On Monastic or Eremitic Stability

[[Hi Sister Laurel, in the video you put up yesterday and the reference to the classic "Remain in your cell and your cell will teach you everything," is this all part of the reason monastics make a vow of stability?]]

Thanks for your question! Yes!!!! You are exactly right that the video and especially the reference to the Desert Abbas' apothegm crystallizes the value of stability in monastic life. Though I have heard some misunderstand the meaning of stability when used in this regard, it does not refer to emotional stability, or "stabilizing one's emotions." Instead, it refers to the practice of monastics to make profession in one monastery and commit to staying there for the rest of one's life unless one is sent to help found another monastic house.

The fundamental spiritual insight into this value is rooted in the recognition that while one remains in the same place or continues the same basic rhythm and patterns of behavior (horarium) day in and day out, one will go deeper and deeper in one's relation to one's true self and one's relationship with God. Those who profess (or otherwise practice) monastic stability are convinced that everything they truly need is found here in this monastery. The monk binds himself to this faith community and to learning to love in concrete ways, to forgive oneself and one's confreres both often and completely, and to allow himself to be shaped by his brothers' needs and concerns just as Christ did. When coupled with the other vows and values of monastic life, the monk or hermit is led more and more to attend to God as the one reality necessary for the fulfillment of every dimension of a truly human life --- every relationship, every aspiration, everything one is and does.

A hermit practicing this form of stability in her hermitage can go a couple of different ways. The first is not the way the hermit is meant to go, but it can happen without competent spiritual direction and appropriate initial and ongoing formation. This is the way of self-centeredness and dissipation. In the search for God (seeking God), one can find oneself unable to focus and turn to book after book after book (for instance) without going particularly deep into any of them. Bishop Varden speaks about this in his series on the Desert Abbas. When the monk treats the monastery library as a kind of casual buffet and nibbles at every author, every Church Father, or Doctor of the Church, but truly fails to drink deeply from or be profoundly fed (much less inspired, challenged, and changed) by any of them, he is failing in his commitment to stability -- among other things. 

Similarly, someone whose eremitical life is inauthentic can focus on this external fault or flaw and then another one and then another one, without ever truly seeking the reason for the fault or flaw that resides much deeper within the person. It is possible to "paper over" one's deep woundedness or illness with confessions of one's more superficial faults and then celebrate God's (unfortunately) equally superficial forgiveness when, instead, authentic eremitical life calls us to a much deeper engagement with both our own brokenness or woundedness and the grace of God. What is sometimes missing, then, is a deep engagement with or resulting understanding of the texts themselves, their still-unfamiliar authors, or the God the texts sought to consider, put one in touch with, and celebrate. This kind of superficially engaged approach to monastic or eremitic life is a form of dilettantism that is antithetical to monastic stability.

The second way a monastic or hermit embracing stability can go within their monastery or hermitage is deeper, ever-deeper. While one is apt to read widely as a monastic or hermit, one is also apt to become very well-read and relatively expert in a particular period of history, specific authors, certain topics, etc. In my own life I can look at several topics that have interested me for decades now: chronic illness as vocation and sometimes as eremitical vocation, the redemption of isolation which we then recognize as "the silence of solitude," c 603 as an ecclesial vocation, the discernment and formation of such vocations, and the Theology of the Cross and God's will to be Emmanuel -- God With Us. These are related topics (the last two function as keys to or even "keystones" in this relatedness), and each tends to call for and lead, at least indirectly, to greater depth of understanding in the others. Even more importantly, however, they are significant signposts of my own inner journey and the nourishment and theological content I have needed in order to go deep -- through and beyond my own woundedness, to the God of Life who dwells in that paradoxical place of existential loneliness and betrothal. Thus, when I am occasionally criticized for continuing to spend time writing about c 603 as though I am "unspiritual", too "coldly intellectual," and "obsessed with law" rather than gospel, for example, it hardly matters!

One of the reasons I insist on the need for hermits (including very experienced hermits) to work regularly with a competent spiritual director is precisely to prevent one's eremitical life from assuming the first pattern as things get difficult, or tedious, or even apparently absurd -- and when things are sailing along and looking fine as well! When darkness obscures the path, when God is silent (as God mostly is!), when suffering kicks up clouds of doubt and tempts to despair, or when none of these things are happening and all goes well, working with a director can help one to stay the course and go deeper. A good director can also ask the questions needed or suggest the journaling and Scripture reading (etc.) that will help to get us back on our path when we have stepped off course. 

Conversations with such persons can help us express both the darkness and light we experience, articulate the struggles we must negotiate, and share the failures and successes that mark and move us from faith to faith. Similarly, they can help us learn to listen to both ourselves and God in ways that will allow our journey to continue toward genuine wholeness and holiness. This kind of ongoing reflection, encouragement, and wisdom is critical in such a perilous and significant undertaking. It is indispensable for eremitic stability and thus, for a life that is not to be wasted in some form of self-centered dilettantism. Remaining in one's cell can, unfortunately, mean learning nothing and failing to grow as a truly loving person (a danger for every hermit), while pretending both to oneself and others to be living a demanding, authentic eremitical life. On the other hand, it can introduce us to the encounter and engagement with existential solitude so essential to our humanity and to learning everything "the cell" (stability) has to teach us. 

Remain in Your Cell: From the Desert Abbas by Bishop Eric Varden

 

 Remain in your cell and your cell will teach you everything. This is a key piece of desert wisdom, and it is key of all spiritual growth. In this presentation, we have a nuanced interpretation of this saying, namely, we seek a single-minded focus on God and we do so for the sake of others, whatever "cell" is in our own life and call. Especially important is the focus on the cell as a place where we come to know ourselves and God intimately. It is in the cell that physical solitude gives way to existential solitude and one does battle with the demons of one's own heart. I hope this taste will cause you to look for the rest of the series.

Further on Chronic Illness and Discerning a Vocation to c 603 Eremitic Life

I wanted to continue the post I put up a couple of days ago. (cf., Followup on Chronic Illness) Specifically, I had not responded to the following affirmation: [[at the same time it is not what we bring that ultimately determines the truth of our call, even if it shapes how we may live it.]] and I want to do that. 

I tend to be in disagreement with this. I do agree that, ultimately, of course, a vocation is always a gift of God who calls as he will, but even so, I believe what we bring matters immensely to the truth of our vocation. That is because I do not believe a divine call is ever only about God alone. In this, I am thinking partly of the Frederick Buechner quotation that is so popular among consecrated women and men today: [[Vocation occurs where our greatest joy meets the world's deepest need.]] Thus, while I believe a call comes from God, I believe it is also shaped by God in the very giving of the call, both by God's awareness of our own deepest joy and the world's deepest needs.

Bearing this in mind, I believe God calls us not in spite of our weaknesses, frailties, etc., but because of them. Vocations are always a part of God's redemptive will and are always about our own redemption as well as that of others. While I don't believe God willed me to be ill/disabled, I absolutely believe he chose me to be a hermit in part because of my illness. That is, my illness is not an accident linked to the substance of my vocation, but instead is part of its very substance. What I am saying is that I believe that God called ME to this vocation, not me sans illness, or me sans sinfulness, or me sans my gifts and potentialities either. My own illness and disability are part of this call and part of God's own call to me within the Church because they are a central dimension of myself. As I see it, this is a desert vocation, and chronic illness and disability are part of the desert that makes such a call possible and meaningful. 

At the same time, my chronic illness and disability are indications of a profound need for God's love and life. They call out for redemption and echo the same calls from billions and billions of others in our world. They call out for being and meaning, and are a sharp reminder of my whole Self's call for these things. Likewise, when God in Christ is allowed, to redeem our lives --- to love us and be merciful to us, to strengthen us, to inspire and empower us to live truly human lives, whole and holy despite chronic illness and disability, then we will see the purpose of our vocations coming to fruition. Similarly, the world will be able to see it clearly and benefit from it. This becomes a significant part of what it means for God to will to be Emmanuel. In considering this, I also think of the gospel's affirmation that we are the clay and God is the potter. While I am not defined by my illness or disability (I, like anyone with an illness or disability, am very much more than these things!!), my illness and disability are elements of that clay, not only because they help shape the way I live this vocation, but because they are constitutive parts of the person I am.

Of course, they might not have been, they need not be, and I would continue to be myself nonetheless. Even so, they are real and currently condition my entire existence; I believe God's wisdom was shaped by considerations of these things as part of calling me to eremitic life. In part, I believe this because, while I have many gifts that I might have made use of for the sake of God's promises and plans, I also have significant frailties that cause me to seek God in an intense and more and more all-consuming way. My own illness and disability are clearly part of this. 

I cannot imagine God calling me to a more perfect vocation for all of this and, more especially, for (the sake of) his church and world. Eremitic life calls me to wholeness and holiness, it provides space for illness and disability while challenging me not to allow my life to be defined by these; it demands I develop many of the gifts God created me with while it also makes of my frailties the good ground of fruitful and compassionate ministry, and it summons me to an intimacy with God I might not have appreciated as much without illness and disability. Finally, with and in Christ, it absolutely makes of my life a living incarnation of Paul's divine affirmation, [[My grace is sufficient for you; my power is perfected in weakness.]]

Parable of the Merciful Father: The Choice for a Truly Human Form of Prodigality (reprised)

 Commentators tend to name today's Gospel parable after the Merciful Father, because he is central to all the scenes (even when the younger Son is in a far-off place, the Father waits silently, implicitly, in the wings). We should notice it is his foolish generosity that predominates, so in this sense, he too is prodigal. Perhaps then we should call this the parable of the Prodigal Father. The younger son squanders his inheritance, but the Father is also (in common terms and in terms of Jewish Law) foolish in giving him the inheritance, the "substance" (literally, the ousias) of his own life and that of Israel. His younger Son treats him as dead (a sin against the Commandment to honor Father and Mother) and still this Father looks for every chance to receive him back.

When the younger son comes to his senses, rehearses his still seemingly-exorbitant terms for coming home ("I will confess and be received back not as a Son, but as a servant,"), his Father, watching for his return, eagerly runs to meet him in spite of the offense represented in such an act; he forestalls his confession, brings his Son into the center of the village thus rendering everything unclean according to the law, clothes him in the garb of Sonship and authority, kills the fatted calf and throws a welcome home party --- all heedless of the requirements of the law, matters of ritual impurity or repentance, etc. Now we truly begin to see a new and unimagined prodigality which outstrips the younger son's imagined responses in every way! Meanwhile, the dutiful older son keeps the letter of the law of sonship but transgresses its essence and also treats his Father with dishonor. He is grudging, resentful, angry, blind, and petty in failing to recognize what is right before him all the time. He, too, is prodigal, allowing his authentic Sonship to slowly die day by day as he assumes a more superficial and "dutiful" role instead. 

And yet, the Father reassures him that what is the Father's is the Son's and what is the Son's is the Father's (which makes the Father literally an "ignorant man" in terms of the Law, an "am-haretz"). Contrary to the wisdom of the law, he continues to invite him into the celebration, a celebration of new life and meaning. He continues to treat him as a Son. The theme of Law versus Gospel comes up strongly, though merely implicitly, in this and other readings this week, though at first we may fail to recognize this. Paul recognizes the Law is a gift of God but without the power to move us to act as Sons and Daughters of God in the way Gospel does. When coupled with human sinfulness it can --- whether blatantly or insidiously --- be terribly destructive. 

How often as Christians do we act in ways which are allowed (or apparently commanded) by law but which are not really appropriate to Daughters and Sons of an infinitely and prodigally merciful Father who is always waiting for our return, always actively looking for us to make the slightest responsive gesture in recognition of his goodness even while we are still far off,  and always waiting for us to "come to our senses,"? In today's Gospel, we are assured that our God, contrary to all customs of propriety and divine dignity, will run to us and enfold us in the sumptuous garb of Daughterhood or Sonship. Indeed, in Christ, he has already done so! And yet, how often is our daily practice of our faith dutiful, and grudging, but little more? How often do we act competitively or in resentment over others whose vocation is different than our own, whose place in the church (or the world of business, commerce, and society, for that matter) seems to witness to greater love from God? How often do we quietly despair over the seeming lack of worth of our lives in comparison to that of others? Whether we recognize it or not, these attitudes are those of people motivated by law, not gospel. They are the attitudes of measurement and human judgment, not of incommensurate love and generosity. 

At the beginning of Lent, we heard the fundamental choice of this season and the heart of all choices put before us in any season, "Choose life, not death." Today, that choice is sharpened and the subtle forms of death we often choose are set in relief: will we be Daughters and Sons of an infinitely and, in this world's terms. a foolishly Merciful Father --- those who truly see and accept a love that is beyond our wildest imaginings and love others similarly, or, will we be prodigals in the pejorative sense, servants of duty, those who only accept the limited love we believe we have coming to us and who approach others competitively, suspiciously and without generosity? Will we be those whose notions of justice constrain God and our ability to choose the life he sets before us, or will we be those who are forgiven to the awesome degree and extent God is willing and capable of forgiving? Will we allow ourselves to be welcomed into a new life --- a life of celebration and joy, but also a life of greater generosity, responsibility, and God-given identity, or will we simply make do with the original prodigality of either the life of the younger Son or that of the elder? 

After all, both live dissipated lives in this parable: one flagrantly so, and one in quiet resentment, slavish dutifulness, and personal unfulfillment. The choice before those living the latter kind of Christian life is no less significant, no less one of conversion than the choice set before the younger son. His return may be more dramatic, but that of the elder son demands as great a conversion. He must move from a quiet exile where he bitterly identifies himself as a slave rather than a free man or (even less) a Son. His own vision of his life and worth, his true identity, are little different than those of the younger son who returns home rehearsing terms of servility rather than sonship. 

The parable of the merciful Father puts before us two visions of life, and two main versions of prodigality; it thus captures the two basic and, in some ways, antithetical meanings of prodigal: wasteful and lavish. There is the prodigality of the sons, both elder and younger, who allow the substance of their lives and identities to either be cast carelessly or slip silently away, the prodigality of those who lose their truest selves even as they grasp at wealth, adventure, duty, role, or other forms of security and "fulfillment". And there is the prodigality of the Father who loves and spends himself generously without limit or condition -- even to the point of scandal according to society's rules. In other words, there is death and there is life, law and gospel. Which form of prodigality will we choose? For indeed, the banquet hall is ready for us and the Father stands waiting at this very moment, ring, robe, and sandals in hand.

Followup Questions on Chronic Illness and Discerning a Vocation to c 603 Eremitical Life

[[Sister Laurel, I think one of the things that struck me [and raised the question about chronic illness and discerning an eremitical vocation] was somewhere you had mentioned being able to offer chronic illness as a gift in this call, and my knee jerk reaction was, "yes, we bring ourselves and our gifts, talents, sorrows, etc., but at the same time it is not what we bring that ultimately determines the truth of our call even if it shapes how we may live it." 

At the same time, as in any call, we are to bring forth our uniqueness as part of our self-gift, and disability is part of it. In other words, the truth of one's call is not determined by a unique gift one can give to God. I feared that the blog readers might use that idea of "unique" and feel inadequate in discernment. Put differently, if it takes the monumental ability to offer God disability to figure out that the eremitic life is for you, how is an able person to discern that it is for them as well because they don't have a unique gift?]]

Thanks for following up on your earlier questions. I am not sure what I actually said or what you read, so this will just have to look at the ways in which I might have been speaking about chronic illness and disability as gift. The first is the way you have taken it in your second paragraph. That's entirely valid, of course, and an important way of approaching the whole notion. We bring our whole selves as a gift, and chronic illness and disability might be part of that. However, another way of approaching it, and one I am more likely to have written about is from the perspective of allowing God to redeem chronic illness or disability, to make it a significant grace, to transfigure what was really simply a burden and personal weakness so that instead it becomes the ground for proclaiming the Gospel of God in Christ with a unique vividness and paradoxical power. 

I have no real sense of how I might be able to give God my illness as a gift, except to the extent I can allow it to become the basis of a divine victory of meaning over meaninglessness, and fullness of life over a diminished sense of living. In other words, I cannot see chronic illness being a gift unless it participates in God's promise of redemption in some way. This is the only way something so negative and life-denying could become a life-affirming gift. In part, this will depend on one's vocation and whether or not it serves to allow God to achieve the victory he does over absurdity (meaninglessness) and death (the diminishment or curtailment of life) in all the ways illness or disability cry out for. There are a number of vocations that would not have done this in my own life; instead, they would have accentuated my illness as a serious deficiency, possibly exacerbated it by judging it, but certainly have had no room for it --- or for me as one who suffers in this way. Eremitical life not only has room for chronic illness as an instance of desert experience, but it provides the space, time, and focus that brings one's entire life into a profound engagement with God so that it ALL might be redeemed and transfigured.

The motto I adopted at my consecration is from Paul's 2nd Letter to the Corinthians: [[My grace is sufficient for you, my power is perfected in weakness.]] (The second half of this is engraved on my profession ring.) While I can say I am inspired by that in several ways and aspire to letting it be true in those same ways, I can also say that it is the truth of my life in terms of chronic illness and disability. The fact and fruitfulness of God's loving mercy is something I know most fully in my weakness. God's mercy is an expression of a powerful love that can redeem any negative reality by bringing good from it. When I think of chronic illness as gift, it is that set of dynamics I am thinking about. Fr James Empereur, sj, once wrote a book on the Anointing of the Sick called Prophetic Anointing, in which he wrote compellingly about a vocation to being sick in the Church. I see the Sacrament of the Sick in the same way, and I also see chronic illness and disability themselves as potential vocations, not because God wills these things (he does not), but because he wills to be God With Us in every moment and mood of our lives.

I think you can hear how eremitical life provides the context and means to allow God to redeem my illness and transform it into a grace. In this weakness, God's love and mercy are perfected. I turn to God more and more fully in part because of my illness/disability. At the same time, I do so because my eremitical vocation calls for this as well. I turn to God in this way for God's own sake, so that his will to be God-with-us can be fulfilled. In the midst of this process, God's will for me is also realized, not only despite my illness, but even in and through it. My life comes, over time, to proclaim the Good News of God's sovereignty, God's Kingdom, not only in strength, but in weakness. In other words, Chronic illness becomes a gift, not only to me, but also to the Church and even to God.

At the same time, I am not saying that chronic illness is a prerequisite for discerning an eremitical vocation. Still, eremitic life is always about allowing God to redeem our weaknesses and frailties, our incapacities along with the realization of our potentialities. We embrace the silence of solitude, stricter separation, etc., so this redemption may be sought and received with a particular focus and intensity. Moreover, again, we do so for God's sake and the sake of all that is precious to God. We do it so that God's will and gospel may be fulfilled in our world. One traditional way of perceiving eremitical life is to accent its difficulty and the need for candidates to be able-bodied, strong enough to manage the rigors of the life. I see it somewhat differently. 

While the vocation still takes strength, perseverance, and courage, chronic illness and other frailties can provide the good ground out of which hermit life and God's redemption may grow. They are part of the penitential life of a hermit when the hermit is chronically ill or disabled. At the same time, no, I am not saying chronic illness is a necessary part of an eremitical call for everyone. I am thinking of a quote by Sister Kathy Littrell, SHF, who once said, [[One does not need to be a Sister to do what I am doing, but I need to be a Sister to do what I am doing.]] A variation of this, then, is [[While most folks do not need to be hermits to live chronic illness as God wills them to, I needed to be a hermit to do so.]]

Thanks for the opportunity to clarify some of this! I want to respond to your "kneejerk reaction" in another post and think about it a bit more before I do that. 

A Contemplative Moment: Loneliness

by

David Whyte

Loneliness

is

the doorway to unspoken and yet unspecified desire. 

In the bodily pain of aloneness is the first step to understanding how far we are from a real friendship, from a proper work or a long-sought love. Loneliness can be a prison, a place from which we look out at a world we cannot inhabit; loneliness can be a bodily ache and penance, but loneliness fully inhabited also becomes the voice that asks and calls for that great unknown someone or something we want to call our own.

Loneliness is the very state that births the courage to continue calling, and when fully lived can undergo its own beautiful reversal, becoming in its consummation the far horizon that answers back.

In the grand scale of things, loneliness is a privilege. Human beings may have the ability to feel aloneness as no other creature can, with a power magnified by intelligence and imagination. Animals may feel alone in an instinctual way, moving naturally and affectionately toward others of their kind, but human beings may be the only beings that can articulate, imagine, or call for a specific life they feel they might be missing.

Loneliness is the substrate and foundation of belonging, the gravitational field that draws us home, and in the beautiful essence of its isolation, the hand reaching out for togetherness. To allow ourselves to feel fully alone is to allow ourselves to understand the particular nature of our solitary incarnation; to make aloneness a friend is to apprentice ourselves to the foundation from which we make our invitation to others. To feel alone is to face the truth of our irremediable and unutterable singularity, but a singularity that can kiss, create a conversation, make a vow or forge a shared life. In the world or community, this essential singularity joins with others through vision, intellect, and ideas to make a society.

Loneliness is not a concept, it is the body constellating, attempting to become proximate and even just with other bodies, through physical touch, through conversation or the mediation of the intellect and the imagination.

Loneliness is the place from which we pay real attention to voices other than our own; being alone allows us to find the healing power of the other. The shortest line in the briefest e-mail can heal, embolden, welcome home and enliven the most isolated identity. Lonely human beings are lonely because they are made to belong. Loneliness is a single malt taste of the very essentiality that makes conscious belonging possible. The doorway is closer than we think. I am alone; therefore, I belong.

in

Consolations, the Solace, Nourishment, and Underlying Meaning

of Everyday Words. pp 99-101

On Growing Towards Perfection: Journeying in the Direction we are Born For (Reprise)

 In thinking about Lent I remember a time when the commandment to "be ye perfect as your father in heaven is perfect" had come up for me. The first time was in an email to my director, referring to the use of the term "total commitment" in something I was reading in relation to our work together. I wondered what "total" meant in the context involved; I couldn't understand it as even conceivable, much less possible, and that, it sounded like, could jeopardize everything. She wrote back, pointing out the similarity of the word "perfect" in the NT and the difficulty of defining it. She then defined "total" contextually, in a less absolute (but no less personally demanding) way, a way which corresponded to the needs of the work being done and which, yet again, was a matter of "trusting the process" and the changes, healing, and growth it brings about. (This, of course, involved trusting the grace of God in all the ways it is ever mediated to me over time and that was especially true in this process!)

Other instances of meeting the word "perfection" had to do with Lent itself, with the God I was somehow supposed to come to image more perfectly and who was defined as perfect only in terms of static Greek categories: (omnipotence, omnipresence, immutability, etc.) --- categories that often seem at odds with the living God of the Old and New Testaments. Another had to do with consecrated life and the older usage regarding being called to "a state of perfection". Again, I thought, as I always do, that being called to perfection meant being fully human because I think being authentically and fully human is at least part of this call to perfection --- but somehow the word "perfection" continued to raise obstacles within and for me. It is a problem all by itself. I would bet I am not alone in this. In fact, I know I am not; one of the reasons women Religious rarely refer to "states of perfection" these days is because to do so seems elitist and divisive. It can also lead to needless or unwarranted anxiety over hypocrisy and failure.

So, I went back to the original text --- not something I do often enough these days --- and was reminded that the word translated as perfection is τελειος (teleios) --- from the Greek telos (τελος) which refers to the goal, end, or fulfillment of something. (Jesus is the telos or end/goal/fulfillment of the Law, for instance.) That was suggestive of being goal-directed or of having reached a goal (some have defined this call to perfection in terms of "maturity") but it still left me little further along in my thoughts and prayer. Then, while in Tahoe for a week, I was reading a book by William O'Malley on Parables, and not far into the book, O'Malley begins to discuss the difficult word "perfection". (God does indeed work in surprising and delightful ways!) O'Malley also notes that the Greek is teleios (τελειος) but in light of that word, he went on to define the call to perfection as the call to be "heading in the direction [we] are born for".  And that made "total" (!) sense to me. It is a refreshingly dynamic way of defining perfection (a way which is appropriate to the God who is "verb more than noun", who is Love-in-Act) in an unfinished and evolving universe; it also reduces anxiety or concerns about hypocrisy and elitism and is able to free folks from any unhealthy perfectionism. Perfection, in the sense Jesus and the New Testament used the word, is not about having reached, much less achieved a static state without flaws or frailties, but instead, it is about being true to the journey; it is about being on a pilgrimage to authenticity with, in, and towards life in God.

Last Sunday, we celebrated the Gospel story of Jesus' Transfiguration. We often use the term transfiguration in the sense of change or transformation, but when we think about the transfiguration of Jesus, the only thing that changed was the way Jesus appeared to others. Jesus was transfigured in their eyes but he himself remained who he was right along. The disciples saw him for who he really was, namely, a truly human being living fully with, in, and towards life in God. They rightly saw him as the glory of God, the revelation of the love and mercy which every human being is called and born to be. Whether they were aware of this or not, what James, Peter and John saw in Jesus was also an image of their own telos, the end or fulfillment of their own journeys to authenticity and maturity in, with, and through God. They saw an image of human perfection --- a man well on his way in his journey to fully reveal the glory of God in ordinary life situations. Jesus was heading towards Jerusalem with all that implied and involved; he was on his way to the Cross and the exhaustive revelation of a Divine power which would be perfected in weakness; he was on his way toward changing the very nature of reality by reconciling that same reality to God, destroying (Godless) death and by effectively giving creation a place in the very life of God. In other words, He was "perfect" (teleios) because he was "heading in the direction [he] was born for" and in no other direction.

So many times, Jesus could have turned aside or away. There were so many times he could have chosen a different path, one which was good, fruitful, respectable, admirably religious, and apparently "law abiding" (in terms of the Torah) --- but which was not about heading in the direction he was born to head. But, as he did during his time in the desert, he chose to do what he was born (or baptized) to do. He entered the desert having heard from God that he was God's beloved Son who did indeed delight God. He grappled with what that meant both in personal and pastoral terms. And finally, he chose to respond to the deep call of God to be that person and live that identity in the ordinary and extraordinary things of life. This choice was one he renewed again and again throughout the course of his public life with every act of compassion and self-emptying. In the process, he renewed the course of his journey with, toward, and on behalf of God's sovereignty and the extension of that "Kingdom of God" to all God holds as precious. Jesus affirmed and reaffirmed a commitment to the same perfection we are each called to, namely, an authentic and God-centered humanity lived for others. And isn't this what Lent gives each of us the space and encouragement to do?

A few folks have emailed and suggested that by focusing on the work I have already been engaged in with my director I am failing to do what Lent really calls for. That, they believe, is inexcusable in a consecrated (canonical) hermit who lives this life in the Name of the Church! Apparently, they suggest, in outlining my plans for Lent, I have not made a sufficient commitment to additional prayer, penance, and almsgiving. But thus far, in this (in 2017) now-10-month-journey, I have called "inner work" what my director and I have been engaged in is a profound desert-time where I grapple with 1) my identity and 2) with God's call to be myself as fully and freely as possible. This is the call to be perfect as God (Him)self is perfect --- nothing less.

We are each involved in a journey towards authenticity and (simultaneously) communion with God. As with Jesus, it is a single journey where we may have to renounce what is usually recognized as "respectability" in order to embrace genuine holiness --- just as we may need to embrace brokenness to be reconciled to God, self, and others, or to live the joy and freedom of life in and of God. The question Lent asks and gives us space and time to answer with our lives is, "are you headed in the way you were born to be headed?" Are you headed in the way your heart has been shaped throughout your whole life by the Love-in-Act we call God? If not, if you are impelled and even compelled by something else, how will you change course? What paths do you need to leave behind? What ways of being? What obstacles to freedom, personal deficits, woundedness, etc., will you need to work through and let go of?  How, after all, will you embrace the call to be "perfect", the call to be "heading in the direction you were born to be heading"?

Promises Fulfilled in Surprising Ways: Feast of the Annunciation

I wonder what the annunciation of Jesus' conception was really like, factually, what the angel's message (that is, God's own mediated message) sounded like, and how it came to Mary. I imagine the months that would have passed without Mary having a period and her anguish and anxiety about what might be wrong, followed by a subtle sign here, an ambiguous symptom there, and eventually the full realization of the inexplicable fact that she was pregnant! That would have been a shock, of course, but even then it would have taken some time for the bone-deep fear to register: "I have not been intimate with a man! I can be killed for this!" Only over more time would come first the even deeper sense that God had overshadowed her, and then, the assurance that she need not be afraid. God was doing something completely new and would stand by Mary just as he promised when he revealed himself originally to Moses as: "I will be who I will be," --- and "I will be present to you, never leaving you bereft or barren."

In the work I do with people in spiritual direction, one of the tools I ask clients to use sometimes is dialogue. The idea is to externalize and make explicit in writing the disparate voices we carry within us: it may be a conversation between the voice of reason and the voice of fear, or the voice of stubbornness or that of impulsivity and our wiser, more flexible selves who speak to and with one another at these times so that this existence may have a future marked by wholeness, holiness, and new life. As individuals become adept at doing these dialogues, they may even discover themselves echoing or revealing at one moment the very voice of God which dwells in the deepest, most real parts of their heart as they simultaneously bring their most profound needs and fears to the conversation. Almost invariably, these kinds of dialogues bring strength and healing, integration and faith. When I hear today's Gospel story I hear it as this kind of internal dialogue between the frightened, bewildered Mary and the deepest, truest, part of herself which is God's own Word and Spirit (breath) calling her to a selfhood of wholeness and fruitfulness beyond all she has known before but in harmony with her people's covenant traditions and promise.

This is the way faith comes to most of us, the way we come to know and hear and respond to the voice of God in our lives. For most of us the Word of God dwells within us and only gradually steps out of the background in response to our fears, confusion, and needs as we ponder them in our hearts --- just as Mary did her entire life, but especially at times like this. In the midst of turmoil, of events which turn life plans on their heads and shatter dreams, there in our midst will be the God of Moses and Mary and Jesus reminding us, "I will overshadow you; depend on me, say yes to this, open yourself to my promise and perspective and we will bring life and meaning out of this; together we will make a gift of this tragedy (or whatever the event is) for you and for the whole world! We will bring to birth a Word the world needs so desperately to hear: Be not afraid, for I am with you. Do not be afraid, for you are precious to me."

Annunciations happen to us every day: small moments that signal the advent of a new opportunity to hear, embody Christ, and gift him to others. Perhaps many are missed and fewer are heeded as Mary heeded her own and gave her fiat to the change which would make something entirely new of her life, her tradition, and her world. But Mary's story is very much our own story as well, and the Feast of Christ's nativity is meant to refer to his being born of us as well. The world into which he will be brought will not love him really --- not if he is the Jesus our Scriptures and our creeds proclaim. (We bear this very much in mind during Lent and especially at the approach of Holy Week.) But our own fiat ("Here I am Lord, I come to do your will!") will be accompanied by the reassuring voice of God: "I will overshadow you and accompany you. Our stories are joined now, inextricably wed as I say yes to you and you say yes to me. Together we create the future. Salvation will be born from this union. Be not afraid!"

Introduction: Linkage Between Holy Saturday and Existential Solitude?

[[Sister Laurel, you wrote, [[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.]] I understand what you have written before about authentic eremitical vocations I think, but your reference to Holy Saturday surprises me. I figured you were not doing this just because of it being Lent and that it must have something to do with existential solitude, but I am just guessing. Could you explain your reference? Is your understanding of Holy Saturday linked to the experience of existential solitude? If so, I have never gotten this impression from homilies or reflections on the Triduum.]]

First, thanks for your comments and questions. I wasn't expecting such a question so soon so I can only give you something of a preliminary response, but your question is very fine and I did want to give you a little to think about until I can write more.

 Yes, I think the linkage between Holy Saturday and the experience of existential solitude is very significant. In order to approach that let me refer you first to an article I have posted here several times over the years as we move toward Holy Week and the Triduum. You can find it here: In Darkness We Wait in Hope. That piece speaks of the profound questions raised by the death of Jesus and the (potential and actual) loss of hope of the disciples who had trusted he was God's Messiah. It speaks of Holy Saturday as a day of loss and grief, but also one of nascent hope. It should point out, but does not, that it is also the day the disciples huddled hidden from the authorities, the meaningfulness and even the fact of their entire lives now thrown into doubt, and the brink of despair by the execution of the convicted criminal they thought was God's anointed.

As I recount some of that, I think you can hear the resonance it has with what I have written recently on existential solitude, the deep questions it involves, and the profound hunger for being and meaning it is associated with. What I wrote last week was:

For me, this is the deepest paradox of our existence, namely, that often we know God best in our hunger and it is in the sharpening of our hunger that we know we have been drawn closer to God by Godself. As a hermit, I am coming to know that on this side of death, the greatest consolation we can know is not so much that we are filled by God, but rather, that our hunger for God is developed, sharpened, and deepened. This profound hunger, however, can also be extremely painful since God is not only the ground and source of being, but of all meaning as well. To yearn for being and meaning and all these imply and require, can lead us to the very brink of despair unless and until we realize that, paradoxically, this agonizing hunger for God is itself the deepest sign of God's presence and love we can know, entirely unadulterated as it is by egoism. Jesus' cry of abandonment, especially in the presence of so much other suffering, is at once the measure of his greatest hunger and a sign of God's undoubted love echoing within him.

It was the experience of this hunger that opened me to a very much clarified understanding of my own existential solitude. Over the years, that solitude has been marked by an extended Holy Saturday experience. For instance, I remember once having a conversation with my director where I noted that the rhythm of my life never quite seemed to match the rhythms of the liturgical seasons and feasts. The Church was celebrating Easter and I was still living Holy Saturday, for instance! This was not a bad thing, but it was challenging, and I knew that I wanted to spend some time with the experience, studying, praying, meditating and writing about it. My director noted that it was likely that a lot of people in today's world experienced a similar challenge and that my own attention to this could benefit many. I believe she was correct; meanwhile, the explicit linkage between this extended experience of Holy Saturday and existential solitude per se only came full circle in what led to my writing the above-quoted paragraph last week.

The Triduum is a multi-layered, multi-faceted liturgy embodying and symbolizing many different moments and moods. Unfortunately, Holy Saturday and the loss, grief, bewilderment, liminality, and profound questions associated with the experience of Jesus' death seem to me not to be given sufficient time or space in our lives. We need time to question, to doubt, to wrestle with our own inadequate theologies, and to recognize this experience of deep struggle, questioning, grief, and even anguish-on-the-way-to-genuine-hope rooted in resurrection, and this time is something our world generally does not allow us. Existential solitude is a universal reality. Every person knows it to some extent, yet really experiencing it in all of its depth is not something even our ordinary liturgies and homilies encourage or allow. Holy Saturday, I think, is meant to provide us some of the time we need to experience this specific form of solitude. Too often, it is too quickly collapsed into Easter, or treated as a time to prepare the church building for Easter Sunday liturgies. Even the  Easter Vigil liturgy seems to me to be less vigil-like than we need.

Somehow, while it is critical to live in light of the resurrection, we seem to have forgotten that it is the certainty of Jesus' resurrection that truly allows and actually invites us to plumb the existential depths of need, hunger, emptiness, grief, betrayal, loss, doubt, potentialities, and so much more. Hermits retire to hermitages to undertake this perilous and ultimately promising journey. I think contemplatives in general do the same. The people who do the kind of inner work I have been engaged in for the past number of years have the tools and opportunity to do similarly. The Church, in her wisdom, gave us the Triduum, and especially Holy Saturday (from after the Passion on Good Friday) to spend time getting in touch with this reality in a privileged way. I am sure I will be writing more about this over the next three weeks as we approach Easter. For now, I hope this preliminary response is sufficient!

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 from 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,  is still also a painful reality because of the state of estrangement in which we yet exist, and thus, is something most folks tend to evade and avoid for as long as possible. And in terms of society's needs for our active engagement with one another, 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.

A Contemplative Moment: Interior or Existential Solitude

"Man the Solitary" from

Solitude in the Thought of Thomas Merton

by

Richard Anthony Cashen

Important as is the category of physical solitude, interior solitude, is more important, more fundamental than physical solitude. "There is no true solitude except interior solitude", Merton states bluntly. Physical solitude helps foster interior solitude, it is true, but it is interior solitude which gives physical solitude its validity. Without interior solitude, physical solitude might be a false or dangerous solitude, full of life denial and self-hatred, a flight from responsibility or spiteful separation from one's fellow man. . . .Solitude becomes for Merton, as Jean LeClercq has pointed out, the symbol of the 'absolute, ultimate and inexhaustible encounter with God and with humanity'. Merton's concept of interior solitude resembles the biblical concept of 'heart'. In fact, one of the finest summations of Merton's thought on interior solitude can be found in his own description of the scriptural 'heart'. One need only substitute the words interior solitude in place of 'heart':

heart (interior solitude) refers to the deepest psychological ground of one's personality, the inner sanctuary where self-awareness goes beyond analytical reflection and opens out into metaphysical and theological confrontation with the Abyss of the unknown yet present --- one who is 'more intimate to us than we are to ourselves'.

While physical solitude removes us from our fellow man, interior solitude unites us with him. It is communion with our fellow man on a much deeper level than the social fictions of life in a large city or a technological world allow. Physical solitude is not absolutely necessary for the process of interior solitude.

. . . a (person) becomes a solitary at the moment when, no matter what may be his external surroundings, he is suddenly aware of his own inalienable solitude and sees that he will never be anything but solitary. 

 

On Existential Solitude and Discerning my own Eremitical Vocation

[[I do have a question for you. I am trying to be respectful in how I word this. Chronic illness is an integral part of how you live your vocation. I got the impression not too long ago that you had struggled at one point about your vocation from one of our conversations. . . . What I am interested in knowing if you feel like sharing, is what helped you understand the difference between a call to the eremitic life as a vocation geared to you specifically, and a way of making lemonade out of lemons? The reason I ask is because I just have an overall impression from many of your posts... that there is a real emphasis on how this vocation really fits chronic illness and I wonder if people see it as a secondary thing, or the primary reason for seeking profession. . . . and yet there seems to be a liminality about it. . . that is, it is true that these factors are compatible with vocations and radically shape how it is lived, and yet [these factors] do not explain how a person identifies the vocation psychologically without a particular apostolate or chronic illness as being theirs. And perhaps this question makes no sense. . .]]

Thanks for your questions. They are important and point to a significant constellation of issues any hermit candidate and diocesan personnel along with mentors, spiritual directors, et al, will need to deal with in discerning a vocation to eremitical life when the candidate has a disability or chronic illness. Chronic illness certainly impacts the way I live my vocation; more importantly, though, I think it is a foundational part of my vocation per se. I say this because it has been chronic illness along with personal woundedness that confront me with existential solitude most sharply and have done so all through the years, even when I was much younger. Existential solitude is something every genuine hermit comes to know, but chronic illness, for instance, introduces us to this much earlier and, perhaps, in a more thoroughgoing way than is ordinarily the case. Karl Jung once wrote about this (if I am remembering correctly). He noted that some younger people have certain lived experiences that suit them to a solitary life, even though we ordinarily think of eremitical life as a second half of life vocation. I believe chronic illness, some disabilities, and some other difficult situations experienced in early life represent such experiences.

While I believe the eremitical vocation is primary and the chronic illness must be secondary in one's discernment of the vocation and admission to profession and consecration, I also believe that one's illness can serve one's vocation to eremitical life precisely because it puts the person in touch with the deepest solitude we human beings know and that eremitical life is lived in terms of, namely, existential solitude. This is the solitude that recognizes our fundamental aloneness and separation from others no matter how close we also become to them or how well we love them and they love us. Existential solitude recognizes a gap that cannot be bridged as well as the fact that this aloneness is overcome in and by God alone who is "closer to us than we are to ourselves." As I wrote recently, in our hunger for being and meaning (that is, for the fullness or abundance of meaningful life,) we hunger for God and often know God's powerful presence best only in the sharpening and deepening of that hunger. I associate existential solitude with this hunger and with the sharpening of this solitude with both chronic illness and the call to eremitism.

The chronically ill already know the kind of solitude a hermit is called to get in touch with over time, though it may not be something they reflect on or come to appreciate. Those who are able-bodied are (or at least are more likely to be) less in touch with this deep solitude. They will come to know it in the various natural ways any hermit comes to know it in time, but perhaps not as profoundly; moreover, they will not be as likely to structure their life in terms of vows, prayer, and spiritual direction, that allow them to get into greater and greater touch with it. Discerning a true eremitical vocation takes real time, whether one has a chronic illness or not, but my sense is that some persons with chronic illness (not all) are meant to live their existential solitude even more radically than most persons with chronic illness. I believe this is necessary for them to be whole and holy persons. It is also essential if they are to witness to others that this foundational solitude is constituted especially by one's relationship with God lived in space and time. These persons will have discovered an eremitical vocation. Does this also make lemonade out of lemons? Yes, but it is not primarily about that, and it must be distinguished from that.

You see, for those without this vocation (and even with it), there is the question of whether one is JUST trying to make lemonade out of lemons. First of all, God can use the eremitical vocation to make lemonade, but this must still be God's project, not one's own! Was I trying to justify living as a hermit by convincing myself this was actually God's call? For me, this was a nagging question, though, through the years, it was countered more often and more profoundly than not. It took time to reach the depths of my own woundedness and discover there a Divine call to eremitical solitude, not just a neat way of justifying things that isolated me from others, prevented the use of personal gifts, or gave me a relatively restful life. The vocation to eremitical solitude is a vocation to engage with God at the point of one's existential solitude.** Physical solitude, silence, and prayer are essential helps and means to this but so are privileged relationships, for example. Still, it is a commitment to existential solitude and all that implies that defines the vocation, not merely physical solitude.

The question of how I discovered this is somewhat different. It began with an insight into c 603 and its possible place in my own life. I looked at that canon (even reading the canon at all, I believe, was providential) and began to see that it was a way of answering every question and yearning I experienced for a way to live my religious vocation that not only made space for but made sense of chronic illness at the same time. This was very like the deep insight I had had upon first attending Mass before I became a Catholic. On that occasion, as I knelt watching others go to Communion, I had the sense about the Church that "here every need I have, whether emotional, psychological, spiritual, intellectual, aesthetic, social, theological, etc., can be met." I was about fifteen years old then. But of course, the insight is not enough. It must be tested and proven in one's living.

So (the short version of things!), I began living eremitic life. As part of this, especially after perpetual profession and consecration, I also worked hard with my director to heal personal woundedness. Each major piece of work we undertook, each root of woundedness we dealt with, led to healing that was associated with the felt risk that I would discover I had been mistaken and was not really called to eremitical life as a Divine vocation. And yet, through the years (now 40 of them), each piece of healing came with a reaffirmation that I was indeed called to this by God. (I can go into details about this ongoing discernment another time, but for now, it is enough to say the Church affirmed this, my director affirmed it, and the fruits of my life and this work affirmed it.) Generally, the truth was that authentic eremitical life 1) was the very thing that called for the work we were doing, 2) it gave me the courage, will, and strength to undertake this work and sustained me in it, and 3) it was what I felt called to live upon "completion" of the work. (I say "completion" here because while we came to a significant point of healing, the work would also continue in a new key.) In any case, eremitical life proved again and again that it was the very reality that allowed for any significant healing to be accomplished. While the call to eremitical life made dealing with personal woundedness imperative, it also made it possible and fruitful for others.

The need to wrestle with existential solitude and the deepest truth of my identity throughout all of that was similar in both eremitical life, chronic illness, and personal woundedness. Each of these posed the crucial and sometimes excruciating questions of being (existence) and meaning (meaningful life) --- though in different ways; each touched on or tapped into what Tillich calls being grasped by an ultimate (or unconditional) concern and the gift of faith. The trick was teasing these apart from one another because similarity is not identity. Eventually, with eremitical life as the context, goal, and gift that made all of this possible, we reached the depths of personal woundedness, and part of the healing there (once again, but now without any nagging questions whatsoever) included the affirmation and bone-deep sense that I am a hermit because God, through the mediation of God's Church, calls me to be one. It is, in other words, the call that allows me to achieve wholeness and holiness and be the person I was created to be.

You can clarify what you are asking if I have largely missed your point, and I am happy to clarify my initial response as well. This is not easy stuff to explain so I am grateful for the opportunity.

___________________________________

** Wherever I speak of eremitical life God is implicit in this term. Again, eremitical life is a life of personal engagement with God at the point of existential solitude.

Feast of the Transitus of Saint Benedict

When we are very fortunate we will have been given by God the gift of great men and women formators, those who serve us as mentors, guides, older Brothers and Sisters in the faith and in our religious life. We recognize over time that we have been formed by the work we do with these gifted men and women, that God's Holy Spirit works through them and in us so that we are privileged to share their name in some way. While I never had a Benedictine Novice director, I have been privileged to read Benedict's Rule most days of my life for the past 30+ years and to have learned from Saint Benedict through his writing and his followers for many more years than this! Especially this includes the Sisters of Social Service and the Camaldolese --- both Camaldolese Monks and Nuns. 

Today is the anniversary of Saint Benedict's passing into eternity, the day we mark his "transitus" or transition to a new form of life and presence with and for us. It is thus, also the day he became a co-formator for all of those Monks, Nuns, and Oblates who would follow him and his Rule into monastic (and eremitical) maturity as Benedictines of whatever stripe or habit. Thanks be to God for the gift of Saint Benedict and for his lifegiving presence with God and amongst us!! 

The Silence of Solitude and the Distinction Between Physical Solitude and Existential Solitude

[[Dear Sister Laurel, You speak of the silence of solitude and of solitude as a form of penance; at the same time you have written about the need hermits have for relationships. Don't relationships mitigate the degree of solitude you are also embracing? Could you say more about the way this all works? I really like my solitude and could never consider it to be penitential! I would think you or any other hermit would be drawn to solitude as well, no? ]]

Many thanks for these questions and for your patience is awaiting a response! Let me draw some distinctions that are central to eremitical solitude. I tend to use the term eremitical solitude when I am speaking about the reality c 603 specifies as a central element of consecrated solitary eremitical life. I also distinguish between physical solitude, which has to do with being physically separated from others, and eremitical solitude, which includes physical solitude but is not exhausted by it and, especially, is not to be defined in terms of it alone. Instead, I experience eremitical solitude as an incredibly rich symbol with a number of dimensions and defining characteristics. At its heart, I think, is the experience of being irreducibly alone, not "belonging" to anyone or anything except God from whom, this side of death, we are at least somewhat alienated. I identify this dimension of eremitical solitude as existential solitude. This dimension of eremitical solitude does not change, that is, it does not matter whether we are with others or not; in terms of existential solitude, we are always essentially alone with God. 

Eremitical solitude allows one to experience existential solitude with a kind of sharpness and depth that many never experience until their last years when they are isolated by illness or age and bereavement, for instance. In fact, (we) hermits practice physical solitude precisely to sharpen our experience of existential solitude. Our prayer does this all the time. We learn to depend more and more profoundly on God and God alone, knowing that without God there is no real challenge or ability to grow truer, no genuine consolation, no personal strength, and no life, but especially no meaningful life. This sense of what it means to exist and for one's life to be meaningful only through the grace (i.e., the presence and power) of God is sharpened and honed to a razor edge within the hermitage. For consecrated hermits under c 603, even the fact that our vocation is ecclesial and that the Church has specifically called us to live this in her name does not really ease this existential solitude. Often these elements of our life (i.e., ecclesiality, living this life in the Church's name) along with our limited ministry to others, only sharpen it further. The same is true of most relationships.

It seems to me that when I speak of the need for friendships it must be recognized that these are a Divine grace that not only allows us to grow in our capacity for and ability to love but also helps make us aware of our existential solitude. They are an important way God is mediated to us! Yes, you could say they mitigate physical solitude, but existential solitude is a different matter. Friendships can ease our experience of this for a limited time, but inevitably, and ironically, they lead to a sharpened sense of existential solitude. You have heard the adage "One is never so alone as when one is in a crowd". We experience existential solitude as well when we know loss and grief with regard to those we have loved. Thus, while friendships allow us to share and grow in our capacity for love, they also cause us to run up against what I described above as our irreducible aloneness. This is the aloneness that occurs whenever we realize that what is deepest in us (our relationship with God and the eremitical vocation that stems from this) is not understood by even our best friends (unless, of course, they also happen to be contemplatives and even hermits). And even then, this is really more a matter of their experience resonating with our own, rather than the other person actually knowing our unique experience.

When you say that you could never consider solitude to be penitential it sounds to me like you are saying it would never be uncomfortable for you. When I think of penance (or asceticism), I think of anything that helps integrate, deepen, extend, or regularize my prayer. It is not necessarily uncomfortable any more than what are genuine consolations** are necessarily pleasant. My Rule says the following:

Prayer represents an openness and responsiveness to the personal and creative address of God which is rooted in and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Penance seems to me to be any activity or practice which assists in achieving, regularizing, integrating, deepening and extending, 1) this openness and responsiveness to God, 2) a correlative esteem for myself, and 3) for the rest of God's creation. While prayer corresponds in part to those deep moments of victory God achieves within me, and includes my grateful response, penance is that Christian and more extended form of festivity implicating the victory in the whole of life . . . . (Eph 1:4; Lumen Gentium 5, 48) from O'Neal, Sr. Laurel M, Canon 603 Eremitical Rule of Life, approved by Bishop Allen H. Vigneron, Diocese of Oakland, 02. September. 2007.)

The role of solitude (here I mean physical solitude since this is the only kind of solitude we can actually choose) is precisely something the hermit chooses in order to become a contemplative person of prayer. It is a discipline that helps us become open and responsive to the personal and creative address of God. At the same time, physical solitude makes keener the existential solitude that represents our deepest aloneness and also our most profound communion with God. This experience of physical solitude, then, can be immensely creative; at the same time, it can be incredibly difficult and even painful for us. In the Old and New Testaments, long-term solitude involving physical isolation from other people, is looked at with pity and even horror.*** And yet, it is a discipline we hermits embrace as a necessary element of eremitical life. 

When most folks speak of desiring solitude they are speaking of degrees of physical solitude that allow them respite from daily demands involving others and which give time and space to solitary, relaxing activities one doesn't ordinarily have time or space for. Hermits are speaking instead of a reality that throws them back upon their own existential solitude, and so, ultimately, upon their relationship with the ultimate and absolute Mystery we call God. This is at once awesome and terrible, what Rudolf Otto called "mysterium tremendum et fascinans" --- the mystery that at once repels and attracts!! (cf also, The Paradox of Faith: Loved into Ever Deepening Hunger for God)

I hope this is helpful. There are other distinctions I ordinarily make in speaking about solitude or "the silence of solitude", so I hope it is okay that I limited myself here. While this response might not be what you expected, it reflects what I am reflecting on personally these days. If you want to push me a bit further by asking clarifying questions, please do that!

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** Consolations, in the Ignatian sense of the term are experiences that bring us closer to God, not simply experiences that feel good or are pleasant. Consolations can be difficult, even painful experiences while desolations are experiences that lead us away from God --- even if they feel pleasant in the process!

***Barbour, John D, The Value of Solitude, The Ethics and Spirituality of Aloneness in Autobiography, University of Virginia Press, 2004, p 12.