[[Dear Sister, when you told the brief version of how you discovered a vocation to eremitical life and became a hermit, you said that you saw that perhaps this way of living would "make sense of" your entire life. I wondered if you could say more about the phrase "make sense of" because in part, it sounds like maybe you were looking for a way to validate a life you felt was meaningless. I wonder if that's a very good reason to try to live as a hermit. Is that really what a divine call looks like? Every other vocation story I have heard or read speaks about coming from a place of strength and knowing clearly that God was calling one to this. One hermit I know even talks about God saying to her directly that she was called to be a hermit. Yet, you are giving a very different picture of the way God called you to eremitical life. I just hoped you would say a little more about this, particularly if I am misunderstanding you. Thank you!]]
Thanks for your questions and observations. They are excellent and incredibly timely. Some people use the term "synchronicity" to describe this kind of timeliness. My Director and I often speak of the same thing and use the word "sacrednicity". I think that your questions are an example of that and maybe you'll see a little of why as I respond.
What I wrote in that recent piece with a brief version of the way I came to eremitical life and then to canonical eremitical life was true. And yet, in some ways, I have always felt a bit defensive about the very phrase you have asked about, "make sense of". But recently I was listening to Francis Kline OCSO speaking about Trappist life specifically and monastic life more generally. He was discussing the monastic value and vow of stability and how essential it is to living a monastic life. The reason he gave was that monastic life (and here you can substitute eremitical life) is about an inner journey and a stable structure was necessary to support this inner journey. Then, strikingly, he said, without that stable structure a person would either give up their attempt to make this inner journey, or their lives would become completely compartmentalized --- which, of course, would enervate, or vitiate and destroy the dynamism supporting the journey. In fact, compartmentalization would be antithetical to the inner journey itself, because it is one of healing, integration, and Communion growing to Union. I came to look at my own story in terms of compartmentalization and saw that my life had been fragmented, partly out of richness (a variety of talents and gifts including what I sensed as a call to religious life and a call to do theology) and partly because of chronic illness and disability; I needed a way to pull and hold all of these various dimensions together so that the inner journey that was compelling to me was truly possible.
Chronic illness and other factors already separated me, to some extent, from the world around me, and additionally, they threatened to dominate in such a way as to make living a coherent and intelligible life impossible. These parts or dimensions of my life called for a way to heal and achieve integration as much as the gifts and talents that were mine also called for this. In Father Francis Kline's terminology I was looking for a stable structure, way, or vocational pathway that might heal the fragmentation I knew, and maybe even be beyond the power to fragment possessed by chronic illness, and the other factors present in my life. The way I ordinarily have said this to myself or to others has been that I was looking for a context within which I could be myself, and truly and wholly myself. I came upon canon 603 at a point of crisis, that is, an opportune point where decisions were necessary and urgent. I was vulnerable and open to hearing the will of God at this point. And when I read canon 603, I began to think that, indeed, this was possibly a way forward that allowed both strength and weakness to contribute to the inner and outer journeys I felt called to make with my life. There was never a reason to feel defensive because of my own needs. What c 603 seemed to promise was not the validation of isolation but its redemption!! And so it has done!
The Scripture behind all of this and that echoed in the background was Paul's statement in Colossians 1:17, [[[Christ] is before all things, and in him all things hold together
(cohere)!]] For me then, c 603 provided a glimpse of a way to follow Christ that was profoundly healing and empowering. It provided a potentially stable structure and vision focused on the grace of God, and where that grace and the support of those God sends into my life allow me to live my life fully and for the sake of others. To answer your question about this, yes, I believe that for most of us, this is exactly what a divine call or vocation looks and sounds like. Few people I know hear some direct voice of God saying, "become a hermit"! Most of us have to listen for the opportunity embedded in a situation -- whatever the nature of that situation. We have to trust that God's love will find a way and that way will be offered to us in recognizable tones and keys, even if they are also very subtle ways. But that is what real discernment is like and about!! It means learning to hear the opportunity embedded in the complicated and sometimes chaotic as, in time, we discover that that opportunity is proffered to us by the very hand and heart of God.
The insight I had when first reading c 603 was profound; that is, it both came from and spoke to the very deepest places within me and yet, it still called for a significant discernment process. It required study and prayer and discussion with my director and then too, with the Church's own representatives, and only over time did it resolve into a clarity that allowed me (and the Church as well) to say, yes, this is the will of God for me and yes, what it seemed to promise is real!! Canon 603 called me to the silence of solitude and therefore, to the redemption of an isolation occasioned by chronic illness and disability, as part of an inner journey in which all things cohere in Christ. Thanks be to God!
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