Dee Williams has posted a remarkable video on the thinking behind her “tiny house” project. The video reminded me that when I was 20 I was influenced so much by Thomas Merton that I spent some weekends and vacations at Trappist monasteries. I came to know monks who lived in utter simplicity, the cycles of nature, and the excruciating closeness of working next to and eating with and praying beside people not of their choosing—the ultimate in terms of community. I felt an undertow pulling me into that ocean. The sign over the entrance to the monastery, however, stopped me: Here is where you will die.
I have never thought that I wasn’t up to the Trappist program. The glory of people like Merton and Dee Williams is that they are signs of the beauty to be found in Dee’s three prescriptions: gratitude, humility and grace. The danger of monastic life is that without keen discernment, aided by skilled counseling, it can be excuse for dying rather than living. That would have been my fate. Better that the monks became for me a sacrament of how to live fully and well.
Thanks, Dee, for the message today of gratitude, humility and grace.
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