New Resident at Mepkin
Mepkin has a new resident, Jake Atlas, who will be with us for six months, until June. Jake is a native of Austin, Texas. He has one older sister. After attending his local public school, he attended University of Texas, in Austin. He studied philosophy and graduated in May 2020.
Since May, Jake has been living in the Southeast doing conservation work, most notably building a mountain bike trail in West Virginia. He also worked in the Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina. Most recently, he was employed as a window repair technician on Andrew Jackson’s ancestral home in Greenville, Tennessee. When he finishes at Mepkin, he hopes to go to Malawi with the Peace Corps.
Although Jake joins us because of his interest in religion from an academic point of view, he also has been searching for a deeper meaning in life after having been raised without a religious tradition. Reading Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain has brought him to our monastery. We wish him every blessing during his time with us.