In 2,000, I left the familiar behind, including my family, and set off on a Hero Journey that was frightening, challenging, and full of danger. It was a difficult thing to do, an awful thing to do in many ways, and it led to my life now,  but today, looking back. With the benefit of hindsight and the joy of a happy and meaningful life, I can finally say it was the right decision for everyone who got hurt, including me.

I set out on a spiritual life, which also saved me and almost tore me to pieces.

I ended up living on the first Bedlam Farm for six years by myself and struggled alone with all of the demons I had unleashed. At one point, I decided that my life was hopeless and that I would never find the love of life I sought. For the first and last time in my life, I seriously considered thinking of a way to end my life.

Two people saved my life: Maria, who said I was just the person she was looking for, and my therapist, who sat with me and asked me if I ever said a prayer for myself. And perhaps a dog or two.

“No,” I said, almost without thinking, “I became a prayer.”

I am not a religious person, and I did not pray to a God. Prayer has come to me at many levels, shapes, sizes, and colors at many different moments. Hundreds of thousands of books are online about worship, but fear is not predictable or teachable, at least for me. Anybody can pray anytime; I suspect most people do at one point or another. For me, it had to come from deep inside.

Joan Chittister writes that the theologians of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were skilled at dissecting and defining prayer. They described silent prayer, spoken prayer, prayer of the mind, prayer of the heart, and union with God. I did get some help from them.

I learned the most from the Rule of Benedict, which instructed the monastic community to keep prayer brief and silent. I learned to pray alone and without interruption. Some call meditation a kind of prayer that the Benedicts didn’t know about. Meditation became a prayer for me, a way to see the truth about myself and work to face the truth and improve.

I needed to pray regularly, and I discovered that contemplative prayer begins when formal prayer ends.

“Prayer,” I read in one of my spiritual books, “is not a technique. It is an attitude of mind, a quality of soul, and a daily dimension.”

For me, prayer was also an expression of hope and the need to find a meaningful life, in which I learned to love others as much or more as I learned to love myself. “Vision, sacrifice, and hope are the caretakers of the future,” wrote Chittister  of those seeking a spiritual way, “without them, tomorrow is impossible, and today is straw.”

I learned that spirituality is a long haul, a constant, unyielding commitment to keep criticizing and understanding what is beyond criticism and understanding. Spirituality is about love and keeping hope alive.

I decided that I would try to become a prayer rather than pray to a God I wasn’t sure about. I had to follow my dogma, not someone else’s.

It’s too early to say if my prayers were answered; I may never know in my lifetime.

I also know that once I committed to living a spiritual life and it became my prayer, my life began to change.

It was challenging and complicated.  I am still far from the person I hope to be. I will probably never be that person, but I will never stop trying.

But the things I most wanted began to come into my life—Maria, the freedom to write freely, the value of meditation and authenticity, the slow and painful ejection of anger and grievance, my farm, my blog,  my photography, and my love of colors, the animals I had come to love so much, the natural world all around me, and a partner to help me build a wonderful life.

I prayed for the right to be happy, find love, and do some good,  and lo and behold, my prayers were answered.

I’d love to know what the Benedictines would make of that.