Hermitage as Outpost of the World? Questions.

[[Dear Sister, you wrote recently that it was possible for a hermitage to become an instance of "the world." I think you have said that before and I don't really understand what you meant. Can you explain this to me?]]

Sure, I would be happy to give that a shot. Remember that "the world" means that which is resistant to Christ or promises fulfillment apart from him. It is not so much a distinct "thing" out there, some sort of "pure object" (as Merton explains) as it is something which is untrue or illusory with regard to reality. "The world" represents a falsification of what is real. What I wrote earlier was, [[. . . This sense of the term "world" refers to anything which is untrue, distorted, resistant to life, to love, and to all the rest of the values which constitute life in God. But it is not God's good creation, therefore, from which we mainly separate ourselves. It is "the world" of falsehood, chaos, and meaninglessness, and this means that it is not something distinct existing merely outside of ourselves, but instead is a reality which is intimately related to the darkness, woundedness, distortions, and sclerosis (hardness) of our own hearts.]]

So, bearing that in mind, how could a hermitage become an actual outpost of "the world"? What I originally had in mind was the falsehood that one could simply shut the door on "the world" and forget about "the world" represented by the wounded, distorted, and false parts of one's own heart. I was thinking of situations where a hermitage was treated as a holy place completely separate from the rest of temporal-spatial reality. It would be a fundamental untruth to deny that one carries the world deeply in one's own heart or to affirm that one can simply shut some physical door on "the world" and treat it as something merely "out there". Such a foundational falsehood would therefore become an instance of "the world" or "worldly (anti-Christ) thinking" and the hermitage (and the eremitical life!) built on and pervaded by such an untruth --- as well as by the resulting pretense that one does not need to depend wholly upon God's mercy and love --- would then become an outpost and symbol of these -- an outpost and symbol of the very reality they are meant to stand in opposition to. More, in embracing such untruth and pretense, the hermit abdicates her responsibility (and her capacity) to speak the truth into the situation outside the hermitage in a way which will redeem it.

It is true that hermitages can (and are meant to be) holy places, but they are also, for that very reason, places where the struggle between truth and untruth is often waged in earnest. This (struggle) is not always the dominant reality within the hermitage but to abandon this struggle by treating "the world" as something merely exterior to oneself and one's place, is to turn away not only from a central aspect of the eremitical vocation, but from the ministry of reconciliation --- which is every Christian's --- while embracing untruth and distortion instead. Other ways of abandoning the struggle include abandoning prayer or any other central discipline of the hermitage. (Note, this does not preclude experiments with horarium, etc, nor times when one is ill and needs certain praxis relaxed, etc. Neither does it refer to a hermitage where the hermit sometimes truly struggles with the elements central to her life. Emphatically not!) Hypocrisy and pretense, however, are symptomatic of "the world", not of a hermitage.

That's the brief answer. I hope it helps!