I have been putting together serious thought on the homework project Jim Nagle presented, defining a religious community based on my spirituality.  I will post efforts today.  In the ongoing pursuit of recovery, discerning a life conducive to contemplative expansion, I realize that during a high point of Lent, a personal religious time strong in practice, I am gaining confidence.  The fact is being challenged at work.  I am not fearing confrontation, nor the possibility of moving forward based upon my terms.  I have become cash strong, easily able to survive three plus months on savings alone.  I will not live in fear, nor attached to prideful endeavors.  My employment is negotiable.  I trust my decision making at this time.  I look back on my Cleveland experience, able to comprehend, long ago I should have parted ways from a delusional demented situation.  I hung on for the sake of change that in my heart I knew could never take place. I am proud that once the ridiculous and immature situation tried to reemerge in my life, I smashed it.  At work, avoiding detail, I will not be afraid of confrontation.  I will not live in fear, nor allow the environment around me to be tainted by manipulation and inferior ways.  I will stand upon integrity, unafraid to stand alone, while always being flexible, able to identify my own weaknesses within imbroglios.  Rationalizations, aberrations, and other forms of self-defense I will forsake.  I am reasonable in my demands.  On a more straightforward level, I will clearly identify my life as unstable, in flux in regards to permanency.  The religious life still calls strong.  Yesterday morning, following a wonderful day of fellowship at ‘Arise’, I woke from a deep slumber dazed, unsure of everything.  I did not know where I was?  I was unclear regarding details of my life?  Everything about my life was a haze.  I suffered a deep loneliness, longing, and emptiness.  I experienced God calling, establishing the fact underneath everything nothing existed except my relationship with Him.  A part of the discernment, serious reflection, regarding working is the fact I am being forced to work seven days again, producing a run of twenty-one consecutive days without a day off.  I am getting older, clearly of the mindset that I do not want to work this much.  I can structure my life on forty hours a week.  If life as a layperson is established through spiritual direction my volunteer time with the Hospice of the Western Reserve will emerge essential.  I am positive God approves and guides in this direction.  The remarkable experiences being presented to me are happening for a reason.  I will eagerly and happily sacrifice income in order give more time to the Hospice.  Right now, I am patient, residing in prayer, unafraid to state my mind, clear in direction, eagerly looking forward to the Maronite Monks of Adoration Easter retreat.  The startling morning of clarity yesterday, actually of confusion and darkness, called forth the retreat to Massachusetts as necessary, the fulfillment of my Easter celebration. Now for my ideas on a religious community, restricted to one page, direct influences residing with St Francis de Sales, St Jane de Chantal, and Abbot William.

Healing through consecration, separation, adoration, and prayer on into purity within community. Unification the aim.  Pull back the bow.  Hold steady, unification waiting upon the pleasure of God.  God gives flight to the arrow.  ‘Prefer nothing to the love of Christ’! –St Benedict

“In the building up of Christ’s Body there is engaged a diversity of members and functions. There is only one Spirit who, according to his own richness and the needs of the ministries, gives his different gifts for the welfare of the Church.” In accordance with and through the Church, a religious community, modern in birth, will be established, abiding in the grace of God, with respect to the complexity of the world two thousand years after the resurrection and assumption of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The charism, the spiritual influence unique to the community, will concentrate upon the sacrifice of daily Mass, healing through imitation of Christ and a devotion to Our Holy Mother Undoer of Knots, a prayer life centered upon Eucharistic Adoration, and discipline within the sacramental life and the fellowship of religious brothers. The community honors the need for fellowship, taking inspiration in the Visitation of Mary with Elizabeth, catering to those exhausted from the world, experienced in the need for acquiescence. Solitary in nature, worn and tired, individuals will be nurtured by communal religious practice. We are not hermits, rather damaged sinners in need of healing through healthy relationships, structure, and discipline. Left alone impaired by the disastrous imprinted of the world, religious individuals trend toward exhaustion, dissipation, and most horribly self-destruction. Abandoning the noise of the world, proper fellowship provides bolstering. A wise surrendering, acceptance of a personal calling, abolishes attachment, rebellion, and other delusional forms of damaging reactive thought and behavior.  A relieving immersion into the community as a whole proves sanctifying. Older men from all walks of life are welcomed. Together, we become whole, creating individually emboldened interior dispositions worthy of the infusion of God’s love. All for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. 

Worship will be aligned traditionally with the chanting of the Liturgy of the Hours, the singing of hymns, and selected readings during meal times. Mass will be the cornerstone of the day. Confession will be weekly. Spiritual direction monthly. A morning and evening communal Holy Hour before the Eucharist will provide scheduled and ritualistic silence. The evening Holy Hour will be followed by a communal Rosary. Individual paths of private worship will be determined through consultation with a spiritual director. Supporting individuality, strength and soundness of mind and body, the plague of singularity will be thwarted. The devilish influence of obstinacy, anti-authoritarianism, over-sensitivity, and self-dependence–intellectual reliance, must be disciplined. These negative personality traits, as well as a host of others, are recognized as a natural consequence emblazoned by the world upon the individual inclined toward contemplative ways. Being holy and prayerful are placed above intellectual pursuits. Spiritual competition, passive aggressive nonsense, brutal egotism, and other subtle and bold forms of fiendishness, will be warred against as a community. Confrontation will not be feared. Disputes discussed as a community. Community members must recognize their need for healing as they pass lovingly beyond the world. The strenuous work to be done is individual and interior. Conversation, simple in nature, will be encouraged during lunch and dinner after readings. Breakfast will be silent. A Grand Silence will rule after evening prayers until the start of the work day. The work day will be nourished by conversation. An exercise hour will be scheduled three days a week, with brothers encouraged to enjoy a daily walk. Communal recreation, healthy competition, such as volleyball and soccer are encouraged. Technology will not be shunned, laptops permitted within personal cells. Television will be limited to communal enjoyment. The internet broadcast only when the sun shines.  There will be no closed doors during the day, all behavior open to witnessing. Lectures and learning opportunities will be ongoing. Younger men will be placed through a rigorous examination discerning the priesthood. The community will be nurtured and survive only through the will of God. New members will be closely scrutinized. Growth for growth’s sake will not be engaged. The community will not fear nonexistence, nor small numbers, if God calls forth such a demand.