Why Did God Send Me Here?

And other contemplations from two recent monastic tours

Dear Friends,

I want to share two stories/adventures from two different spiritual centers of great reknown that I recently visited. The Christ in the Desert Monastery and Upaya Zen Center.

There is No Perfect Place

Since I moved to New Mexico last September, so many people have told me to visit the Christ in the Desert Monastery, and now I have. It’s a long drive down a thirteen-mile, single-lane dirt road that follows the Chama River and dead ends at the monastery. This thirteen-mile dirt road feels intentional. It’s a commitment to get out there. Not just a place you can swing by for a few jars of monastic honey and beeswax candles. The long drive on the way back out feels intentional too. It’s a decompression chamber from the contemplative world of the monks and the river to the secular life and the highway.

The vast expanses of New Mexico

Overlanders’ rigs peppered the banks of the river. One guy in a 1990s 4-Runner with a canoe on the roof passed me coming from the opposite direction. He was driving way too fast, careened around me, half in the ditch, and didn’t wave. Skin the color of roasted carrots. Hair the color of hay.

This is not just where monks dwell. It is also where all the cool kids camp. Because it is beautiful, wild, free of charge, and still kind of off the radar.

So many hip people have told me about this place, I was half-expecting the monks to be hip, too, though I had no idea what hipster monks would look like. Good-looking dudes with retro facial hair and barefoot hiking sandals? I also expected the monastery to be bursting with people on self-directed retreats, which is loosely what I was there to do.

The monks do not offer any teachings or shepherding for your stay, but you can rent a room there, and join them for meals, chores, prayers, and chanting. On their website, they suggest starting a self-directed retreat with the question, “Why has God brought me here?”

I pretty much ask myself this same question everywhere I go. I ask myself this in every town I spend a night in. I ask myself this at work. I ask myself this on dates. My life is one big self-directed retreat with a van.

I don’t know why God brought me to the Christ in the Desert Monastery. I am not religious, nor am I a Christian, but monasteries and monastic living pique my interest. Solitude, contemplation, and silence are like Christmas presents to me. Deep reflection, deep questions, and inward journeying is its own kind of adventure.

I could not live monastically for long, though. I’m too restless for that. I need something to reflect on. Adventures, social engagements, relationships, creative projects, art, and yes, even work.

Once I reached the monastery, I parked the van in their nearly empty visitor lot. Not a soul in sight. Not a single hipster on a self-directed retreat. Not a single monk.

I got out of the van and walked toward the church, then noticed the cemetery in front of it with about 20-30 plain, white crosses stuck in the ground: each one representing a monk who had kept at least one vow and stayed.

This vow, I learned, is called, “The Vow of Stability,” which binds a monk to a particular monastery and community for life. I felt a subtle sense of horror in my stomach as I stood still in that silent place, the unremitting sun bearing down on me and those white crosses. Not even the Vow of Chastity could stir as much dread in me as the vow of staying in one place with the same people for life.

I spotted a monk in the distance exiting a mysterious door. I walked towards him, and his pace quickened as I approached. I waved, and I think he must have seen me, but he scurried down a path to another doorway and disappeared behind it. I gave up on following him and re-routed myself to the gift shop.

Inside, a monk dressed in black robes sat at the register, his head nodding forward. He startled as I entered.

He gave the slightest smile, nothing in it but peace, and rotated slowly in his chair. It must be sleepy work, I thought, being stationed at the gift shop all day, with nary a soul on a self-directed retreat.

Monk chant played as I browsed through the rosaries, greeting cards, and monastic loaves and honey. On the next track, the monk chant music took a funky turn with some techno beats. I grooved around the shop, put one hand up in the air as the monks sang, and dipped my hips left and right to the beat.

“Oh my, how did that get on there?” The monk said as he fumbled for his phone to switch the song back to the regular, somber chanting without the dance club beats.

I carried an assortment of beeswax candles to the counter, which he said were recycled from melted down candles used in the church. I noticed his long fingers as he wrapped them up in paper, and how he used his long, almond-shaped fingernails to crease the edges. His cheeks were a bit sunken, his long, grey beard went halfway down his chest.

“How long have you lived here?” I asked.

“15 years.”

“And before that?” I asked.

“Before that, I was monastery-hopping. I wanted to find the perfect place.”

“And this is the perfect place,” I said, thinking of those little white crosses out front.

“No. This is not the perfect place. This is the place where I realized there is no perfect place.”

“Holy smokes,” I said, holding his gaze. Deeply relating. Thinking this was definitely why God brought me thirteen miles down a dirt road. Just to hear this monk’s story.

I restrained myself from asking him too many more questions. I didn’t want to invade his space. But I was fascinated to learn that it is quite a daring thing to monastery hop, because every time you start at a new monastery, you have to start the whole process over again.

Lately, I have been yearning to have a podcast. I feel it stirring in me. When I get that off the ground, this monk will be one of the first guests I invite on the show. I want to go deep on monastery-hopping, the Vow of Stability, and the realization that there is no perfect place. I mean, I don’t know a single person in this age of instant-gratification and perfection-seeking who would not have something to glean from this.

Personally, his words steeped in my being as I drove the long, dirt road out of the monastery. I reflected on how taking a Vow of Stability makes my stomach twist, but how I chose that word, stability, as my intention for the year.

I thought about Santa Fe, and how it’s not the perfect place. How I am not madly in love with it as I have been with other cities, and how oddly liberating that has felt.

Santa Fe is allowed to disappoint and annoy me without me wanting to burn down my life here and run away. It is allowed to charm and dazzle me without me wanting to get a tattoo to assert my belonging to it. It’s a much calmer kind of feeling than I found in New York and New Orleans. It’s like Santa Fe is teaching me how to be in a healthy relationship.

The Ease and Joy of Mornings.

Almost every day now, I meditate. I actually do. I even look forward to it.

I started meditating faithfully because of the Michael Singer podcast, which I highly recommend. Every night before bed, I listen to Michael talk about mind and heart and shakti. He sounds like Larry David if Larry David were a yogi.

Michael says there’s no point in any kind of wellness/transformation work - manifestation programs, pilgrimages, ayahuasca journeys, vision fasts, digital detoxes, juicing regimens, feminine/masculine embodiment coaching - if you haven’t dealt with your inner roommate, your mind. I have tried most of those other methods and know that what Michael says is true. So, I am very married now to the project of getting acquainted with my fierce and fearful inner roommate. I am curious to watch it, but even more curious to know the watcher.

The Ease and Joy of Mornings on the Mesa, visiting Johanna & Eric

Sometimes I listen to Pema Chodron, too, and she instructs that when meditating, have an intention. The intention could be to witness the thoughts and not believe them. Another intention is what she calls “stability,” which is bringing the mind back to the breath every time it wanders. There is that word again.

Last week, I went to a different style of monastery: the Upaya Zen Center. I took a class called, “The Ease and Joy of Mornings,” a 101 on Zen Buddhism and the etiquette and ceremony for sitting zazen in the Upaya zendo. (My fellow New Mexican substacker, Maia Duerr, wrote a great piece about Upaya, if you’re curious to know more about it).

In the zendo, you wear dark clothing. As you enter, you bow to the Buddha and your own Buddha nature. Then you bow to your pillow, the dharma (the teaching). Finally, you bow to the others in the zendo, the sangha (the community). Then you sit half-lotus or full lotus, or there are a few other ways you can sit. You imagine a string holding up your head, your spine is straight. Then you hold a soft, downward gaze and count the breaths to ten until the chime.

Someone in the class asked, “What if you’re sitting next to someone and they’re shuffling around like a hamster?”

One of the teachers laughed and said, “I think there’s a hamster at every sit.”

The other teacher said it was okay to move. Everything is okay (I like this). As a neighbor offer you can offer your stillness as a support to the hamster. But know that remaining still through the discomfort is what retrains your brain from reacting on impulse. Over time, this practice will expand the space between your thoughts and your reactions.

“What you give your attention to is everything,” she said.

I have heard this before, of course, many times. Something about how she said it reminded me how profoundly important it is. We talk a lot about the commodification and exploitation of our attention, but what are we actually doing about it? The only thing we can do is work on the mindfulness of our own attention.

At certain moments in our meditation, the teacher would ask: “Why do you sit?”

My first reply was, “To meet the watcher.”

He asked again, “Why do you sit?”

I replied, “To find peace.”

He asked a third time, “Why do you sit?”

I landed on my most earnest reason.

“To learn devotion.”

***

More wanderings coming your way soon.

Love,
April

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Weekly posts are coming your way. A tour of Chaco Canyon from a recent visit, as well as a video tour of the van. Subscribe to stay in touch.

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