I see the same things played out in so many people’s lives. The solutions are ancient and simple. That’s what I’ll (I believe) be talking about going forward.

So, if you start getting newsletters from a publication called “Warrior Monk Society” that you don’t remember signing up for, don’t worry. It’s just me. Writing under a banner that is totally evergreen, not at all cheesy, and will certainly always be relevant. Hah.

Not to worry, though - I’m not a preacher and have no intention of preaching to anyone. I’m still me, and for better or worse, that’s what you’re going to get.

Thanks for reading.

-Christopher