Discerning Whether one lives a Solitude marked by Community or Community marked by Solitude

[[ Hi Sister, thanks for answering my questions. I'm sorry for your difficulties in your parish. I will certainly pray for you and them! It does raise some more questions for me though. For instance, because your parish has always been such an important part of your vocation, would you ever consider changing parishes? What happens to a diocesan hermit who finds that living in a given parish or diocese detracts from living his/her vocation? I mean you can't just go off to another diocese, or can you? Also, from your earlier answer, what is the cut-off line that makes a hermit a hermit instead of being a religious living in community? I hope you understand what I mean here. You don't divide things up percentage-wise so how do you determine you are a hermit participating in community rather than a community member living a non-eremitical form of solitude? Does that make sense? And one last question, what kinds of questions can people ask you? Have you considered opening your blog to comments? I would bet you get more questions if you did that.]]

Good questions and yes, I think I understand what you are asking in all of them. Thanks for your prayers for me and my parish. I appreciate that very much and would note the difficulties we are experiencing are probably not much different from those a lot of folks have or are experiencing in relation to widespread attempts by some to move back behind or to prevent the full reception of Vatican II. Would I ever consider changing parishes? Yes, at least I would consider finding other options for regular Mass attendance and preaching that meets my own need to be fed. In some ways, I already do part of that by listening to homilies that are live-streamed. It may be at some point I will need to find a more comprehensive solution, but I am not there yet. 

Regarding changing dioceses the situation is more complicated. Though a diocesan hermit is a canonical hermit wherever she goes within the universal church, should she wish to move to another diocese, she must get the permission of the new bishop in order to be accepted as a diocesan hermit in that diocese. (She cannot live in one diocese and be professed in another.) Her current bishop will confirm she is a hermit in good standing while the new bishop accepts responsibility for her vocation, vows, and canonical status in this new diocese. So, the short answer to your question is no, hermits can't just go off to another diocese; neither am I looking to do so.

Your follow-up questions on determining whether one is a hermit living solitude as a unique form of community, or someone living in community with a consonant and significant focus on solitude is important. When a hermit writes that community is important in her life, is there a danger that at some point she ceases being a hermit and morphs into something else? Yes, that is a danger and it is something dioceses have to discern with candidates prior to profession and hermits must discern at various points thereafter as well. It is important both that solitude not be a name given to validate isolation and individualism, and at the same time, that despite the pervasive presence of community in the hermit's life and coloring her solitude, that she really be living eremitical solitude and bringing the silence of solitude to experiences of community. How does one know what one is really living?

You are correct that I don't use percentages to determine things here. The Trappistines I mentioned in my earlier post refer to balance as important in assuring that they live 100% community and 100% solitude. It is also an important term in managing the relationship between prayer and work so that while they live Benedict's ora et labora, eventually prayer seeps into the Sisters' work and they live a life of prayer in all things. In my own life, and I think in any hermit's life, one begins with the defining elements of one's life. Here c 603 refers to stricter separation from the world, assiduous prayer and penance, and the silence of solitude --- all lived for the salvation of the world. All four of these taken together (the motivation for the first three is critical) are important in determining whether or not one is living eremitical solitude or using the term solitude to validate something else. Together, they lead me to discern what I am living in terms not of balance, but of healthiness and focus.

The Silence of Solitude, a Key to Discernment:

When I write about the silence of solitude I treat it as the context, goal, and charism of the eremitical life. It is context because almost everything I do is done in the silence of my hermitage's solitude. That context is the ground and supportive sphere in which I pray, study, recreate, do inner work (spiritual direction-related work including meetings with my director), and write. Do I go out? Yes, for Mass, walks, some doctor's visits, occasional lunches or coffees, occasional workshops or talks, and until a few years ago, weekly rehearsals for orchestra. Since COVID I tend to do some shared lectio and some Bible study (including those I teach) along with annual or bi-annual retreats via ZOOM;  I meet my doctors via ZOOM as well, but the silence of solitude is first of all about living alone with God in this hermitage. This way is healthy for me, the way I am most truly myself, and the way God can most truly be God for and with me.

The silence of solitude is something I also recognize as the goal of my life. Here silence means the healing of woundedness, the healing and reconciliation of the various anguished and otherwise noisy voices of the past that call for forgiveness, and even more, the achievement of the authentic expression of my deepest self. When I speak of being made to be a Magnificat (cf banner at top of this blog) I am thinking of being made silent in some ways that allow God's life to sing within and through me so that I become not just God's prayer in this world, but God's hymn of praise --- even when the overtones and harmonies of that hymn are profoundly modal or echo my life's lamentations. In some ways, silence here means not getting in the Word's way and allowing it to come to fruition as I am called and empowered to incarnate it for the sake of the whole world. Here the "silence of solitude" which is central to c 603, points to human wholeness and holiness --- the achievement in God of true individuality where my own deepest potentials are realized and appropriately expressed in my most mature Sel. At the same time, the shouts, temptations, and anguish of the world that can deflect such a process are rendered silent or harmonious (even if now gently dissonant) and of no distorting influence.

Finally, the silence of solitude is the charism of my vocation. I believe hermits live this reality with a special focus and vividness. They say with their lives that every person is called to be completed by God and made for a love that can only be received as gift. Given all the various idols alive and prevalent in our world, all of the things without which we are told we cannot live or be happy and complete or whole, the hermit defines authentic humanity in terms of communion with God and points clearly to all of the values and goals which, more often than not, help ensure we "miss the mark" (i.e., are bound by and to sin) instead. That it is really possible to achieve meaningful and fruitful authentic humanity via the love of God is the claim hermits make with lives lived in eremitical solitude; it is a gift we live for the sake of all others and their own search for completion and abundant life.

The purpose of eremitical solitude is to provide a unique (though not the only) way toward Communion and even Union with God. Again, in my life, I understand communion with God as part of being authentically human and necessary for any genuinely loving relationship with others. Each of the canon's central elements mentioned above puts communion-towards-union with God right at the center of the hermit's life; communion with God which tends toward union is the primary definer of the meaning of eremitical solitude, there thing which makes it context, goal, and charism. The first question I have to ask myself therefore is "am I living an eremitical solitude which first of all tends toward union with God?" The second question is related and has to do with how I know this to be true, namely, "Am I living a healthy solitude which is marked by personal growth as a whole and holy human being?" The last questions I tend to ask myself are, "How does community color and shape my solitude and how is it affected by my solitude; does it foster my life in communion-toward-union with God or detract from that? Is it enhanced by my solitude or does it seem to conflict with it?" All of this and more goes into determining how I am living solitude in its relation to community. I hope this is helpful. 

Regarding your question about opening this blog up to comments, etc., I considered it a number of years ago and decided against it. While I appreciate folks writing me via email and otherwise, opening the blog to comments seemed to me to make the boundaries between my hermitage and the world outside it far too porous. This blog is an extension of my life in solitude and the questions I receive are questions I open within the hermitage and its routines. I have some real control over these --- when to read them, when and how to respond to them prayerfully during my day or week. I can work on my blog without being assailed by comments and questions and at the same time can give such things the time they really deserve and call for without feeling assaulted by other opinions, questions, and concerns. (Those too will have their proper time and space if and whenever folks take the time to write me!) Not sure if I can explain this sense of mine any better than that; I hope you can understand what I mean.

Weather and Accessibility Updates on New Camaldoli Hermitage

I have had news over the past several days regarding New Camaldoli Hermitage near Big Sur. Due to the rains here (Norther CA) and problems with slides along the coast roads, NCH is currently closed to guests but also isolated from incoming assistance and supplies. Father Cyprian wrote the following to update Oblates and others who care. I am passing it on:

“We had heavy rains––7.14 inches––yesterday on top of the intermittent heavy rains we have had for the past ten days. Highway 1 is now closed all the way from Palo Colorado Road in the north to the Elephant Seal viewing area in the south, so a distance of about 70 miles. There is at least one major slide to the north of us (there are bound to be countless little ones); and there is at least one major one 25 miles south of us. They have closed the gates on either side of Paul’s Slide, the one that we sit on, so we can’t even go 100 feet south of our driveway now. On top of that, a section of a slope slid down on our entrance road, right where the old road meets the new one, with bushes, rocks, and mud. It is impassable at this point, but our guys are down there now with a bulldozer, two Bobcats, and a backhoe trying to clear it.

 Our biggest issue is that we are low on propane in some of the tanks so we are conserving and moving folks around to places where there is more available. We have also moved all our liturgies into the Chapter Room for the time being to save on heat there too. We have no idea when a delivery truck can make it to us.

The good news is everyone is fine, and in a pretty good mood, staff included, who are consistently loyal and resilient. And thanks to Br. Benedict’s diligence we have enough canned and dry goods to weather most any kind of isolation.

We have been warned to expect more atmospheric rivers in the coming days, but anyone who says they know for sure what is going to happen is not to be believed. So we shall wait and see! Of course all our guests are gone and we have no idea when we will be able to welcome anyone just yet. We hope soon, obviously.

Join us in prayer for all those who have lost life and property, for the evacuated and the homeless, and for all the first responders out there who really have their hands full all up and down the coast. 

Thank you so much for all your concerns and prayers, loyalty and love. We feel it!”

Feast of the Baptism of Jesus

 Of all the feasts we celebrate, today's feast of the baptism of Jesus is one of the most difficult for us to understand. We are used to thinking of baptism as a solution to original sin instead of the means of our initiation into the death and resurrection of Jesus, or our adoption as daughters and sons of God and heirs to his Kingdom, or again, as a consecration to God's very life and service. When viewed this way, and especially when we recall that John's baptism was one of repentance for sin, how do we make sense of a sinless Jesus submitting to it?

I think two points need to be made here. First, Jesus grew into his vocation. His Sonship was real and completely unique but not completely developed or historically embodied from the moment of his conception; rather it was something he embraced more and more fully over his lifetime. Secondly, his Sonship was the expression of solidarity with us and his fulfillment of the will of his Father to be God-with-us. Jesus will incarnate the Logos of God definitively in space and time, but this event we call the incarnation encompasses and is only realized fully in his life, death, and resurrection -- not in his nativity. Only in allowing himself to be completely transparent to this Word, only in "dying to self," and definitively setting aside all other possible destinies does Jesus come to fully embody and express the Logos of God in a way which expresses his solidarity with us as well.

It is probably the image of Baptism-as-consecration and commissioning then which is most helpful to us in understanding Jesus' submission to John's baptism. Here the man Jesus is set apart as the one in whom God will truly "hallow his name." (That is, in Jesus' weakness and self-emptying God's powerful presence (Name) will make all things Holy and a sacrament of God's presence.) Here, in an act of manifest commitment, Jesus' humanity is placed completely at the service of the living God and of those to whom God is committed. Here his experience as one set apart or consecrated by and for God establishes God as completely united with us and our human condition. This solidarity is reflected in his statement to John that together they must fulfill the will of God. And here too Jesus anticipates the death and resurrection he will suffer for the sake of both human and Divine destinies which, in him, will be reconciled and inextricably wed to one another. His baptism establishes the pattern not only of his humanity, but that of all authentic humanity. So too does it reveal the nature of true Divinity, for ours is a God who becomes completely subject to our sinful reality in order to free us for his own entirely holy one.

I suspect that even at the end of the Christmas season we are still scandalized by the incarnation. (Recent conversations on CV's and secularity make me even surer of this!) We still stumble over the intelligibility of this baptism, and the propriety of it especially. Our inability to fathom Jesus' own baptism, and our tendency to be shocked by it because of Jesus' identity,  just as JohnBp was probably shocked, says we are not comfortable, even now, with a God who enters exhaustively into our reality. We remain uncomfortable with a Jesus who is tempted like us in ALL THINGS and matures into his identity as the incarnation of God's only begotten Son.

We are puzzled by one who is holy as God is holy and, as the creed affirms, "true God from true God" and who, evenso, is consecrated to and by the one he calls Abba --- and commissioned to the service of this Abba's Kingdom and people. A God who wholly identifies with us, takes on our sinfulness (our estrangement from God and from our deepest selves), and comes to us in smallness, weakness, submission and self-emptying is really not a God we are comfortable with --- despite three weeks of Christmas celebrations and reflections, and a prior four weeks of preparation -- is it? In fact, none of this was comfortable for Jews or early Christians either. The Jewish leadership was upset by JnBp's baptisms generally because they took place outside the Temple precincts and structures (that is, in the realm we literally call profane). Early Christians (Jewish and otherwise) were embarrassed by Jesus' baptism by John --- as Matt's added explanation of the reasons for it in vv 14-15 indicate. They were concerned that perhaps it indicated Jesus' inferiority to John the Baptist and they wondered if maybe it meant that Jesus had sinned prior to his baptism. And perhaps this embarrassment is as it should be. Perhaps the scandal attached to this baptism signals to us we are beginning to get things right theologically.

After all, today's feast tells us that Jesus' public ministry begins with a ritual washing, consecration, and commissioning by God which is similar to our own baptismal consecration. The difference is that Jesus freely accepts life in a world under the sway of sin in his baptism just as he wholeheartedly embraces a public vocation to proclaim God's sovereignty. The story of the desert temptation or testing that follows this underscores this acceptance. His public life begins with an event that prefigures his end as well. There is a real dying-to-self involved here, not because Jesus has a false self that must die -- as each of us has --- but because in these events his life is placed completely at the disposal of his God, his Abba, in profoundest solidarity with us. Loving another, affirming the being of another in a way that subordinates one's own being to theirs --- putting one's own life at their disposal and surrendering all other life possibilities always entails a death of sorts -- and a kind of rising to new life as well. The dynamics present on the cross are present here too; here we see only somewhat less clearly a complete and obedient (that is open and responsive) submission to the will of God, and an unfathomable subjection to that which human sinfulness makes necessary precisely so that God's love may be exhaustively present and genuinely sovereign here as well.

Reflection on the Feast of the Epiphany (reprise)

There is something stunning about the story of the Epiphany and we often don't see or hear it, I think because the story is so familiar to us. It is the challenge that faces us precisely because our God is one who comes to us in littleness, weakness, and obscurity, and meets us in the unexpected and even unacceptable place. It is truly stunning, I think, to find three magi (whoever these were and whatever they represented in terms of human power, wealth, and wisdom) recognizing in a newborn baby, not only the presence of a life with cosmic significance but, in fact, the incarnation of God and savior of the world. I have rarely been particularly struck by this image of the Magi meeting the child Jesus and presenting him with gifts, but this year I see it clearly as a snapshot of the entire Gospel story with all its hope, wonder, poignancy, challenge, and demand.

If the identities of the Magi are unclear, the dynamics of the picture are not. Here we have learned men who represent all of the known world and the power, wealth, and knowledge therein, men who spend their lives in search of (or at least watching for the coming of) something which transcends their own realms and its wisdom and knowledge, coming to kneel and lay symbols of their wealth and wisdom before a helpless, Jewish baby of common and even questionable birth. They ostensibly identify this child, lying in a feeding trough, as the King of the Jews. Yes, they followed a star to find him, but even so, their recognition of the nature and identity of this baby is surprising. Especially so is the fact that they come to worship him. The stunning nature of this epiphany is underscored by the story of the massacre of male babies in Bethlehem by the Jewish ruler, Herod. Despite his being heralded as the messiah, and so too, the Jewish King, there is nothing apparently remarkable about the baby from  Herod's perspective, nothing, that is, which allows him to be distinguished from any other male baby of similar age --- unless of course, one can see him with eyes of humility and faith --- and so, the story goes, Herod has all such babies indiscriminately killed.

One child, two antithetical attitudes and responses: the first, an openness which leads to recognition and the humbling subordination of worship; the second, an attitude of a closed mind, of defensiveness, ambition, and self-protection, an attitude of fear which leads not only to a failure of recognition but to arrogant and murderous oppression. And in between these two attitudes and responses, we must also see the far more common ones marking lives which miss this event altogether. In every case, the Christ Event marks the coming of the sovereign, creator, God among us, but in the littleness, weakness, and obscurity of ordinary human being. In this way, God meets us each in the unexpected and even unacceptable place (the manger, the cross, human being, self-emptying, weakness, companionship with serious sinners, sinful death, etc) --- if we only have the eyes of faith which allow us to recognize and worship him!

Silence of Solitude and Community in Eremitical Life

[[Hi Sister Laurel, good to see you writing here again. Have you been okay? I had a question about what you wrote on the Feast of the Holy Family. You said, [[It took and still takes the focused work I associate with spiritual direction, the deep and intense silence of prayer, and the community in all its forms that grounds and renders meaningful and coherent the eremitical solitude that represents the context, charism, and goal of my own life with God.]] When you write about community in all of its forms rendering eremitical solitude meaningful and coherent, what do you mean? I guess I still see community and eremitical solitude as opposed to one another. I am not sure I understand the use of the word coherent here either.]]

Hi there yourself, and thanks for the questions! Yes, in the main I have been okay. There have been struggles with health that are ongoing -- these are sometimes worse and sometimes better --- and difficulties in our parish community that are relatively new; all have taken a lot of energy, including emotional and intellectual energy. Also, I haven't received many questions recently so thinking up posts was just too hard for me. However, I am getting back on track and discerning what I will do in the midst of all of this so I am feeling better. Not least, I am beginning Bible study again for the parish (and others joining us by ZOOM) with the Gospel of John on the 19th of January, and as always, Scripture and the challenge of teaching it are incredibly life-giving for me. 

I am also recommitting to this blog. I continue to believe it is important and touches more people than I can ever know. The week after Christmas I wrote to a monastery in a neighboring state whose Christmas Mass was live-streamed. (I attended Mass in person in my own area, but I wanted to share this community's celebration as well.) Unfortunately, there was no audio! Later that day they put up the homily as a separate video. Fortunately, the audio worked fine! When I wrote, I thanked them for posting the separate video and made a few comments about the homily. It had spoken to me "with God's own voice" and was simply a gift I will carry with me as I move into the future. Not least, to underscore the substance of the homily, the presider included a litany-like song with Celtic harp accompaniment about each of us being the beauty of God incarnated in our world. 

Later that afternoon I received an email from the priest whose homily I had noted. He introduced himself as "the guy playing the harp" and thanked me for the kind words. Further, he explained that he was glad to make contact with me because he was discerning contemplative and/or eremitical life and when he began doing so a few years ago had first read my blog. He has read it many times over the past several years. Our connection was a reminder of how small our world really is, and how God works to weave threads together in some of the most surprising ways as he summons everything to fullness in himself. All of this also ties into and prepares the way for my answer to your question about the relation of solitude to community.

So, on to that question! I spoke of community in all of its forms as providing a way for eremitical solitude to be meaningful and coherent and there I was thinking there of several things. The first is that no Christian hermit lives solitude purely alone. That may be isolation;  it may be some form of personal death (that is, death in a less definitive sense), but it is not solitude. Eremitical solitude as I live and know it is inherently communal --- though that may certainly seem an unusual claim. I do not live alone, ever. I live with God and God is real to me most all the time. Secondly, however, because I am a Catholic hermit, my solitude is rooted in the community of the universal Church, especially as it is localized in my diocese and parish. 

This is not an abstract or merely notional or pro forma rootedness; it involves me with people in concrete ways; they are fed by and feed me and my solitude (communion with God) even when I am not with them physically. I work regularly with a spiritual director who either comes here to the hermitage or meets with me via ZOOM. I am dependent on other people in a number of different ways, from doctors and nurse practitioners to folks who deliver my groceries, those who give me rides to liturgy, et al. And of course, as noted above, I both touch and am touched by people who read this blog and have done for some part of the past 16 or so years. Most of these I will never meet or even speak to. Some write me and a few I will meet face to face --- especially those living in solitude themselves.

In other words, in my solitude, there is a complex and deep web of people whose love and prayers sustain and challenge me to be myself precisely in the silence of solitude even as my life does the same for them. Though it is not always done directly, they subtly influence all of the elements of my vocation; they give that call a certain significance and are part of shaping it in ways that are both meaningful and help it to hang together (cohere) so that it constitutes a meaningful whole. I have often written of the vocation to eremitical solitude as an ecclesial vocation --- meaning first of all that this vocation belongs to the church before it belongs to the hermit herself. (God gives it to the Church who mediates it to me and to other hermits on God's behalf. 

That mediation is not a one-time act, but an ongoing reality I continue to receive and embrace.) I believe profoundly that this ecclesial context is a large part of what allows an eremitical vocation to speak in the way any true vocation must. Among other things, it helps clarify at every point that one's solitude is not about escapism but encounter and engagement, not individualism but individuality and being the whole person one is called by God to be. The silence of solitude points to being committed and whole enough to listen and respond --- to God, to one's deepest self, and to others who might come into one's ambit in any way at all including their need for prayer. It is also a fruit of such attentive or obedient listening, living, and loving.

Consider the following in identifying eremitical solitude as a unique form of community. One's vocation is mutually discerned with representatives of the church; one is called forth by the community to make one's profession and to receive consecration; one is similarly sent into the hermitage to embrace a life of assiduous prayer with and for God's own sake and the sake of all of God's creation, and is supported in one's solitude and anachoresis by the prayer and the assistance of many others. 

The hermit is aware of all of this throughout her life in the hermitage. To forget it is to forget who she is and how she has been and is called every day of her life. At the same time, if one takes any part of this communal dimension away, solitude begins to look very different. It ceases to be eremitical solitude as the church and canon 603 understand it, and can gradually slide into alienation and individualism while the silence of solitude may modulate into the muteness of an uncommitted and personally empty withdrawal from life. It may become a silence we struggle to fill with "noise" --- the noise of various forms of activity and distraction, for example. 

Because of the difficulties recently associated with my parish and the way it has affected my own life, I am clearer than ever that community underlies, pervades, and even characterizes the hermit's solitude in a unique way --- though of course, one can and does move more deeply into the solitude of one's hermitage and the arms of God one finds there for strength and comfort at such times. But even at such times, one's "greater" turn to the silence of solitude of the hermitage is strongly marked by one's existence as part of a community of faith. Nor does deepening or more intense communion with God allow one to forget this. The suffering one brings to prayer at times like this is the suffering of life in a faith community and the strength and healing one finds in one's solitude is the healing one brings in some way to one's faith community. I remember a Trappistine Sister explaining in a video once a while ago that "our life is about 100% community and 100% solitude; it is not 50/50 because the heart of both of these is communion with others" -- and though hermits approach this truth from a different perspective than Trappists, so it is with eremitical life and its communion, first with God, then ourselves, and also with others. 

I hope this is helpful. An older post covers some of this and may do a better job of it in some ways. You can find it here: Silence of Solitude as Charism

Happy New Year! Recommitting Ourselves to the God of Newness

I have written here in the past that our God is associated with a form of newness we might call qualitative newness. In Greek, it is kainetes or kaine. It contrasts with the second kind of newness Greek recognizes and has a distinct word for, neos. This is the newness associated with a new pair of shoes, for instance; it is the kind of newness where a version of the thing in question replaces an older or worn-out version of the thing or where one gets something one didn't have before, a new broom or car or dishwasher --- or a new pair of shoes. The promise of the Gospel, of Christmas, and of the entry of God into our hearts and human history, is the promise of kainetes, a qualitative newness where everything is made new and, eventually, God is all in all. 

The ironic thing about becoming new in this way is that it means the realization of the things which are deepest and oldest within us, the potentialities we have held since our conception to become the person God calls us to be. To become new in the way God makes all things new means, for us, to become our truest selves, to become authentically human; we do this in response to the Word and Spirit of God who is constantly summoning us to Godself. 

At the beginning of the year, we make resolutions --- or at least most folks do, I think. In these resolutions, we tinker with this or that aspect of our lives and commit to improving this practice or that one. We may swear off chocolate, commit to praying more often, to spending less money on extravagances or to go to the gym every day, and the like. All of these touch in some way on who we are and often on things that prevent us from being all we might be. But often only barely. At the same time, they miss the mark in enabling us to be new persons. They simply do not go far enough in allowing God to make all things new. They don't go far enough in identifying the real goal, the commitment we need to make to be our truest selves. 

On the other hand, when we commit to being ourselves, our truest, most authentic selves, nothing remains the same. Nor is there any limit on the growth this entails or the number of ongoing, related commitments that might also be required as newness opens up within and in front of us. This commitment means turning first and last to God as the ground and source of all genuine (qualitative) newness --- or kainetes. And, it means turning to the truth deep within ourselves, the truth that no enemy can destroy, no failure abolish, nor darkness quench. Finally, it means learning trust that deep truth, in all of its strength, beauty, and wondrous giftedness, is really who we are -- and depending on it, living from it day in and day out along with the God who is its source and ground.

In the new year I pray that people will make this kind of commitment. If we can do that, and if we can renew it every day,  the God who works in and through us can and will make our world a vastly different place and we will have taken steps toward allowing (him) to become all in all.

All good wishes to my readers for a really New Year!! I wish you each and all, the peace of Christ.