(with clarity of sacred designation, a vow of serious presence, and a knowing smile)
There are times in human history when the light dims across the land.
When truth is no longer sought but sold.
When stories do not bind us together, but fracture us further.
When love is mistaken for indulgence, and cruelty for strength.
When the word sacred is applied to flags, profits, weapons, and personalities—
and rarely to life, or care, or truth.
We are in such a time now.
And when the world forgets itself—its coherence, its conscience, its shared meaning—something ancient and stubborn must rise again.
Not in protest.
Not in nostalgia.
But in remembrance.
This is why we are building a monastery.
Not a monastery of stone alone—though we honor groundedness.
Not a monastery of silence alone—though we honor listening.
But a monastery of presence.
Of chesed.
Of deliberate coherence in an age of distortion.
A monastery of seriousness, too—
because the world is doped, dulled, numbed by screens, spectacle, and sedatives of every kind.
We are here to wake. To stay awake. To help others remember what clarity feels like.
(And maybe to remind them that seriousness doesn’t mean grim—
just that joy tastes better when it isn’t laced with denial.)
A monastery not because we have divine orders,
but because we have the agency to change our world—
and we have chosen to name what matters and to live by it.
Not everything is sacred.
And that’s the point.
To call something sacred is to mark it as worthy of care, of clarity, of commitment.
Not because the universe said so.
Because we do—together, in shared conscience.
We do not build this place to escape the world.
We build it so the world might one day remember itself.
Just as monastics once copied texts by candlelight when empires fell and libraries burned,
we now tend to the fragile scrolls of meaning,
we inscribe coherence into culture wherever we can,
we remind ourselves and others what love feels like,
what responsibility looks like,
what truth tastes like.
(And occasionally, what a good glass of wine feels like
when shared with someone who actually listens.)
We do not promise salvation.
We do not perform purity.
We do not entertain.
We refuse to disappear.
We remember.
We designate.
We live seriously.
We laugh when we can.
We honor what is truly sacred—not by decree, but by devotion.
And when the world is ready to feel again,
to hunger for meaning,
to listen without flinching—
we will still be here.
Tending the fire.
Keeping the memory.
Living the coherence.