Followup Questions on Ecclesiality, Individuality, and Thanks from Another Hermit

[[Dear Laurel, I read your last piece a couple of times and was overwhelmed by what you wrote about the hermit becoming the place where God and world came together, a place of intercession. I have followed your writing on the ecclesial nature of the c 603 vocation with interest, especially as it intensified in the past couple of years. I have known that it means more than living as a hermit within the Church, and I understood, of course, that this vocation belongs to the Church that then entrusts it to me, but something was still missing for me. In my own eremitical life I have worried about whether or not my life is too individualistic. I have also wondered if I should watch the news more, or be a bit more active in my parish, or cultivate a couple of the relationships I have with others that show promise of deepening, and I have been concerned that that would decrease my own solitude and even make me less a hermit. I have also wondered from time to time what you mean when you say eremitical solitude is a unique form of community. And now, because of your last piece and what you wrote about becoming the place of intercession, it ALL makes sense to me!! 

I don't really have a question. Or rather, I probably have a lot of questions that are bubbling around inside of me and haven't yet come to articulation. But having said that, it seems to me that the guidebook from the Dicastery was important for you to come to understand yourself as the place of intercession,  is that true?  And while I am asking, do you think the pseudo spirituality you wrote about is common to hermits today? It seems really really dangerous to me, though I think it helped you come to where you are as well. Is this distortion of eremitical life one of the reasons you say the Rule with its three stranded braid needs to include ecclesiality? Oh right, one more question. When you wrote about the canon honoring individuality and referred to the range of meaning in the elements of the canon, what did you mean and how does that help prevent individualism? I didn't quite get that. I wasn't going to write except to thank you for hanging in with this blog for such a long time. It is interesting seeing it all come together in the way it has. It gives me a deeper sense of my own vocation and maybe a bit more patience with myself as well, so, really, thank you! By the way, if any of this is helpful for your blog, feel free to use it. ]]

Hey, hi! Thanks for reading and writing! When you have further questions, please be sure and ask! I am going to start with clarifying my meaning in the sentence you asked about. What I actually wrote was, [[Given this flexibility, individuality (which is deeply honored by c 603's requirement of a personal Rule of life the hermit writes herself, the range of meaning contained in each element, and the absence of time frames, stages of formation, etc.) mustn't devolve into individualism.]] What I had in mind was the fact that c 603 honors the individual hermit and the flexibility of the life, not only with the requirement that the hermit writes a Rule of Life that will not be like any other hermit's, but that the constitutive elements of the canon have a range of meanings the deeper one goes into the vocation and her relationship with God. So, for instance, the most obvious meaning of the silence of solitude refers to the quiet of life lived alone (assuming no television, etc!). Over time, however, if one continues in the various disciplines of eremitical life, one will also come to realize that silence also means the inner state that results from personal healing, maturation, and sanctification. This means it is apt to depend upon relationships and lead to their growth. Then too, in time, one will also come to understand that "the silence of solitude" points to what it means to exist in relation to and learn to hear God's own silence and to love from that place. 

Solitude reflects a range of meanings just as silence does. Most superficially, it means aloneness, but as one's experience of eremitical solitude deepens, so too does it come to mean relatedness (to oneself, God, and the world whose cries the hermit hears with increasing clarity and compassion. Eventually, solitude will come to indicate the community that results from being oneself in and for the Love of God and all that God holds as precious. I believe each of the central elements of c 603 have a similar range of meanings and this means that each hermit's journey with and to God can lead to growing understanding that will differ from the understanding of other hermits. This also means that someone asserting that solitude means "being alone" in an absolute way, may be knowledgeable about the dictionary definition of solitude, but not about the range, depth, and even the paradoxical senses of eremitic solitude. It also means that these differences cannot be allowed to devolve into individualism, and the quickest way to that is by absolutizing any single meaning.

You also asked about the "three-stranded braid" and my emphsis on ecclesiality. [[Is this distortion of eremitical life one of the reasons you say the Rule with its three stranded braid needs to include ecclesiality?]] I have been interested in nature and importance of the ecclesiality of the vocation since around the time I petitioned for admittance to profession and consecration with (then) Bishop Allen Vigneron. We had a brief conversation on this during our first official appointment, and my interest in it has only grown over the years. I had been surprised at conversations I had had with other c 603 hermits or candidates who had no sense at all of the ecclesial sense of this vocation. Over time the linkage between ecclesiality and the prevention of individualism became clearer and deeper and when Ponam named the Church as one of two poles preventing individualism, I felt really gratified. When I began working on a project regarding the importance of the hermit writing her own Rule, I had to look again at what was essential in such a Rule. It was not a surprise that ecclesiality was the third strand.

In part, my sense of this importance has come from my experience of hermits or would-be hermits who were seeking to use c 603 or eremitical life as the validation of their own estrangement from others, their own personal failures at living life in the Church, their own desire to do their own thing and be a religious while doing so, etc. I had honestly not anticipated running across hermits who were exaggerated individualists, so finding this particular distortion was a bit of a surprise. Still, the ecclesiality of the eremitical life has more positive roots than the need to avoid individualism. This is what we see when we begin to explore what this vocation means for the Church itself. Here, as I have said several times recently, we see a life that reflects the hidden heart of the Church and what it means for the human being to be hidden in Christ and become the place of intercession. These are far more important than the mere avoidance of individualism, and it was the sense of ecclesiality that led me to see this!!

Good luck with your own questions and discernment. I know you will do what you sense God calling you to. If what I have written on ecclesiality and individualism (and perhaps what I wrote in this post on the range of meanings in solitude, silence, and the silence of solitude, for instance) has helped, I am glad!