45: a monastic calling?

I pulled my wool cap over my eyes. I cannot sleep well unless I go into sensory deprivation. I usually plug up my ears as well as covering my eyes.

If I hadn't taken that bath in the river, I thought, I might have arrived in Gernika on time to get into the pilgrim shelter. But what's a pilgrim life if you don't sleep on a bench now and then?

I was thinking about the monks. I was thinking about Helga's comment and about my calling. What draws me to monasticism? There's plenty that I fear about it -- mostly that vow of stability, that lifetime of staying in one place, singing music that becomes very familiar after a few years, being at close quarters with people, living a life of short nights and frugal meals. But there's so much to love as well. Mostly the silence. I don't know much about silence -- I'm a talker -- but it has always fascinated me.

When I was an adolescent, I made a private vow of celibacy to God. I pretended it was in order to be more available to the service of God, but the real reason was that I was afraid of turning into a guy who wanted to get married one day, and I figured that this vow would at least keep me from such a foolish move.

If I were to try to explain the background to that fear, it could take a while. There are many causes. But it seems to me that my large and small vices, fears, sins and weaknesses are all overshadowed by one giant fear: the fear of living.

Of course, since I am alive already, this fear often takes the form of resentment. Resentment about being alive.

I am aware of course that this will have to go, and that God will change this about me. For the last few years, it has become a more and more frightening and real possibility that God will cure me by getting me married. There's no devious method I would put past Him: he'll make my sexual desires unbearable; He'll make me lonely and miserable; He'll make me fall head over heels in love; He'll get me drunk. In short, He'll do whatever it takes to make me end up eternally betrothed to a woman in order to give me a reason to live and a reason to start enjoying it.

It will work, of course. But it will be a long and painful process, and not just for me. But hey, no one promised that this life would be easy.

But is my attraction to the monastic life nothing more than the flight from this? I woke up to it one day and thought, that's all it is. I'm just driven from behind. I'm not drawn to monasticism because it is my calling, my pearl of greatest price for which I sacrifice everything; it just happens to be a place where I can flee from my greatest fears.

But sometimes I think it isn't. The very idea of spending my life in silence and contemplation makes me less afraid. Not that I'm any good at it. But I found, to my surprise, that my one week at Taize left me with a feeling of purpose. I had almost forgotten what that felt like. I had settled for finding something to ease the agony of being, but I suddenly found myself thinking that I would risk much, and sacrifice much, to attain the inner strength of silence and the charisma of contemplation.

This scared me.

I know that I cannot get away from what I fear by entering a monastery, but it seems that I would be submitted to a much more gentle and compassionate process of falling in love with life there. But when I pray about it, I still feel that it isn't meant to be. God is more interested, it seems, in turning me into a person who wants to get married.

Why am I making this pilgrimage? I don't know. But if you were to ask me if there is something I hope it will accomplish, I'll tell you that I hope it will resolve this battle.