The Cell as Sacred Space
As we have seen, the cell is the reason for anachoresis. The monk withdraws to find a place for solitude, silence, and transformation. The cell is different from the rest of the inhabited world because of what happens in the cell and in the interior life of the monk. For this reason, the monk must guard the cell both by being a good steward of what takes place within the cell as “topos” and by a manner of life that manifests God presence in that place.
The place does not hold the monk; the monk guards the place, because by his life he brings God to it. This is how the inward character of the guarding of the place is to be explained, its direct correlation with spiritual rebirth, which is a matter completely different from any external guarding.
The cell is guarded by not allowing anything to profane the integrity of its purpose or to misuse it. This “guarding” does not infer militaristic protection. It is a fundamental aspect of the monk’s ascetic practice and applies both to the cell, itself, and to the “cell” of the monk’s interior and exterior life.
Amma Syncletica said, “There are many who live in the mountains and behave as if they were in the town, and they are wasting their time. It is possible to be a solitary in one’s mind while living in a crowd, and it is possible for one who is a solitary to live in the crowd of personal thoughts.”
Guarding the cell acknowledges that what a person thinks, does, sees, takes into his or her life or habitually experiences will facilitate a positive openness to grace and movement toward transformation. At the same time, it can negatively direct the “content” of a person’s life away from his or true self. This tension between what happens in solitude and in relation to the rest of the world was sometimes uneasy.
Monastic life is often described as consisting in the renunciation of the world. Properly understood, the statement may stand, but its starkness may lead to misconceptions. The caricature of the monk as a world-hater, unfortunately supported by evidence from monastic literature itself, misses the point. The separation from ordinary society effected by withdrawal to the desert, or by the cloister, or by vows, is ideally less a quarantine than an opportunity. Nonetheless, the break with conventional human society is genuine, and these stories depict the tensions which can arise from the decision to choose the monastic alternative.
This is true, also, for persons who are not monks. It is not easy for us to integrate the movements of our spiritual lives and values into our families, our workplaces and the fest of our “inhabited world.” At the same time, we must avoid letting the values and behaviors of a materialistic and often profane society deflect us from the “cell” of our personal relationship with God. By guarding this cell we learn to manifest what happens there in the way we live. It is stewardship of the sacredness of our lives.
~David G.R. Keller, Oasis of Wisdom: The Worlds of the Desert Fathers and Mothers
