In The Demons’ House

In The Demons’ House

To experience a "demon house," you don't need some just-bought, never-gonna-fix-‘er-upper, much less one inhabited by spooky, little girls. Nah. For demon encounters of the spiritual kind, the most ordinary and uneventful of houses will do.

Most of my life, I had the romantic notion that desert hermits ran to stark, marginal environments for the quiet. Only it turns out peace and quiet were the exact opposite of what Syncletica, Evagrius and the other early Christian hermits sought in the desert. Nope. What they wanted was a fight. An all-out, no-holds-bared, knock-down, drag-out battle with demons. They went to the desert because that was where the demons lived.

In fact, the story goes that St. Antony renounced comfort, sex and family by moving into an abandoned desert fort. Once there, his demon desires for these were so strong they literally beat him unconscious.

You want to fight demons with no way to run and hide? Move into the demons’ house. And you don't need a desert. They are more than happy to face you anywhere you choose.

sigh.

My creative energy was fueled by the narrowly-focused, pared-down life of the monastery. Before, it had been like a leaping, playful fire: lots of form and color, but no intensity. After a year of monastic confinement, it had the white-hot brilliance of a hurricane lamp.

Forced out of the cloister, I didn't know if I could maintain that creative fire. And I didn't know if I had the courage to live wholly from my spiritual center - without the financial security offered by community life.

Yet, I resisted the desire to immediately jump into a decent-paying, middle class job – the kind I'd had for most of my post-graduate life. It had taken entering a monastery for me to find the courage to shuck all that in the first place. I didn’t want to immediately load myself up again.

Because I can use a job and house to generate unlimited excuses not to write.

It was in making this choice that I found I had moved into the demons’ house. I do some freelance work - consulting and teaching - but dedicate my time & energy to writing. So by and large, I can’t say, “Of course I will write, but after I get this report done or that pile of papers marked because they are due tomorrow.”

With no externally imposed musts and shoulds, I have no cover story to disguise immobilizing habits, destructive thought-patterns and addictive, emotional fogs - and no insurance against the fear of financial failure. Instead, in each day’s effort to write, I must marshal my spiritual forces and struggle with these, my demons, raw and undiluted.

Strange. I have never lacked food, shelter or a comfortable bed. I even have a car and a dog. My environment is about as far from “inhospitable desert” as one can get. Yet here my demons are and here I am, in their house, facing them every day without protection.