Monastery of the Sacred Earth

A Monastery Without Walls

~ New monasticism rooted in the living world ~

A Rule of Life
Kept Outdoors

Monastic life has always been organized around return: the same hours and practices, repeated day after day until they shape the person who keeps them. I am asking what that wisdom offers those of us trying to live attentively in the world as it is now.

Monastery of the Sacred Earth carries that rhythm into an ordinary life with a job, a home, and a calendar that fills too fast. Its cloister is the path I already walk. Its teachers include a pine tree in a Parisian park, the frogs outside Espalion along the Camino route in France, and a cow on the Camino who lifted her head surrounded by flowers before I lifted mine.

It grew from my own need for structure and a call toward monastic life, and I am building it in public, one working version at a time.

What Makes This Monastic?

For centuries, monastic traditions have organized life around rhythm, prayer, study, silence, work, simplicity, hospitality, and service. I am asking what that wisdom offers those of us trying to live attentively in the world as it is now.

Monastery of the Sacred Earth places those practices in relationship with the living world. The cloister may be a forest trail, a neighborhood street, a city park, or the place outside your own door. The bell may be sunrise, the first stars, or a sound on your phone kept for nothing else. The life becomes monastic through a rhythm of attention and response, chosen and kept in the middle of ordinary days.

What would it take for a few practices, kept long enough, to shape a whole life with the living world?

The Daily Hours

Rising

Dawn

Day

Dusk

Rest

The day turns on 5 hours: Rising, Dawn, Day, Dusk, and Rest. Around them sit 5 more practices that return across weeks and seasons.

  1. Keeping the Hours. 5 pauses a day, each called by a bell sound kept for nothing else.
  2. Walking as Practice. The same routes, walked slowly enough to meet who lives along them.
  3. Reading the Living World. Earth-Based Lectio Divina in 4 movements: Receive, Ponder,
  4. Belonging to Place. Learning the watershed, the seasons, and the neighbors who are more than human.
  5. Study and Reflection. Reading the traditions this practice borrows from, and writing back to them.
  6. Simplicity and Service. Asking what is enough and what belonging to a place asks in return.

A Rhythm of Practice

The monastery takes shape through practices we return to regularly. Some mark the hours of the day, while others deepen our relationship with place, the living world, and the way we choose to live.

Keeping the Hours

Brief pauses at Rising, Dawn, Day, Dusk, and Rest give the day a contemplative rhythm. Each one returns attention to what is unfolding and to how we want to meet the hours ahead.

Walking as Practice

Walking becomes a way to enter into relationship with place. We attend to weather, season, sound, movement, and the more-than-human lives around us, allowing the path itself to become part of the practice.

Reading the Living World

Earth-Based Lectio Divina extends sacred reading to the living world, which reads us back. Through sustained attention to land, water, plants, animals, weather, and encounter, we practice its 4 movements: Receive, Ponder, Respond, Belong.

Belonging to Place

We learn where we are: the watershed, seasons, species, histories, and communities of the place we inhabit. Over time, familiarity can deepen into relationship, and relationship can lead toward reciprocity and responsibility.

Study and Reflection

Monastic life has long set study beside contemplation. Reading, journaling, and reflection place our experience within older traditions of wisdom and keep us questioning how we understand our relationship with the Earth.

Simplicity and Service

Simplicity asks what is enough and what we can release. Service asks how our attention to the living world changes the way we care for human and more-than-human communities. Together they ask what our attention to the living world requires us to do.

In Conversation with Wild Church

Monastery of the Sacred Earth shares important ground with the Wild Church movement and its emphasis on direct relationship with the places where we live. Wild Church has helped articulate a spirituality in which land, water, weather, plants, animals, and seasons take part in worship and practice.

The monastery approaches that same relationship through monastic formation. Our relationship with the living Earth begins to shape the rhythm of the day, the practices we return to, the things we study, the choices we make, and how we understand service.

How might we live the hours of an ordinary day with the living world, from Rising to Rest?

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This Monastery Is Still Taking Shape

I share practices while they are still working versions.

Earth-Based Lectio Divina went public in April 2026 and came back refined in July, shaped by readers who tried it on their own ground. The Earth-Based Examen went public in October 2026 and is in its first season of testing. The Rule on this site will develop and change in the same way.share practices while they are still working versions.

What would it take for a few practices, kept long enough, to shape a whole life with the living world?

Follow Along and Write Back

This began as my own Rule, kept for my own days. I share it as an invitation to try any part of it on your own ground and tell me what holds there.

New practices, revisions to the Rule, and notes from the path go out first through Contemplative Walking on Substack.

Next steps for this website (for full transparency):

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