WIE: How have you found that your outward renunciation has supported and deepened your inner renunciation? How has the outward asceticism and solitude helped to deepen your inner spiritual life?

WM: That is a good question, because in our modern age there is a tendency to dismiss the need for exterior renunciation, saying, "We're grown up now; we've come of age, so all we need to do is renounce disturbing interior things but not exterior ones." It doesn't work. If there is no renunciation of inappropriate external things, then the whole interior life weakens. You can't separate the exterior from the interior. If we're not mortifying and renouncing a lot of external things, then we grow soft inside, we grow limp. There is no interior alertness, aliveness, because we're still too inordinately attached to external things: food, clothing, conveniences, comfort, my own schedule, my own agenda. All of that interferes with what God wants and what is absolutely the best for the human being.

If God is not supremely important, he's not important at all. So we have to judge everything, evaluate everything, and ask the question: How directly and immediately does this meeting, this talk, this meal, this movie relate to the ultimate human act, divine union? If we don't ask that question, we lose track.

WIE: What if someone came to you and said, "Father McNamara, I think that I want to become a monk, but is it worth it? From your own experience, tell me why it's worth it to take that step." What would you say to them?

WM: A monk is convinced that God is the all, and that short of union with him, life is a fallacy and we do more harm than good. So I would say that the basic reward of taking that leap and becoming a monk, becoming a god-man, possessed by God, overwhelmed by God, is human freedom. It just obliterates all of those shackles, all of those forms of imprisonment that prevent freedom. We're not only free for delightful, passionate, intimate union with God, but we're free to enjoy all that pertains to him and belongs to him with no designs on any of it. We're not grabbing, clutching, using. We just see God's gifts and thank him. It's a wonderful, free life. It's sheer joy.

WIE: That's inspiring, because so many people see it as the opposite.

WM: I know. That's the popular opinion. Spooky, sour monks. I think of monks as the fish that jump out of the water. They're the live ones. That's what monks do—they jump out of the ordinary, everyday environment in order to taste God.

WIE: Jesus said, "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." Like other great religious figures of history, Jesus inspired a very strong spirit of renunciation in his disciples, many of whom walked away from family, friends, and work forever to follow him into a homeless life of poverty and simplicity. As a contemplative monk in the Christian tradition, what do you think of that kind of radical step, of dropping everything, walking away, and leaving the world completely behind to pursue the spiritual life?

WM: That radical kind of leaving the world behind in order to do the one thing necessary, in order to follow Christ into the abyss, into the ultimate communion with his Father and his Father's world, is the most dramatic kind of gesture. Although everyone can't do that, it's absolutely indispensable that some do it. By doing that, by leaving the whole world behind and going into the desert (let's use the desert as a symbol), they become the best possible witnesses of the living God. What greater testimony could there be that God is alluring, that God is absolute, that God is demanding? And in so many cases it's a very enriched mind that does that; it's a noble person. Any kind of person who does that becomes a living witness, but the more noble the person, the greater the witness. People say, "God alone satisfies that man or that woman. Nothing but God." And that's worth all the preaching and all the writing in the world—just living that way.

There have been people like that from the beginning, and there will be until the end. They are the people who keep the world from falling apart. It's not the people who are busy all day and all night in offices, on computers, in the hurly-burly of the world, but the people who have a pure heart and who want only God. The overflow of that—its benefit for the world—is tremendous.

My favorite example is St. Anthony the Hermit. He was the first hermit, in the fourth century. He heard a sermon in church that quoted that exact same statement of Christ's that you just read, and he went off to the desert and stayed for eighteen years. Then he came back, and he was alive with love and he had a tremendous effect on people. He was sustained by God, and because of that he just radiated God.

Look at Jesus himself. The apostles would wake up in the morning, and they wouldn't be able to find him because he was out in the desert communing with his Father. Now if he had to do that—how ridiculous we are to think that we could pull it off under our own steam.

In all the traditions, it is the great people who take that kind of radical step away from the world. It's not just an individual thing, a private kind of spiritual matrimony with God. It's also an apocalyptic thing. They are willing to wage war with the enemies of God. And they do it first of all by being committed entirely to God, and then, once they make themselves available to him, they are also willing to be sent by him, if he sees fit, into the worst places in the world. All they know is that they have to make themselves available, by going into the desert, and then whatever God does is fine with them. But if they don't take that first step, nothing happens.

WIE: Many people today feel that the contemplative life, the life of solitude and renunciation, is fundamentally self-centered, merely an escape from the problems of our modern society. Yet both you and the cofounder of your Spiritual Life Institute, Mother Tessa Bielecki, have claimed the very opposite—that the contemplative life is the crucial and missing answer to many of the most pressing issues of the human predicament, "perhaps the only hope for the future of our endangered planet," as Mother Tessa says. Could you explain why you view the renunciate or mystical life not as a flight from the world's problems but rather as the best way to get at the essence of what ails the human race?

WM: The reason a human being renounces the so-called world in pursuit of the contemplative life is because that person not only accepts responsibility for him- or herself, but they are literally in love with the world, and they are convinced that by moving into solitude, they move into the heart of reality. And from that God-centered place, deep down in the universe, in the real—from that prayerful center, they believe that they can touch and uplift everyone in the world to some degree. So what they are seeking is more reality, more communion, more salvific human activities that will help the whole world. They are not primarily trying to perfect themselves or sanctify themselves, because only God can do that, and only the exigencies of life can do that, when one is responsive to them and therefore allows God to break through.

There's absolutely no selfishness in the life of a genuine monk, a genuine contemplative. No, they are called by God to make themselves present to him so that he can use them for the benefit of the world.

WIE: Many people today feel that the whole concept of renunciation and monasticism is outdated in the modern world, based on values that are world-denying, patriarchal, and which imply a false split between the world and God, between the body and the spirit. What would you say to those who feel that we need a new form of spirituality based on a total integration of the worldly life and the spiritual life?

WM: Certainly your whole life is your spiritual life. There is no doubt about that. We do have to integrate every aspect of our lives into the center, into the god-spirit that permeates and sustains us. But it is obvious to me, and should be obvious to everyone, I think, that the monastic life, if properly understood, is the most conducive way to achieve this end. Because the monastic life does integrate them. It provides the most balanced possible life, if it's genuine.

For example, our own life in the Carmelite order I started is the only instance I know of where there is a marvelous cooperation and balance between man and woman, between solitude and community, between work and play. That has always been the purpose of monastic life, to provide the most humanizing set of circumstances or conditions so that God is free to sanctify the human being and then to act, through the human being, on the whole world. I think that because people don't understand the real meaning of monastic life, they falsely see a separation. The whole purpose is to unite and to integrate everything, but on a deep level. There are a lot of shallow, superficial efforts in that direction today, but they are kind of juvenile and transient; they're passing fads. Whereas the monastic life is so essential and so substantial that it goes right to the heart of the human being and the human world, and there unfolds effectively.

WIE: Why do you think it is that there are now so few people interested in the kind of life that you have undertaken?

WM: I think that most people in this modern age are seduced by the workaday world. The average human being is being deceived by hyper-activity, feverish activity. It's dispersed human energy. It is not hitting the target. It is not uplifting the world. It's just a roundelay of repetitive mechanisms, over and over again, with no final end.

George Santyana, the great Harvard professor, said, "A fanatic is one who, having forgotten the end, multiplies the means." And that's what we're all doing. Where are we? We don't know. Who are we? We don't know. We're just busy. And that embarrasses us, and so we keep doing more things to cover over the embarrassment, the emptiness, the hollowness of our lives. So given the condition that we're in, we shy away from the contemplative life.

WIE: Do you think that is also partly because the predominant message in the spiritual world right now seems to be that you can do it in the midst of the world, in the midst of your work and your life? Does this message help to blind people to what you were just speaking about?

WM: Yes, and that's so seductive because it's half true. You can do it in your present circumstances and conditions, but not unless you take radical steps for transformation. And so people say, "Oh yes, we can do it in these circumstances and conditions, if . . ." But they never follow up the "if." They never introduce those measures, those disciplines, those habits of life that will make it possible. So ultimately it's possible, but existentially it's not possible because no one is doing what it takes to make it possible.

WIE: It seems that even those people who do have a genuine passion and interest in spiritual life often don't consider the step of monasticism. I wonder if that's also partially because it has been denigrated in our modern society.

WM: I've given retreats to a lot of people who are totally dissatisfied with their way of life, but they don't have the gumption, they don't have the bravery, they don't have the heroism to change it. They know it's killing them. They feel like robots, automatons, but they don't have the courage to change. It would mean stepping out of that rat race, taking a stand against that whole current. It's a lonely, heroic thing to ask of anyone, and so people won't do it.

WIE: I have one last question. As a spiritual practitioner, I know that it can be quite a shock to come back into the world after a period of time in seclusion, and I'm sure that that is even more true for someone who's spent as much time as you have in solitude. I was curious what your experience is of spending time out in the world. What do you see when you walk out into this modern society?

WM: I guess I see two things, progressively. One is that I'm more and more aware of the unreal aspect of what I go back out into, as opposed to the ideal situation in which I live. The noise, the frenzy, the lack of meaning in things. For instance, the expressed, articulated relationship of creature to Creator is not obvious. It's not there, or at least when it's there, it's smothered, it's submerged. I never hear anyone refer to God except by profane language. It's all very remote, and it's all very separate. People have somewhere a spirituality, they have somewhere a religious duty, and it's pretty conventional. They go through it on Sunday. So I feel all of that right away when I enter the world. I feel a sense of, "I'm an alien." And there's a sadness with that.

On the other hand, despite all that, because of some kind of awareness of God that has become habitual, I sense his presence more in the turmoil. But at the same time it's kind of a "negative presence." I don't mean that he's absent, because he's not absent. I sense our absence, not the absence of God. I perceive and appreciate God in an alien world.