New Monasticism with Jonathan

In yesterday's entry , I extracted from Greg Peters' introduction to The Story of Monasticism (TSM) the importance of identifying and summarizing the evolution of my fishhook into monasticism. Here is a six-sentence version. 1) I was raised as an atheist materialist by a single mother in upstate New York during the 1970s and 1980s and became emotionally dependent on pornography and masturbation in middle school. 2) During my junior year of high school, I began to exhibit symptoms of bipolar schizophrenia, but I avoided a formal diagnosis until my late forties. 3) I quit high school when I had a spiritual awakening - or was it a psychotic break? - shortly after reading The Brothers Karamazov for a humanities class. 4) This led to independent study of Krishnamurti's The Awakening of Intelligence , the start of a Zen Buddhist practice, and a psychedelic-induced near-death experience at the age of eighteen that convinced me of God's existence, the reality of Jesus, and my...

I am very impressed and helped by what I have read so far in  The Story of Monasticism: Retrieving an Ancient Tradition for Contemporary Spirituality by Greg Peters. Check out Peters' webpage at Nashotah House:  The Rev. Canon Greg Peters, PhD, SMD . It's profoundly encouraging, and humbling, to see what a gifted man can accomplish if he stays on the straight road to Christ from the start of his college years. My thought at this point is to take a deep dive through The Story of Monasticism (TSM) here on my blog. These will be fairly informal study notes that tackle one small section of TSM at a time. Eventually, I might like to work this into a three-year curriculum, but I am not pressuring myself. This could grow in a different direction. Peters begins TSM with an introduction titled "The Monastic Impulse." What I would like to do in today's note is unpack the first paragraph of this introduction, which contains three key components. The first component is a cl...

Now that I have the basics of an horarium established (see The Twelve Gates ), and I am seven days into my Lent 2026 retreat, I want to start reading an introduction to Western Christian monasticism when I don't have anything more pressing to attend to during my daily 3-6 PM "Watch of the Steward" time block.  There are several introductory pathways to choose between: https://share.google/aimode/fwGUMirl8VrDBLmm7 After a bit of research on Gemini and Amazon, it looks like my best next step is  The Story of Monasticism: Retrieving an Ancient Tradition for Contemporary Spirituality  by Greg Peters. His background fits perfectly with my interest in the Book of Common Prayer : https://share.google/aimode/ocrnjczYTJSnKvWge I am also thinking about starting a daily deep dive into   The Rule of Benedict with Reflections from Christian Meditators  on Saturday, 2 May 2026. It's a course of study that will take four months to complete. We will see if I am really call...

Here is a summary of today's session: https://share.google/aimode/iQ5GAvaCFCBtghkIG For reference, this is  Hebrews 13 :9-14 (BSB): "Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace and not by foods of no value to those devoted to them. We have an altar from which those who serve at the tabernacle have no right to eat. Although the high priest brings the blood of animals into the Holy Place as a sacrifice for sin, the bodies are burned outside the camp. And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate, to sanctify the people by His own blood. Therefore let us go to Him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace He bore. For here we do not have a permanent city, but we are looking for the city that is to come."

4:10 PM Thursday. Alright, heavenly Father, it looks like you are calling me to view Tuesday's  Lent 2026 Horologion Capstone  as a constructive rough step in the right direction. Now I need to clarify that my "Stewardship of the Gates" watch from 3 PM to 6 PM every day is the calendar, mail, filing, and checkbook component of an emergent new monastic Divine Office. I should further clarify that secular use of a Microsoft Outlook calendar as part of my annual Office 365 subscription seems to be turning into the religious management of a horarium (the temporal structure, or "trellis") and a horologion (the prayerful contents of the calendar structure, or the "vine" that grows on the trellis and produces "fruits"). Despite Tuesday's "capstone" accomplishment, it would be totally wrong for me to suggest that I have put a final Lent 2026 Horologion into place. Rather, what I mean to say is that I will be working out the structure of...

Tuesday, 4:46 PM EST. Earlier today, I posted Jonathan's Lent 2026 Horologion on my new ancillary blog, Jesus with Jonathan . This horologion feels a bit overwhelming at the moment, but it's important that I answer God's call as best I can and learn from my charisms and my shortcomings along the way. I've been chipping away at this old blog for almost eleven months now. My Lent 2026 Horologion is in some ways a capstone synthesis of everything I have learned since I posted A Simple Spring Beginning back on 28 March 2025. In other ways, it feels like the foundation stone of the next phase of my discernment journey. Let's call it a rung in the ladder of my new monastic ascent. Let's call it rung five, taking 2022 as the first celibate chaste rung in my climb.  The key point for me to remember is that February 2026 was a turning point in my monastic journey, highlighted by the Leo Full Moon at 5:09 PM EST here in Albany on Saint Brigid's Eve, with Jupiter in ...

Well, I got at least a couple of things wrong last Thursday with  Order of the Vegan Heart?  I don't need Sister Laurel to tell me to focus on my personal horarium first, and this particular blog will not work as a monthly update. It needs to be published every 2-3 days, and it needs to cover everything I focus on between 3:15 PM and 5:45 PM during my hermitage office hours. Right now, I am busy putting together my Lent 2026 Horologion. I should have a working draft together by Ash Wednesday. Sorry for any confusion created by my previous entry.

Welcome to " New Monasticism with Jonathan,"  my February 2026 blog platform upgrade. (You can access all of my blogs through my profile ). The blog you are now reading replaces "Discerning an Eremitic Christian Blogging Vocation with a Psychiatric Disability," which I maintained under various titles from March 2025 to January of 2026. My goal is to post one new article on "New Monasticism with Jonathan" every calendar month. Is God calling me to establish a non-denominational new monastic society, perhaps titled the Order of the Vegan Heart? (It's okay if that makes you think of a Yes song. I am not set on an exact title yet.) I've been discerning this call in earnest since 2022, with many pauses, diversions, and setbacks along the way, but also with steadily increasing confidence. I am thinking there must be at least four men and four women over fifty scattered across North America who are now being called to seriously consider something along th...