This adventure is changing me. It is digging up a lot of selfishness that I previously thought I was above… selfishness that relates to my consumerist nature. I find pleasure in consuming and don’t take the time to produce, to create. And this part of me needs to die.

I’m reading a book on the early desert fathers, monks who practiced a eremitic lifestyle characterized by chastity, abstinence, solitude and unceasing prayer, and I am finding that I am not alone in my struggles against comfort and consumption. These guys (and gals) were unbelievable in their discipline and self-control! They would do crazy things like fast from food for days on end and deprive themselves of the comfort of sleep, and when food came it was normally just bread, nothing more… and when sleep overcame them, they chose to sleep on the hardness of the ground using only a animal fur for padding (if that).

Now, I’m not hoping to become a monk, or to completely rid myself of the comforts of food, but I do want to take away something that these extreme personalities model. They model a life that is simple and without the numbing agents of entertainment and consumption. This idealism was hard to pursue then (which is why they went into the desert) just as it is hard to follow after now. But we can look at the product of their personal sacrifice as something to be in awe of… People Loved Them!

Most of these monks were looked to for advice, had uncanny wisdom and prophet like discernment. In the solitude, they found a God to be there amity. In the denial of self they found sustenance from the Lord.

What if we took steps in this direction? Would God still provide, would our selfishness be abated, would our lives be fulfilled?

What do you thin?