Boating like Monasticism?

It strikes me that from an outsiders perspective the life we live on our boats must seem a bit odd. Sometimes I think this comes from people assuming we live in an open row boat - as one of Elijah's friends commented upon. But there is also something about the choice to live simply that flies in the face of the United States consumerist society, too. After all, most of us quickly learn that we don't have room for all the nick-knacks of consumer living.

At any rate, I ran across the following quote while reading Kyriacos C. Markides' The Mountain of Silence: A Search for Orthodox Spirituality (Doubleday 2001.).

Just as the world needs monks and nuns to sing praise, so too does the world need sailors to celebrate life!

Enjoy your new year.

Joel

'Let me ask you another question. Who is more useful to society, a doctor or a monk?’ Thomas asked pensively.

Father Maximos grinned and sighed. ‘I have been asked this question before. What does monasticism offer to society? Well, this question is characteristic of a modern way of thinking. It is an activist orientation toward the world. Every act, every person, is judged on the basis of their utility and contribution to the whole. Parents urge their children to excel so that they may be useful to society. Based on our spiritual tradition I prefer to see humans beings first and foremost in terms of who they are and only after that in terms of their contributions to society. Otherwise we run to risk of turning people into machines that produce useful things. So what if you do not produce useful things? Does that mean that you should be discarded as a useless object? I am afraid that with this orientation contemporary humanity has undermined the inherent value of the human person. Today we valued ourselves in terms of how much we contribute rather than in terms of who we are. And that attitude toward ourselves often leads to all sorts of psychological problems. I see this all the time during confessions.

'People using such utilitarian criteria,’ Father Maximos continued, ‘look at monasticism and conclude that it is useless and therefore most be discarded. But when we are willing to employ different criteria, monasticism offers the supreme gift to humanity that modern individual may not recognize.” … [Father Maximos continues to discuss how each person is assigned a life task, and that they are to work together, like the body.]

'I will tell you. Monasticism keeps alive in an unadulterated way the experience of the Christ. It is the space within which a human being is liberated from all biological and worldly concerns to redirect their focus and energy toward an exclusive preoccupation with the reality of God.”

… 'Isn’t it amazing,' he [Father Maximos] said shaking his head, ‘that people become so upset because a few men and women decided to become monks and nuns? Yet they are hardly concerned about the thousands who get hooked on drugs.’ (36-38, 39)