Discerning a Christian Vegan Eremitic Vocation with a Psychiatric Disability

It's 8:54 PM Eastern on Tuesday and I have decided after careful consideration to acquire  The Fated Sky: Astrology in History by Benson Bobrick. It has taken me all evening to make the decision. This may not be allowed Catholic reading.

It's 5:22 PM Eastern on Tuesday as I begin to write. I've been working all day on reorganization of the sleeping and prayer areas in my loft. I will divide the rest of my hermitage into additional zones as I proceed with my decluttering and inventory. I also helped me my mom out downstairs, did a couple loads of laundry, vacuumed, and started organizing in my closet. On a more forward-looking level, I took a walk around midday and listened to the first 30-minutes of an important talk titled  Creating a Practical Housing Plan for Your Loved One with a Disability :  There is a lot for me to think about here. I am sure I will be revisiting the rest of this webinar on subsequent Tuesdays, my new Hermit Economics productivity theme day. I didn't do any work on my "go bag" this week, but I did start a home inventory in Excel (using one of the included templates) as a way to support my decluttering process. Thanks to The Minimal Mom for the cognitive load insights. Nex...

It's 7:12 PM Eastern on Monday and I am eager to get back into the music production side of the psalmody with Paul Rose on Psalm 6 , but it looks like I need to deal with last Friday morning's Psalm 137:9 crisis of faith , instead, and it might take me the rest of this evening to do so. To be clear, I don't necessarily subscribe to the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture . Instead, I have articulated in my correspondence with Matthew King a belief in the controversiality of Scripture, which I define as follows: "The controversiality of the Bible means that the original authorship, date of composition, strict historical veracity, best contemporary translation, and most valid exegesis, if not absolute divinity, of each and every Old and New Testament passage, are subject to good argument by well-informed and well-meaning Church scholars, naturally leading to organic divisions within the body of Christ over the course of Church history, according to God's provi...

It's 4:29 PM, I am running off schedule because of a dental appointment that I didn't handle very well mentally or emotionally, though I did remember to pray a few times, and this is a quick note to keep the beat on my Monday morning Christian Zionism and my Monday afternoon UN Charter Navigation projects. My plan for this morning was to decide whether or not to start reading and commenting upon A Short History of Christian Zionism by Donald Lewis. I haven't been able to make a decision. On the one hand, it seems like the best and fairest place to really begin with Christian Zionism in earnest. On the other hand, it might be better for me to keep my focus on the interpretation of current events. I parted ways with Prime Minister Netanyahu on the strategic level back on 2 March 2025, but I've parted ways with him on other decisions since 7 October 2023, and for a while he was proving me wrong, which I frankly admired and took as a testament to the strength of Jewish nat...

It's 6:57 PM Eastern on Sunday as I begin to write. I've been thinking all day (well, between a couple of naps) about whether or not God is calling me to a Sunday morning Mass obligation. It's a very complicated question and Sister Laurel has given me much to chew on in Notes from Stillsong Hermitage: Questions on Sunday Obligation and the Hermit Life . I've also taken into account Bishop Barron's most recent Sunday sermon, the daily Bible reading in the Catholic lectionary, and  Code of Canon Law - Book II - The People of God - Part II. (Cann. 573-606) . While I must confess there is a part of my personality that is profoundly resistant to Catholic conversion, the lion's share of my conscience now seems to have tilted in the direction of serious Catholic inquiry - thanks, I trust, to the continued leading of the Holy Spirit.

It's 7:17 PM Eastern on Saturday evening and I may or may not make it into Chapter 1 of Origins  tonight. The Holy Spirit seems to be guiding my attention in two alternative directions. On one hand, I want to drill down into the field of Christian Astronomy by exploring a series of YouTube videos featuring the Vatican's astronomer. On the other hand, I also and maybe more pressingly want to take a step back from even the very broad field of Christian Earth Science to position myself in proper relationship to the history of both science and Catholicism. If I am to become a Catholic - whereas now I am only an intrigued but hesitant Inquirer - I will need to overcome some concerns about excessive supernaturalism, superstition and traditionalism at the periphery of the faith. Perhaps the best way to proceed is to blend or accompany a reading of  Origins with reading of  In Pursuit of Wisdom: Catholicism and Science Through the Ages . The Kindle version is priced at a bargain...

It's 3:06 PM Eastern on Saturday as I begin to write my way through this Week 34 Plan.  I have recently written about trying and failing to successfully implement a time management practice since the 1990s. Maybe this time around I can master some disability accommodations that make an effective system stick. I am not convinced that a high-fidelity Christian vegan eremitic time management system is beyond my capabilities. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I was a student of Stephen Covey's First Things First (FTF) methodology. The FTF system is centered around a weekly organizing session. I have customized the session to include the following elements: Step 1: Evaluate the Past Seven Days (Scan Your Blog Posts) Step 2: Review Your Mission (Blog Title) and Vision (Blog Description) Step 3: Review Your Areas of Responsibility (Blog Pages) Step 4: Review and Add or Retire Active Projects (Blog Labels) for Each of Your Areas of Responsibility  Step 5: Schedule Your Soft Appointme...

It's 11:43 AM Eastern on Saturday. I've had a good office management session this morning. My office space is starting to feel a lot more Zen, but I still have some distance to travel. The checklist I came up with last week is a help. I am not a GTD master like David Allen, but I seem to be closing in on a minimally paper-based office system (cf.  Get Your Paper Based Filing System in Order | GTD® ). Unless something else on my Saturday morning checklist needs more attention next week, I will continue to prioritize refinement of the paper-based component of my office until it is right where I want it. Then I will take some photos and upload them to this blog. Also helpful for this week's session:  GTD® Beginner’s Guide to Organizing Your Paper-Based Inbox .

8:39 AM Eastern Saturday morning. Just back from an informative and encouraging walk with Sir James MacMillan. Excellent interview that I don't want to forget:  Sir James MacMillan on How Christianity Shaped Western Music | The Early Church & Gregorian Chant .

6:35 PM Eastern Friday. This link to  The Gregorio Project   is for future reference, if and when it is time for me to learn to compose and publish chant in Gregorian notation. In the meantime, I feel deeply blessed to open this session with the above video,  SALVE REGINA (Solemn Tone) | Chants of Deliverance . It's a healing Christian musical response to my recent difficult encounter with Psalm 137:9. Now I will jump right in to warming up my voice and finding my natural vocal range. 8:10 PM. Well, that didn't go quite as planned. Here's what I did. I started by watching a YouTube short by Janelle Scott of TrueSong Voice Studio called " How to Find Your Real Singing Voice, or True Vocal Tone ."  Then I turned off my noisy air conditioner, fired up FL Studio 2025, loaded a new project, armed and tested my USB microphone, and recorded a short warm-up speech track. Next, I recorded a second track in which I spoke and chanted "hey" several times, reaching ...

It's 8:02 PM Eastern on Thursday evening and my new psalter has arrived, but instead of digging into it I am noticing some exercise guilt because I didn't make it outside for a walk today and I am wondering if this guilt is a prompting from the Holy Spirit because I have sinned. What if I didn't sin because I attended to higher priorities, and this is an attack from the other side? Google Gemini AI says that my exercise guilt is NOT a prompting of the Holy Spirit. Here are several relevant articles for further study: Conviction vs Guilt: The Astonishing Truth You Need to Know Is Not Exercising A Sin? Joyful Health Co™ Satan Wants You to Feel Bad | Catholic Answers Magazine The Struggle with Scrupulosity | Catholic Answers Magazine It looks like my root issue here might not be a lack of exercise, but a failure to understand the difference between the Holy Spirit as the world's best cheerleader and Satan as the world's worst guilt-tripper.

It's 5:59 PM Eastern on Thursday as I begin to write. I am just finishing up my supper-time green drink (I am running a little late this evening) and thinking how nice it would be to take a shower, but I also have my first psalter arriving from Amazon tonight, it is time to begin my Psalter and Psalmody session, the shower can wait until tomorrow morning when it fits better in my schedule, and I am too chronically depressed and/or spiritually hygiene indifferent to obsess about a daily shower in any event. I'll floss and brush my teeth, no doubt about that. But shower? Let's nail this down by the end of 2025: is daily showering a modern mental health necessity for a sedentary fifty-something anchorite, or is it just a waste of water, and especially of hot water, on my community's journey to ecological resilience and net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050? I will either go with the consensus opinion among those I trust, or I will do what I think is right regardless. I...

It's 4:51 PM Eastern on Thursday as I begin to write. I have just finished consolidating my  Spiritual Direction sub-projects into a single new project stream called Inquiry and Catechumenate. This is to remind myself that I am a moderately serious "Inquirer" with respect to Catholicism. At the same time, I am at least a "Catechumen" with respect to non-denominational vegan Christianity. Looking backward now at all of my posts in this Inquiry and Catechumenate series, it feels like I have been a bit too sinfully disorganized and grandiose. Moving forward, I will see if I can advance more systematically on Thursday afternoons.  Cf.  My Church: An April 2025 Snapshot .

It's 7:09 PM on Wednesday evening as I begin to write. I've been thinking about how to proceed through this next step of my Christian musical formation for about an hour. Back on 21 July 2025, I believed I would be complementing Psalter and Psalmody with a study of world and electronic music under a project titled "Thoughts on Music." Now it seems the Holy Spirit may be calling me to focus first on Gregorian chant. I am particularly interested in learning to chant some introductory versions of the Our Father and the Hail Mary. Paul Rose has set the stage for my aspirations with  Sung English Rosary FAST, Simple Gregorian Chant Melodies (Sing the Hours) . Clearly, I need to learn how to read the four-line staff, which was invented by an 11th century Benedictine monk. This four-line staff is the basis of the modern five-line staff.  Here is the Our Father that Paul Rose chants in the above video, on a four-line staff:  This seems like an excellent starting point.  In...

It's 4:24 PM Eastern on Wednesday as I begin to write. I got out for a walk this morning, but it's been a challenging mental health day and I haven't gotten much else done. I did, however, manage to make a small but important bit of progress with my old medical records. I've got all the records in a single file crate on my desk that I feel motivated to tackle next Wednesday. It's likely to be a full-day undertaking, so I won't aim to get anything else major done as a Healthcare Patient in Week 34 (though I do have a dental appointment on Monday morning and psychotherapy on Friday morning). I plan to recycle what I can recycle, scan whatever I absolutely need to keep, and put all the rest in a box to bring to Staples for shredding. For the most part these are records related to my psychiatric hospitalizations (now half a decade behind me). I am a different person after five years of medication compliance, psychotherapy, and religious formation, so it will be hard...

It's 6:25 PM Eastern on Tuesday evening as I begin to write. I've just finished reviewing last week's entry, What Is Christian Astrology? Part 1 . I concluded that entry with a tentative definition: "Christian Astrology, if it is not always a heretical pseudo-scientific oxymoron, refers to the study and practice of astrology in a Christian way for a Christian purpose."  What I would like to do in tonight's session is investigate, on a fairly introductory level, the apparent presence of astrologers and astrological symbolism in the New Testament. No, this is biting off more than I can chew. I can perhaps slowly start to look into the seemingly direct reference to astrologers in the Gospel of Matthew from a Dominican perspective  (cf.  What Exactly was the Star of Bethlehem? #AskAFriar | Aquinas 101 ), but I won't have time this evening to begin testing the possibility of astrological symbolism in the Gospel of Mark (cf.  The Gospel and the Zodiac: Allegoric...

It's Tuesday morning at 9:12 AM Eastern as I begin writing this entry. I am off to an earlier start than last week, when I started writing  From Hermit Economics to Emergency Preparedness  at 4:09 PM. The wildfire smoke has dissipated, I was able to go for a short walk earlier in the day, and I am not as anxious about putting together a go-bag as I was seven days ago. I am a bit tired, though. Let's see what I can get done. Okay, now it's 4:22 PM and I have about 40 minutes to summarize and consolidate the day's progress. Here is what I accomplished: I reviewed my 2024 journal notes related to this project I did a load of laundry I vacuumed I decluttered much of my sleeping area I listened to  Is decluttering wasteful? what to do with the stuff you don’t know what to do with   I listened to  Should You Sell or Donate Your Excess Stuff?   I donated one bag of items I resolved to integrate a home asset inventory into a weekly decluttering routine, chipping aw...

It's 6:56 PM Eastern on Monday and I am slowly groping my way through the selection of my first psalter. It's too hot to turn off my air conditioner, so I won't try to do any recording tonight. While I am eager to dive into melodic chant, I am determined to first develop some proficiency with monotonal chant, following the instruction of Pastor Joshua Schooping. I am going to need a hardcopy psalter that I can use for this purpose. Now it's 9:12 PM and after a couple hours of research I may have found a good starting point. It's The Ancient Faith Psalter  with an accompanying audiobook. Here you can listen to Psalm 103 as it is read and chanted in the audiobook. The chanting is monotone. The translation was prepared by monastics but Father John Oliver, who performs the chanting, is a married priest within the Orthodox tradition. Father Oliver's chanting tempo is quite a bit faster than Pastor Schooping's. By coincidence, or the Holy Spirit, it was my searc...

It's 1:02 PM Eastern on Monday and I am about to consolidate all of my UN Charter Navigation sub-projects. It has already taken me half an hour to decide that this indeed how I want to proceed this afternoon, and now it will probably take me a couple of hours, if not longer, to get all of my posts re-labeled in my Blogger dashboard. Ah well. Here goes. Okay. Wow. It's 1:48 PM and I am already done. I surprised myself. In the process, I realized that there is both considerable overlap and considerable tension between Christian Zionism and UN Charter Navigation in my political theology. I was also forced to acknowledge (despite my Atlas Complex delusions) that I can only handle two political theology foci at a time moving forward, so I am getting rid of Weekday Briefing and Responsible Voting as separate projects. I will catch up on my Christian Zionism and UN Charter Navigation briefings over the course of week, as circumstances allow and the Holy Spirit leads. Some weeks may b...

It's 9:29 AM Eastern on Sunday. Earlier this morning, I took my mom to the Five Rivers Environmental Education Center for an hour-long walk in the fields and forest. The weather was perfect, and we saw a spotted fawn on our drive home. Afterward, while back up in my hermit's loft eating a bowl of wheat flakes, raspberries, and soymilk for breakfast, I realized that I forgot to pray silently alongside my mom during our walk together. It would have helped if I had a rosary, but I need to get one and learn how to use it. The UN Security Council is holding an emergency meeting at 10 AM this morning that I feel called to observe, so I won't comment on Bishop Barron's Sunday sermon, except to say that it called to mind Amanda Cook's worship album Brave New World : The Voyage (Official Lyric Video) Amanda Cook | Brave New World What Is Faith? | Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon   Have a blessed week.

It's 6:51 PM Eastern on Saturday. Last week, I identified Christian Astronomy as a sub-project of Cultural Astronomy under my Music of the Spheres role. This week, I made Christian Astronomy a full project in its own right. I know that I want to learn how to better use my compass, binoculars, telescope and Stellarium for Christian Astronomy.  But what exactly do I mean by Christian Astronomy, why is it important to me, and how do I plan to step this project out?  T his needs clarification.  Perhaps the first thing I should do is clarify the relationships between earth science, astronomy, and cosmology. According to currently accepted scientific conventions, cosmology is a specialized branch of astronomy, and astronomy is a branch of earth science. I lean toward five main branches of earth science - geology, oceanography, meteorology/climatology, ecology, and astronomy - corresponding to five great spheres: Geology | Geosphere Oceanography | Hydrosphere Meteorology | Clima...

It's 1:02 PM Eastern on Saturday as I begin to write my way through this Week 33 Plan. Last week's  eldercare emergency may have indeed been a nudge from God to make Saturday afternoon, not Friday afternoon, my new weekly planning session.  I have recently written about trying and failing to successfully implement a time management practice since the 1990s. Maybe this time around I can master some disability accommodations that make an effective system stick. I am not convinced that a high-fidelity Christian vegan eremitic time management system is beyond my capabilities. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I was a student of Stephen Covey's First Things First (FTF) methodology. The FTF system is centered around a weekly organizing session. I have customized the session to include the following elements: Step 1: Evaluate the Past Seven Days (Scan Your Blog Posts) Step 2: Review Your Mission (Blog Title) and Vision (Blog Description) Step 3: Review Your Areas of Responsibilit...