Living in a Monastery

A sacred rhythm of light, grief, devotion—and mud-stomping boots. A memoirist’s daily life at the edge of the wild.

Light travels across millions of miles, and still it arrives now.

I live in a monastery. Not one made of stone or hushed cloisters, but one built from attention—layered through ritual, light, grief, joy, and the ache of ordinary life.

My monastery is a 1941 house in Wisconsin with floors that creak and windows that catch the sunrise just right. I don’t wear robes. I wear my grubbiest clothes and my mud-stomping Boggs.

I get up around 8:30 a.m. and begin my devotions. The first is to the birds. I check the feeders—there are always at least two that need refilling. Chickadees, finches, juncos, and crows are already waiting. I watch them scatter and return. Then I unlatch the chicken coop and let my hens tumble out. I scatter seed, and they scatter it farther. That’s the rhythm.

Next is my pilgrimage to Starbucks for a triple oatmilk latte. I carry the same paper cup with me all day, slowly sipping and continually adding steaming raw goat milk. It’s become a ritual of control—one of the few places I still like to know exactly how things will unfold. Every monastery needs one vice. I have many.

From there, I drive with my three yearning dogs—Sheeta, Holiday Napkins, and Blue—to Governor’s Island, where I’ve walked since I was a child. It’s a protected stretch of forest bordered by lake. When I was young, I didn’t know why I felt drawn there. Now I understand: the land has always been calling me into remembrance.

The dogs chase deer, so most of the deer stay hidden. But every now and then, especially at sunset, I see thirty or more gathered in the enormous sloping field near Lake Mendota. When that happens, I park away from them—near the wired fence at Mendota Mental Health Institute—so the dogs won’t give chase. I’m always looking out for the wildlife, feeling the field and the forest and the lake as both pack leader and mystic.

I pause by the fence and say a prayer for any beings inside those walls—souls wrestling with what it means to be alive. From that place, every stone I toss, every wide-attention meditation I manage when I’m not on my phone is turned toward becoming one with this sacred patch of the Universe.

Even tossing the ball becomes a kind of meditation. I study the arc. I watch the speed of the dogs. Sheeta turns to a blur—pure motion, pure joy.

This is what it means to live in a monastery. To orient my day not around outcomes, but around presence. Around attention. Around the intimacy of my relationship with nature.

When my brother died, everything changed. His death didn’t just end his life—it rearranged mine.

In What My Brother Knew, my upcoming memoir, I write:

“I study the weight of my grief by taking the stone into my heart. I hear the far-off voices of people laughing and splashing in the lake. Something both old and immortal inside myself, beyond me and beyond death, works its way toward the steadiness of these rocks. I study a fly, its boldness, its ability to alight, come and go, and leave me behind.”

That’s the monastery. It’s not a retreat. It’s a deep engagement with the Real.

I’ve spent the last 25 years guiding people into healing—through colon cleansing, hair tissue mineral analysis, and nutritional therapy at Optimal Health Network. I speak fluently in the languages of biochemistry and trauma repair. But beneath it all, what I really offer is sacred remembering: that we are not separate.

On a recent trip to Vermont to work at The Center for World Philosophy and Religion, I took three photographs that stopped me. In one, the sun burst through snow-frosted branches. In another, light bent into abstraction through pine needles. In the last, a tree cradled the sun in its limbs.

These weren’t just beautiful images. They were transmissions.

Light travels at 186,282 miles per second, but from its perspective, it never left. Photons experience no time. The light that touches my face this morning left the sun over eight minutes ago—and yet it arrives now. When I truly feel this, I don’t just understand the science. I embody the mystery.

This changes everything.

It changes how I walk the wooded paths of Governor’s Island, fifty years later. It changes how I grieve. How I heal. How I hold a camera. How I pour my coffee.

It’s why I live this way—not above the world, but deeper into it. I pray not just with words, but by refilling the feeders. By letting the hens out. By watching the dogs splash along the PFA ridden lakeshore By listening deeply enough to feel to the shape of silence.

If you visit me, I’ll offer you a sparkling water and some liquid herbs. You can refill a feeder or help collect eggs. You can stand with me at the fence near Mendota. You might see deer. You might see nothing. But I promise you’ll feel something ancient beneath your feet. Something holy.

This is not just my monastery. It’s yours, too.

Let’s remember together. Let’s return.

You can preorder What My Brother Knew and explore more of my work at kristinaamelong.com.