Another Look at Hermits and the Place of Friendship

[[Dear Sister Laurel, I very much appreciate what you have written about the need for friendship in hermit life. Do you think friendships can also be a distraction? I remember when I was growing up Sisters weren't allowed to have what were called "particular friendships". Do you remember that? Is that still something Sisters watch out for? Do hermits decide about the place of friendships individually? Does anyone assist them? One hermit writes about some of this: [[When the hermit gives over to the Lord in accepting the less of the world and the more of the interior life, when the excuses or rationalizing of going and doing, of enabling and encouraging particular friendships, the hermit will settle into the rubrics, and essences exemplified by the saint hermits of history and tradition, the hermit will be in their mystical company, also increasingly so. ..]]

Thanks for your comments and questions; I have enjoyed this series of exchanges because the importance of friendship in eremitical life (and the care these require) is a dimension of eremitical life which is often misunderstood and leads to further misunderstanding of the nature of hermit life. I hope you will continue writing from time to time. It is a help to this blog, so thanks again.

Truly, I think almost anything can become a distraction for the hermit committed to the silence of solitude and bound to the evangelical counsels. I think even the multiplication of prayers and devotions can become a distraction from genuine prayer for those too busy with "doing prayer" and refusing to allow God to pray within them. Some approaches to piety as a way of self-perfection can distort authentic spirituality and distract from a genuine faith committed to allowing God to be God. So too can study, lectio which devolves into simple reading, manual labor which takes over one's life, But yes, of course, friendships could become distractions, particularly if a hermit is unhappy in her hermitage and/or her friends do not share her values or similar vocational commitments. However, if one lives one's Rule, one's vows, and is committed to allowing her life to be the gift which life in the silence of solitude truly is, friendship can, and ordinarily will play an important, though necessarily limited, part in growth in authentic humanity and abundant life.

Last March I wrote a post focused on an apothegm of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (it is reprised in the post below this one). That saying was: [[When one desert father told another of his plans to “shut himself into his cell and refuse the face of men, that he might perfect himself,” the second monk replied, “ Unless thou first amend thy life going to and fro amongst men, thou shall not avail to amend it dwelling alone.”]] (Sayings of the Desert fathers and Mothers) cf: The Desert Fathers and Mothers on the Hermit's Need for Human Relationships in Achieving Holiness.  There I acknowledged that I found this unambiguous part of Catholic eremitical tradition to be fascinating; I also think it was/will be very surprising to those who write that friendships and an eremitism built on a rich solitude rather than on isolation or physical solitude alone is some sort of betrayal of authentic eremitical life. To my mind that certainly includes the author of the blog you quote from above. Hermits affirm with their lives that God Alone is sufficient for us, but at the same time we recognize the ways God is mediated to us in human relationships and the importance of such relationships theologically as well as humanly.

Yes, I am familiar with the term "particular friendships"; I wrote about it not long ago. (cf On Hermits, Selfishness, and Friendship. Particular friendships were certainly something forbidden when I first entered religious life. But remember, this was about life in community and there was a sense that "particular" friendships could cause problems in loving one's Sisters --- all of one's Sisters --- in a similar or equal way in Christ. There was also the fundamental idea that Christ always came first in each Sister's life. (I suspect a piece of all of this was fear that some young Sisters would fall into lesbian relationships as well -- though that was not explicitly mentioned.) I remember when I first entered there were seven of us and we divvied up rooms according to natural affinities. Very quickly (I think it took about two days to a week) and our superiors shuffled us around so we tended to be "rooming" with those we had no natural affinity for. (When I say rooming here I am referring to the fact that we had taken over an old apartment building. Each apartment had three rooms and a bathroom. One bed was placed in each room so there were three Sisters in each former apartment.)

Generally I think this kind of discipline fostered an inadequate affective life in community and also could affect one's interior life with Christ similarly. One lived with Sisters one was discouraged from coming to know in the way we each need to know and be known; we often found (at funerals, for instance) that one had never come to know this person at all, might never have said a kind or truly personal word to her, and could say very little about her to one's other Sisters. Imagine this kind of finding in a community of women living as Sisters in Christ and sharing some of the most intimate values known! But this situation changed in the late sixties or early seventies onwards and in general what was discovered was that life in community became more loving and personal, Sisters grew in their own affective lives, while liturgies and prayer lives generally became warmer and more intimate in entirely appropriate ways. Yes, there were also occasional problems as Sisters negotiated a new approach to community and affective life, but generally speaking, I don't know any Sisters who would go back to the relatively distant institutionalized relationships that were so common when I entered.

Mainly Sisters don't use the term "particular friendships" any longer and it doesn't really work as a cautionary term except for those living in community. Sisters (including canonical hermits) have and benefit from friendships. Those friendships may be with Sisters in other congregations, with lay people with whom a Sister works and prays, etc. But of course Sisters live disciplined lives and have many responsibilities which don't really allow for using friendships to distract from their vowed commitments. More, most congregations involve some expression in "intentional communities" which allow for closer friendships, prayer, and so forth while protecting life in the larger community. For me it is an absolute joy to be able to spend time talking about prayer, Christ, Scripture, theology, poetry, and spirituality with my Directors or Dominican friend. I have three good Sister friends especially; they are from three different congregations and each could not be more different from one another --- or from me. Even so, we share our relationship to Christ who is our Beloved and help one another nurture that relationship. The old idea that one can't love Christ enough if one loves others or that one cannot have good friends and a truly intimate relationship with Christ at the same time has been shown to simply be untrue and even spiritually destructive. Loving better and more widely does not, of itself, diminish one's love for God in Christ. Instead, when one truly loves others and grows in one's capacity for love within the context of a committed religious or consecrated life, one's relationship with Christ will also grow (and vice versa).

But let me get back to hermits per se. Here I would argue that it is far more dangerous to have hermits who speak as the one you quote does about friendship than those who appreciate the place of friendship, for instance. That is especially so when the hermit has difficulties with relationships, for whatever the reason. Eremitical life is often seen as (and has often been) escapist, unloving, misanthropic, selfish, and essentially irrelevant. Someone who cannot maintain good relationships with friends or even family, who rejects the Church as a people called together in Thanksgiving (Eucharist) and speaks of it instead as some abstract, bloodless reality, who defines "world" as everything outside the hermitage door and derides everything else existing in space and time as somehow tainted or profane rather than potentially (or actually!) sacramental, gives the truth to these complaints. We must not allow this. Because eremitical life has a checkered history at best which quite often justified these stereotypes, and because c 603 seeks to protect and nurture an eremitical life which values the silence of solitude, but also because it is a way of proclaiming the Gospel and is lived for the salvation of the world, hermits must be free to develop quality friendships which actually enhance eremitical solitude and counter the destructive stereotypes still prevalent today.

I do think every hermit determines the place of friendship in her life. Canonical hermits will do this with the mutual assistance and discernment of her Director (i.e., her delegate), her spiritual director, and perhaps her bishop --- but she will mainly do this by looking at the deepening nature of her prayer and other dimensions of her life alone with God. She must discern the place of friendship, not on the basis of an abstract definition of eremitical life (though she will respect and live the fundamentals that define the life), but instead on the basis of the way God is working in her life and calling her to fullness of personhood in eremitical solitude. The space and time the hermit has for friendships is different from that of others, whether laity or religious, and the way these are maintained will differ as well. They will be significant relationships though --- rooted in prayer, fruitful for faith, important for growth in compassion and generosity, and for abundant life in Christ. To the extent friendships come from a healthy solitude rich with love and life and lead back to the same, they will be clearly discernible as blessings of God bestowed on the hermit and on her friend(s). Our God comes to us in the ordinary things of life -- that is a truth at the heart of the Incarnation. Authentic friendships, no matter the special care these require, is one instance of this, nothing less.