Followup Questions on Existential Solitude and Chronic Illness

[[Dear Sister, I was intrigued by what you wrote last week and yesterday about existential solitude. You haven't used that terminology before this, but I found it helpful in understanding why you insist physical solitude doesn't need to be absolute, while some self-described hermits insist that if a hermit lives with other hermits in a laura this can't be called solitude! You don't argue that the chronically ill make better hermits than others, but you do say they often live existential solitude more radically than the able-bodied. 

Would you suggest that chronic illness and personal woundedness predispose a person to being a better hermit? Too, I don't think I ever realized how profound and intense your own discernment of this vocation was. It helps me understand why you have written against stopgap vocations and those who use c 603 to achieve an agenda rather than answering a divine call to be a hermit. I can especially see what you mean when you speak of these vocations not being able to witness to those who really need their witness, the disabled, chronically ill and others who are isolated without a choice. Thanks for writing about this!]]

Thanks for writing and for your comments and questions. No, I wouldn't suggest that the chronically ill make better hermits because I don't think trading in that kind of comparison helps understand or evaluate eremitical life. Moreover, I'm not sure it is true in any case. However, persons with chronic illnesses, disabilities, early bereavement, histories of trauma, and personal woundedness of a variety of causes, can certainly discover that their situations predispose them in an ongoing way to an awareness of existential solitude. Even so, as I also suggested yesterday, this is not something they necessarily reflect on or come to appreciate, much less build their lives around in terms of silence, solitude, prayer, vows, spiritual direction, etc. To be frank, existential solitude, while a source of great creativity and a condition of possibility everyone shares for a profoundly graced, even mystical relationship with God, because of the state of estrangement in which we yet exist, it is still also a painful reality, and thus, something most folks tend to evade and avoid for as long as possible. And in terms of society's needs, this makes positive sense. 

On the other hand, those who do find their life circumstances predispose them to a radical awareness of existential solitude and who take this as an opportunity or actual invitation to embrace eremitical life, are apt to find that hermit life suits them very well and allows them to live a rich, full existence with God, where those contributing life circumstances (illness, etc.) are transcended in the unimagined fruitfulness of live lived for the sake of others. Still, others without the same or similar life circumstances could adapt to a desert situation in hermitage, and, with vows of the Evangelical Counsels, stability and/or conversatio morum,  stricter separation from the world, assiduous prayer and penance, the silence of solitude, and so forth, could find they were called to engage with existential solitude in an ongoing and consistently deepening way, and flourish in such an engagement.

I would argue that the typical environment of a hermitage, and the elements required by c 603, for example, produce a relative "desert" where an able-bodied person can more readily experience existential solitude. This can also prepare one for embracing the existential solitude that comes when illness, disability, and the other limitations and conditions associated with age strike. This is one reason eremitism is seen as a second half of life vocation; generally speaking, not only should one ordinarily live a more usual life as fully as one can with families, work and career, active contributions to society, etc, but conditions associated with a more radical experience of existential solitude ordinarily come later in the second half of life. (Remember Jung's comments here, though!) Unfortunately, what is also true is that many with chronic illnesses, disabilities, etc., will never be able to commit to engaging in a sustained or healthy way with existential solitude; for these persons, eremitical life will not be an option. 

The Importance of Authentic Eremitical Vocations:

I have always written here about the way stopgap vocations, part-time or otherwise inauthentic eremitic vocations fail to serve those who need the witness of genuine hermits. One article that summarized a lot of this writing is Whom Does it Hurt?  A friend and diocesan hermit in England wrote me with the hope that some of what I wrote recently would help do away with the cartoonish caricatures so many have of hermits.  With her I hope that this is the case! Especially, I hope that dioceses will see not only that the chronically ill and disabled can have religious vocations, but even more importantly, that some with vocations to solitary consecrated eremitical life live these lives because of a radical experience of existential solitude that can speak in an inspiring and even redemptive way to those suffering from and marginalized by many conditions that separate them from friends and the ordinary rhythms and activities of daily life. 

As I noted a number of years ago in an article in Review For Religious (@1986, cf Chronic Illness as Vocation) the Church does a relatively good job with ministry to the chronically ill and disabled, but it does not do well at all in allowing for or providing ministries of the chronically ill and disabled. And isn't that ironic in a church that considers itself the assembly of broken and alienated ("sinners") who are reconciled, healed, and redeemed by God in Christ? That article was on the idea of chronic illness or disability as a vocation to be ill within the Church and it raised the possibility that for some, eremitical life could be a specific instance of such a vocation. 

What seems clear to me, however, is that while one cannot deny the place of suffering in one's life, particularly in experiences that reprise Christ's own suffering and death, the emphasis of the hermit's ministry to others cannot be on the hermit's own suffering!! Neither can it be about theologically naive (not to say erring) protestations that God wills one's suffering or that hermit life is all about that! There is a very real danger that self-obsession and self-centeredness will replace the quest for self-awareness and self-knowledge in the chronically ill person who attempts to live as a hermit. (To be more accurate, this is always a danger, but I believe it can be even more so in the chronically ill and disabled, especially when allied with simplistic theologies of suffering and incarnation.) 

Instead, eremitical life is rooted in the paradox that the engagement with God at the level of our deep existential solitude leads to the new life of the resurrected Christ. It is that to which the authentic hermit life leads and witnesses, including and perhaps particularly so, in one who lives with chronic illness and disability. The ability to live resurrection life on the other side of the deep loss and anguished questions of Holy Saturday, and to do so for the sake of God and others, marks the authenticity of an eremitical vocation.