I lived in a hermitage in the wilderness for over fifty years, in three different countries and six different landscapes, some of those years without electricity or running water. Since 2017, now that I’m nearly 80 and need to be closer to good health care, I live in an apartment in Tucson, Arizona. Small and simple, I call it my “urban hermitage” because the solitary life I lead here is barely different from my earlier years in the wilds. What have all these decades as a contemplative and hermit taught me that may benefit others who want to live more contemplatively amid their active lives in the world?

1. Live in tune with the rhythms of the earth.

Even if you live in the city, as I do now, this is key. Find a place out in nature that’s special to you and visit that same place often. Or at least look out your window. My friend Mary Brodie was crippled with rheumatoid arthritis and barely left her bed. She deeply inspired me by the richness she saw out her tiny bedroom window. What do you see? What changes through the seasons? What happens to the light? How does the air feel on your face? What’s growing now, even if it’s only on your windowsill? Where does the sun come up and go down? What constellations do you see in the sky, and how do they move? The spectacular gathering of three bright planets, Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn, which happens only every twenty years, consoled me in the first months of Covid-19 lockdown when I woke in the night, filled with anxiety. I love subscribing to the Sky Calendar published by the Abrams Planetarium so that I know what’s happening in the skies each month.

2. Begin and end the day well.

It doesn’t matter what you do, if the beginning and end are intentional and focused – not necessarily silent or even quiet. In my formal years of monastic life, I went to chapel with my community morning and evening and prayed the psalms, with a period of silent meditation. Now I simply sit and welcome the new day or its end with the rhythms of sun and moon, the sounds and smells outside my apartment, with birds and clouds, raindrops or snowflakes. Music is good. So is any kind of formal meditation or exercise. I swim and walk in the desert, especially nurtured by the majesty of Saguaro National Park. My friend Dave bikes along the Santa Cruz River. Every night before bed, I do a brief “check-in” (we used to call it an “examen”) and hold myself accountable for the quality of my day. I often meditate on a poem from the tranquil Poetry Unbound podcast as part of my evening prayer, called Compline because it “completes” the day. Children? A word about them soon.

3. Live each day deliberately.

This means “ordering” the day. One of the geniuses of monasticism is the horarium or Rule of Life, which orders the hours of the day. A personal Rule of Life still helps me. In her little classic, Gift from the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh struggles with the busyness of her life and calls it zerrissenheit, meaning “torn-to-pieces-hood” in German. She discovers that “one perfect day can give clues for a more perfect life.” Nothing can guarantee a perfect day, but we can set the stage for a good one. The first step is to order the day. The quality of each individual day determines the overall quality of our life. The poet May Sarton reveals a secret she and I both share: “Routine is not a prison, but the way into freedom from time. The apparently measured time has immeasurable space in it.” What a koan!

4. Live mindfully in the present moment.

I ask myself the same question as Lindbergh: How do I remain “whole in the midst of the distractions of life… balanced, no matter what centrifugal forces tend to pull me off center?” If I suffer from zerrissenheit, fragmentation, lack of focus, or a dispersion of energy, then I need to practice focus, recollection, mindfulness, a concentration of energy. It helps to have a “mantra,” which we Catholics used to call an “aspiration,” a short word or phrase we repeat throughout the day, especially when we feel frantic or torn to pieces, to quiet us down and bring us back to center. These words don’t have to be “spiritual.” Zorba the Greek asked himself, “What are you doing now, Zorba?” Then he’d answer, “Do it well, Zorba,” or “There’s nothing else on earth.” A Zen teacher I know repeats “Just this, just this, just this.” My root teacher, William McNamara, talked about “personal passionate presence,” which I like better than “mindfulness.” We need to live each moment personally, passionately present, or as Ram Dass said, we need to “Be here now.”

5. Work well without worry and fret.

We tend to blame our busyness or “torn-to-pieces-hood” on the work we need to do in the world. I fell into this trap for years until I realized that the difficulty was not my work but worry about my work. I looked more carefully at the Gospel story of Martha and Mary in Luke 10:38-42, which Catholics have used for centuries to create a false dichotomy between contemplation and action. I realized that Jesus did not reproach Martha for her serving, but for being distracted with the serving. She missed out on “the better part” not because of her work, but because of her worry and fret over it. We need to be both Mary and Martha. St. Teresa insists that the two are sisters and “walk together.” We make either-or what God made both-and. I can be busy, but not frantic; occupied, but not preoccupied; a good worker, but not workaholic. This is the key to sacred activism which Andrew Harvey calls the “fusion of the deepest spiritual knowledge and passion with clear, wise, radical action in all the arenas of the world, inner and outer.” Adam Bucko calls it engaged contemplation.