Monk mode

64A distraction-limiting lifestyle trend 
MONKMODE 

— NYT Crossword Sunday, 13 September 2026

A friend sent me an article yesterday about the sale of a Trappist monastery in Colorado. The community had grown too small and so the remaining monks were returning to the community that had spawned them. The author wonders about the ways in which the vocation of a monk and the yearnings of those who go into the wilderness parallel each other. She quotes Douglas Christie  in The Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Notes for a Contemplative Ecology, who describes the “desire to be immersed within an immensity—to become endlessly, hopelessly lost in it, tumbling down, out, into a vast space, borne along, carried ever deeper by love—is itself endless.”

To me the call to the monastic life is the antithesis of a trend, however trendy it may seem at the moment. Nor am I at all certain that "distraction limiting" is the best description of a monk's life. Having never been a monk, I can't really say, but immersive would be one description I might reach for. Attentive. Still. Mindful. Simple. Extravagant. Open. Cloistered.  

Whatever it is, it's not an antidote to a loud and chaotic world. Martin Laird OSA in Into the Silent Land suggests, "This is why most people don't stick with a contemplative discipline for very long; we have all heard all sorts of talk about contemplation bringing inner peace but when we turn within to seek this peace, we meet inner chaos instead of peace. But at this point it is precisely the meeting of chaos that is salutary, not snorting of lines of euphoric peace." 

Perhaps the call to the monastic life is like a rickety ladder leading into the unseen depths. At times you may cling to the ladder for dear life, too terrified to go down another rung.  Or breathlessly, you dart up until you see the feet of the monk above you,  to be sure that you are not alone. Then there are the moments where you simply wait, drawn neither up nor down. The ladder shakes and creaks. And whatever is in the depths is calling your name with such intensity that eventually you will continue to descend.