You Don't Need to Go to a Monastery to Hear God
The time I watched a desert monk answer a cell phone + five ideas for creating “monastic moments” in your life that make it easier to hear God's voice.
As part of Hear from God in 40 Emails (or Less), we’re in a four-part series on experiencing God’s guidance in your heart—the “H” in the H.E.A.R. Framework. Read Part 1 here.
I was in the middle of nowhere, just off the Alexandria Desert Road about 90 kilometers northwest of Cairo, Egypt at the Monastery of Saint Macarius the Great, swatting flies off every part of my body, when a cellphone started ringing.
The Monastery of Saint Macarius the Great was founded in the fourth century by Saint Macarius, who had escaped to the desert like St. Anthony before him to seek escape from worldly concerns so he could listen for God. It has been continuously inhabited by monks, following in his footsteps, ever since.
I know this because my tour guide, one of those monks named Abouna (Father) Macarius, has just explained this to our tour group.
Then, his cellphone starts ringing.
It’s another monk in the monastery who has a question for him, and Abouna Macarius is visibly annoyed—which is unexpected because my experience of him so far has been that he’s a kind, gentle, and patient man. His annoyance might be because this one particular monk calls a lot, the trivial nature of what he was calling about, or simply because the whole reason he escaped to the desert was to avoid having to answer phone calls like this one.
It was the first of three phone calls he got on this tour and, honestly, I’m not sure how he even had any cell reception at this monastery.
Just before this, Abouna Macarius had explained how thick the walls of the monastery were. The walls were strong because, in the early centuries of the monastery, there had been an attack that martyred forty-nine monks. Since that attack, they had set up some precautions to prevent another. It seems, though, there is no wall strong enough to keep out the quiet, hidden invader of wireless phone signals.
Could Saint Macarius ever have anticipated the advent of the cellphone, which would bring worldly concerns within earshot, making it difficult for even monks to get enough peace and quiet to hear from God?
Christine Rosen, writing in The Extinction of Experience, writes about her own visit to an American monastery in Kentucky. She was there for a silent retreat to learn what it looked like to practice the lost art of waiting. During a brief hiatus from total silence, she asked a monk named Father Carlos about how to make time for silence amidst everything else you have to do. Father Carlos says to her, “Make time every day for silence … and don’t make it a chore. Just sit in silence. This allows you to listen to God.”1
Monks understand how practicing silence and solitude often create space for you to hear God’s voice. As I learned during my monastery tour in Egypt, though, you can still get cell phone reception in a monastery. That’s why it’s essential to learn how to create “monastic moments” right where you are, and at the end of this email I’ll share five of my favorite ways to do that.
Deafening Noise, Bright Lights, and Monkeys
You might remember from the Elijah story in last week’s post that God spoke to Elijah in a “quiet whisper” (1 Kings 19:12). Elijah was the original desert monk. He was in the heart of the desert, standing on a mountain, completely alone. There was a brief moment of deafening noise from wind and the bright light of a fire, but it wasn’t until everything got quiet that he heard God’s voice.
In a cultural moment where we’re constantly surrounded by the sensory overload of deafening noise and bright lights, we need to find and create spaces of quiet where we can practice listening for God in our hearts .“We often talk about God being absent from our lives,” Pastor Jon Tyson says in The Burden is Light, “but in this culture of distraction, I wonder if we are the ones absent from him.”2
That’s why we need silence and solitude in our lives.
This practice is one of the threads running through the life of Jesus. Early in the gospel accounts, they’ll say something like, “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he got up, went out, and made his way to a deserted place; and there he was praying” (Mark 1:39). It’s almost as if the gospel writers are trying to say: I might mention this a few more times, but you can assume Jesus is doing this as a habit (Luke 5:16).
Without these “deserted places” of solitude and silence, it’s not long before the voices of his disciples and the crowds are fighting for his limited attention.
Even if you are able to find some quiet, it’s not always easy to quiet your mind enough to listen for God. Henri Nouwen, a writer who explored the practice of silence and solitude, studying the lives of the desert fathers and mothers like Saint Macarius, says that when you finally find some quiet, your mind feels a bit like monkeys in a banana tree. “The task,” he says, “is to persevere in my solitude, to stay in my cell until all my seductive visitors get tired of pounding on my door and leave me alone.”3
It’s not easy to do this, but if you want to hear God’s voice, wisdom dictates that you have to make space for silence and solitude and, when possible, wait in it long enough for your mind monkeys to chill out so you can hear God’s quiet whisper like Jesus, Elijah, and Macarius.
But, places of silence and solitude are increasingly difficult to find—unless you know where to look.
Five Monastic Moments You Can Try
You don’t need to go to a monastery in the Egyptian desert or a rural farmland of Kentucky to find silence and solitude, you just need to learn how to create monastic moments right where you are.
A MONASTIC MOMENT is an intentional period of time, sometimes as short as the time it takes a stoplight to turn green again, when you make as much internal and external quiet as you can and simply ask God, “What are you saying right now?” Monastic moments are when, as Henri Nouwen writes, we “fashion our own desert.”4
In the modern world, you have to get creative in making space for silence and solitude and have to be willing to accept any amount of it you can get, especially those of you whose constraints and responsibilities don’t allow you to just get in the car and drive to the nearest desert or monastery for the rest of next week.
Susanna Wesley, who raised ten children (including John and Charles Wesley), had to create her own monastic moments. When she needed some solitude and silence, she’d “fashion her own desert” by throwing her apron over her head in the kitchen. It was a universal signal to her kids that said, “Don’t bother mom. She’s trying to meet with God.”
If you’re a parent, you might be thinking, “My kids won’t even leave me alone when I’m going to the bathroom, they’re not about to stop talking just because an apron is over my head.” As a dad of three kids under eight-years-old, I get it.
If you’re not about to try that, try one of these other five ways to create monastic moments in your life.
1) Take back “waiting time.”
Your life is full of waiting time, but in a world in which we are “unable to sit unmediated for even a few moments that it takes a red light to turn green,” you have to resist the urge to fill your waiting time with mindlessly scrolling on your phone.5
It might be when you’re sitting at a stoplight, stuck in traffic, standing in line at the store, waiting for something to load, waiting for your spouse to get into the car, waiting on a meeting to get started, or just going number two. Don’t just turn to your phone in these moments, turn to God and turn them into monastic moments.
Waiting time doesn’t have to be wasted time. Let every moment of “waiting time” become an opportunity to wait on God rather than doomscroll or get something done.
2) Use the first or last moment of your day.
I used to think that the early morning was the only time that you could listen for God’s voice, but the more I studied the gospels and talked with other people, I’ve realized that not everyone is a morning person (and that's okay). Even Jesus often stayed up late listening for God’s voice—so late that all his friends fell asleep (Matthew 26:36-56) and, as we already looked at, he often got up before everyone else as well.
The margins of your day—the early morning and the late evening—provide some of the best opportunities for you to listen for God.
Just like Justin Whitmel Earley encourages the practice of “Bible before phone” in The Common Rule, make your first moment of the day or your last moment of a day a monastic moment when you listen for God’s voice.
3) Practice auscultare ambulando.
There’s a Latin phrase, solvitur ambulando, that basically means, “it’s solved by walking.” You’ve got a problem, go on a walk, get your blood pumping, and you’ll often find a solution.
I think the same is sometimes true with listening for God’s voice. We need to practice auscultare ambulando, which roughly translates as, “listening by walking.”6 Or, running or swimming or biking or (even) driving, for that matter.
Instead of just listening to a podcast or your running playlist, take your earbuds out and turn those activities into monastic moments. You might discover that all you needed to do in order to hear God’s voice was go on a long walk.
4) Try an “Analog Sunday.”
My friend Julian has started a movement called Analog Sunday. It’s a day to turn off your tv, log off your email, avoid your phone, take off your smartwatch, and spend your hours in analog-only mode. You can practice this on Sunday or another day of the week if that works better. What you’ll find when you go analog is that you have more monastic moments throughout the day you think.
5) Find a local monastery or church.
You don’t have to go to a monastery or a church building to hear God, but it probably doesn’t hurt. You might be surprised to discover that you live near a monastery or convent that’s open to letting you hang out and get some quiet—or even stay the night. (Just do a quick Google search and see what you find.)
Your pastor might be open to you stopping by the church on a weekday to sit in the sanctuary for a bit when no one else is really around. Many churches also have regular hours that they’re open for people to pray. You can even find a local prayer room through 24-7 Prayer.
These types of places tend to make it easier to practice monastic moments.
“Generally speaking,” Dallas Willard says, “God will not compete for our attention.”7 But, you don’t need to go on a darkness retreat to give God your attention and hear his voice. Creating a monastic moment might be as simple as turning your phone off while you’re on a walk. Just keep your “ubiquitous listening tool” with you so you’ve got a way to write something down if you’re sensing God speaking to you.
I’d love to hear your ideas: What other ideas do you have for creating monastic moments in your life? How have you created monastic moments in the past?
Next week, I’ll share the five best questions you can ask if you want to know whether that voice you’re hearing is God or not.
This is email 21 out of 40 in Hear From God in 40 Emails (Or Less)—a Substack series designed to give you biblical and practical guidance on hearing from God in a decision that matters to you. Start with the first email.
Christine Rosen, The Extinction of Experience, 101.
Jon Tyson, The Burden is Light.
Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart, 18.
Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart, 21.
Christine Rosen, The Extinction of Experience, 94.
I’m not a Latin scholar, but if you are, let me know if there’s a better phrase.
Dallas Willard, Hearing God, 120
All great advice! I've regained a lot of listening time (both to God and my family) by gradually eliminating phone scrolling over the past few months. You don't need to switch to a dumb phone to do this; just take a challenge with a buddy to share your screen time once a week, sharing any tweaks you made to see success and celebrating the positive results you saw in your families.