I was married 25 years, (wife passed away in 2010) I have not remarried. 2 daughters were sired from that marriage, and 7 grandchildren were produced.

I am in a state of asceticism, and have been for sometime. I pray in the morning, noon, and night and wake in the middle of the night to listen to the liturgy, as well as several times during the day.

I am interested in a more monastic life within a Monastery (somewhere within the Orthodox Church); away from North America. Is this possible for me – I am approaching my 70th birthday in Sept (24th day) 2023.

Respectfully…

Periodically over the years I would entertain the thought of joining a monastery, particularly when I struggled to win the affections of a heart-sick love interest. Those moments were marked by bitter loneliness and abandonment, passions raged.

But today I am 43 years old and I no longer struggle with rejection, loneliness, abandonment, or raging passions as I did when I was younger. Today I feel despair over my own corrupted flesh. It came to me at the moment I think I may have sabotaged my relationship with my current “wife to be”. When she held out the ring to me and asked if I wanted it back, I had become aware of what I had done. I watched myself do it, listened to the madness calmly proceeding from my lips, helplessly, realizing my flesh was so corrupt it had developed a mind of its own and doesn’t even need the inflammation of anger to operate anymore. I basically pushed her away because I am plagued with fear.

Over the past several years I have been gradually sacrificing the comforts of life anyway, and I no longer see the point of living in this world. I don’t even enjoy eating anymore, I do it because I have to. I am not depressed, I am disillusioned by a world that walks in circles. The thought of giving away everything I own for a life of monasticism doesn’t seem all that scary as it once did. For about a year now I often reflect upon William Butler Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium” and in particular the following verse:

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Thanks for sharing your story, Michael. May God guide you to the right pace at the right time.

I may be too old to become a monk. Obedience is valued more than prayer. After being in charge as a father, I may not have the discipline left for a monastic undertaking. I have only visited one monastery though. A Western Rite Benedictine monastery under the Vicarage of Antioch. I loved it, but the Ethos was still not quite for me. I came at a time when I would have been in charge of many things and I was not ready to be in charge of things again after my children grew up and I got divorced.

I don’t care for this juvenile midlife crises, and I am nearly at the end of it after being divorced for six years but; it was a necessary process.

I do know how to make a chotki though, so I at least have that talent, and I try to help others cultivate prayer as I cultivate my own.

Thank you for your insightful and informed articles on monasticism, they have been helpful. May God bless you and your work, especially on the internet that is so prone to guile.