I began the New Year with another move. My wife, Anne, and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary this past year. During this time, we have now moved 13 times for studies, work, and health issues. We hope this move will be different. Now that I am working remotely as the Director of Content for Exodus, we were able to prioritize our family life over other concerns, moving to nine acres near friends in rural North Carolina.
Anne and I have always felt a call to live differently. Even under a myriad of blessings, we, along with so many of our friends, have felt that something is just not quite right with our culture. Oversaturation of technology, isolation without genuine community, families pulled in too many directions — all of these things weighed heavily upon us. We wondered if we could simply get back to living a more normal human life — attuned to the natural rhythms of nature, putting family before work and other activities, and more committed to community.
Stability, that great monastic value, has always eluded me, which does not speak well for me as a Benedictine oblate. Even choosing where to live, with some newly found mobility, has something peculiarly modern about it. On the other hand, instability has its own lessons, because we are “strangers and sojourners on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13). This world is not our home, and we should not seek to become too comfortable. We must long for our true home in the Father and maintain the spirit of pilgrims, passing through this world as penitents.
There has always been a tension in the Church found in the age-old saying that we live in the world but not of it. No one put it better in the early Christian centuries than the disciple who wrote a letter to Diognetus:
Inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven.
In every century, Christians must struggle with this tension of being in the flesh but not living according to it. Our current century, however, does present unique challenges. Identity has never been so fluid, life so unmoored. Never have so many distractions and temptations been so close at hand. Freedom seemingly has put forward every possibility, now technologically enabled. The flesh reigns supreme, but there is something so unreal about its virtual rule.
Grace builds upon nature. As we struggle to share and to live the faith, we must return to reality, maintaining a healthy soil for the Word to penetrate our lives for his honor and glory. Our culture lacks health of body, mind and soul, which undoubtedly impairs our ability to live a holy life. Our faith must become embodied, because the Word became flesh and continues to dwell among us. To take root, the faith must be shared and lived in an embodied way, rooted in daily practices and relationships. Seedlings require tender care, both to nourish and remove the weeds that choke them out.
What we are doing as Christians in the world right now is not working. To make God preeminent in our lives will require sacrifice. We have to be willing to make changes, to break with the ways of the world, even when painful. That has been the biggest lesson of my last move. One year of living in transition while scouting out the right location and preparing it. Leaving behind so many great friendships and much work in the mission field. And for what? To make a new beginning, the search for a life that would be centered on faith and community rather than trying to fit them into everything else.
To make a change, to follow the Lord’s will, to be a saint, we need courage. We will never achieve true stability here, but we should use our gifts as an investment in what is most important and will endure. As pilgrims, the tension will always remain, but we must seek the proper balance, using this world as our path to our true home.
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I lived in a small city for the first 15 years of my life, and moved out to the family farm when I was 16 years old. Before that, I spent time on the farm whenever my brother and I visited or stayed with grandparents. We were also out on the farm most weekends helping with various chores (hay baling, planting and harvesting, feeding and milking, etc.).
Sir, you will discover that rural life can be just as hectic as urban or suburban life, but with the added stress of a long drive just to go to the store to buy some milk. (If you think that you’ll buy a cow and milk her–well, good luck with that!).
I loved rural life, but many of my interests (music, theater, church, sports, etc.) involved a drive into small towns and the small city closest to the farm, and much time spent in the small city. Perhaps you have no interest in these things.
Also, the loneliness of rural life can be oppressive to a person who loves to be with other people. After our family moved out to the family farm, my mother was very lonely, and until she overcame a fear of driving, was unable to even go to the store or church unless I or my brother was home to drive her, or my dad drove her. (Eventually she learned to drive but had to quit in her late 50s as her rheumatoid arthritis worsened. Then she was even lonelier, although she had a pet cat that she loved, and also she enjoyed a bird feeder outside her window.)
Finally, rural life doesn’t necessarily guarantee safety. The 100-year old farmhouse that my brother took over after our parents passed away burned to the ground a month ago, and there is still some question as to whether it was arson. At least there were plenty of neighbors who offered their help (my brother declined, as he has lived in the city for years, and the farmhouse was uninhabited, except for wildlife that found their way in through broken windows, the occasional teenagers who thought the house was haunted and found their way in, or the occasional tramp or drug addict who found a way into the house and camped out).
And if your children end up taking up any kind of activity like a sport, music lessons, scouting or other clubs like 4-H, and of course, parish activities, you’ll find yourself away from the country home as much as you are in it.
Just bein’ real, here, sir. I hope you and your family find a solace in rural life. God bless you and your family in your new home.
Everyone’s different, Mrs. Sharon & rural peace & quiet suit some more than others.
I milked cows for decades & it’s something I enjoyed but it’s a big commitment. We only went to the store once a month & stocked up on emergency staples like dried/evaporated milk for when the cows were dry.
About permanence and relocations—and contexts, on the civilizational scale we might find insights from the Manhattan Project which split the atom to produce the atomic bomb and enable a half-century nuclear arms race and now very unstable nuclear proliferation.
About CONTEXTS:
At one of the three major locations, the surveying and construction crew found (on the barricaded 540-square mile Hanford Nuclear Reservation in eastern Washington), a band of Native Americans (the Wanapums) still living off the land as they had for thousands of years. Never before placed on a “reservation.” On the banks of the Columbia River, literally within a stone’s throw of rising and enormous nuclear reactors and chemical separation buildings—rising above the desert like the pyramids and the size and shape of stranded aircraft carriers.
The Stone Age meets the Atomic Age! Stability versus relocation!
Today, the contextual Wanapums are gone, and ongoing cleanup of tens of millions of gallons of stored liquid nuclear waste will take another half century at a contextual cost of up to $600 Billion. The new geologic context was “catastrophism”—the radically new understanding that even the landscape (the “channeled scabland”) was not permanent, but carved almost overnight by massive post-Ice Age floods. And, in the global context, it was only a small step to also recognize the shifting and provisional nature of even earth’s continents…”Continental Drift.”
WHAT’S THE POINT?
Perhaps a metaphor for a shifting “contextual theology,” and its specious application initially in Fiducia supplicans? Already, Cardinal Scicluna lobbies not for splitting the atom, but for splitting integral sacrament Holy Orders with the oxymoronic ordination of female deacons…
And, what of the synodal Continental Assemblies, and possible institutional CONTINENTAL DRIFT? Instead, and within the shared context of all human history, what now of the central, singular, and definitive Incarnation—infinitely more contextual (!), foundational, and trustworthy than even the stable polar star in the desert night sky? Still to be witnessed as ever new by the Successors of the Apostles: “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever” (Heb 13:8)?
May the collegial non-drifters continue to witness: the bishops of Poland, Hungary, and part of France in continental Europe; plus Peru in continental America; plus Kazakhstan in continental Asia; and plus multiple nations in continental Africa, e.g., Malawi, Zambia, Nigeria, Togo, etc.
“We can say things differently, but we can’t say different things”—St. Augustine, a Berber from North Africa.
You’ll do just fine, Jared. God’s blessings on you and your family.
I am 84 years old, a Christian for 66 and a Catholic for 44 years and have been living as a pilgrim and stranger most all of my Christian life. Shortly after my conversion I met conservative Mennonites at University and was much influenced by their lifestyle as they separated themselves from societies norms while living in it. They adopted plain dress and made no attempt to follow the ever changing style of society. They willinupaid taxes and prayed for political leaders but did not get involved in politics. When I married my wife adopted their modest dress and she continued to wear it for the duration of our 62 years of marriage even though we never became Mennonites. We also adopted simple living and mor or less lived off of the land growing much of our own food. Although educated I did mostly manual labor in order to have more time with the family and greater freedom from compromising with the world.
I am by no means free from sin or untainted by secular culture, but I have been able to escape a lot that could have caused me more grief and pain. Since the death of my dear wife 2 years ago I am living very happily in a 16 ‘ RV which I heat by wood. I have every thing I need and would not trade my life with anyone. My point is that we CAN live in the world and yet quite apart from the world. May God bless you all my brothers and sisters in Christ.
James: If truth be known, the more enlightened among us would be inclined to envy the simplicity of your life. I remember back when I was a freshman in high school and for one year (one of the best years of my life) I lived with 46 other guys who were discerning a vocation to religious life (pre-Vatican II). We all lived (harmoniously) in an undeveloped area of Long Island in what today would be a large single family house sleeping in bunk beds and dormitories. We showered every fourth day as 46 guys couldn’t possibly have taken daily showers. As it was, you’d race to be first in the shower line after night prayers because after 4 or 5 guys had showered, there’d be no hot water. Our meals were taken in silence because sacred reading would be the norm. There was no television and yet we were fully aware of the Cuban Missle Crisis of ’62. I remember a few of the older guys (high school juniors) had rifles and some days after school they’d go hunting for rabbits, bag a few, and then return to the locker room at the house to skin them and prepare the hides for preservation. Life was simple for that one year…uncomplicated…richly rewarding spiritually. Today’s abundance is killing us, I’m afraid. And it’s called “progress.”
Blessings for a prosperous move for you and your family, it sounds like a good choice. There is a reason a lot of monasteries are rurally located.
I do take some slight issue with “What we are doing as Christians in the world right now is not working.” We all have to live as close to the Gospel as we can manage but are admonished to not be discouraged! If the world seems to be falling apart, maybe it needed to, to some extent. Our Lord will bring good out of evil. We need to keep doing what Christians do in the world, in good humor, whether it seems to be “working” or not.
I know of a man that would not betray his belief in GOD. Russian imprisoned him, it was a hard life. But he kept GOD with him. Eventually he was released, traveled the world. He always kept GOD with him. He started several businesses and advanced his life, and kept moving forward. He is now successful, doing what he loves, and handing down a legacy to his grandchildren. BUT he kept GOD in every step he took.
What i take away from your’s, others and my stories is this. We all have our paths to walk. We don’t need $100 words or theoretical analysis, or a 10,000 worded doctorate theory to show us the way. GOD knows how many hairs are on my head and takes care of the birds in skies and directs to quite waters and green meadows to lay down in. I respect and follow the good and blessed path and valleys he leads me through, and give thanks. We all can make it with his help. Stay strong and keep the faith.