Yes, I am afraid it was rather muddy, wasn't it? Let me clarify what I was thinking in Retired and Seeking to live Eremitical Life. The poster asked about living eremitical life and said he had been living this for a few weeks and was considering private vows. That seems way too premature to me. I suggested he give living the way he is at least another year and begin working with a spiritual director regularly.
At this point he might or might not be ready to write a Rule or set of guidelines regarding how God works in his life and how he needs to respond to that. It is still too early for vows of any kind here. It is even too early to call oneself a hermit. The solitude one is living is still transitional and he will need to negotiate the grief of loss of job, and embrace a new way of living and seeing himself as well. It is always more than simply living alone. This takes time. At the end of two years (more if necessary), if he can live this Rule faithfully, and can develop it further with the aid of his work with his director, he would then write a Rule that would accompany private vows.
This Rule would describe and inspire a life which looks and is eremitical at its heart. For instance, it would involve the central elements of c 603 and the way he proposes to live these elements, even though the poster is not proposing to make canonical vows. More and more these elements would shape and define his life; more and more deeply over time, he will penetrate their depths. If he persists in this enterprise in this way, he will have moved from being a lone individual with thoughts of being a hermit, to truly being a novice hermit.
He would write the Rule mentioned above with the idea it is something he will live for at least five years, but the vows he makes would be for a year or two only. They could be renewed at the end of that time. Only once he is able to write a liveable Rule that reflects the way God is working in his life, his embrace of the central elements of canon 603, and which he could easily see serving as his way of life for at least five years has he reached the kind of stable identity where he could consider or call himself a hermit. Until then he remains a lone individual transitioning to eremitical life of some kind.
The numbers I suggested are not carved in stone. However, they can help to serve an important purpose. It takes time to become a hermit and living alone is not the whole of it. It is merely the context in which one acquires the heart of a hermit. It takes time to create the heart of a hermit and the poster I was responding to, like anyone else needs to allow for that time and work with God and a spiritual director in the creation of such a heart.
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