Showing posts with label Belonging vs fitting in. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Belonging vs fitting in. Show all posts

12 October 2014

Diocesan Hermits and Community, part 2

In On Community and the Hermit I began an answer to a questioner asking about friendships and the shape of community in the hermit's life.  In one way and another I have been dealing with that question for the past several weeks --- even prior to receiving the question. It may have been that fact that prompted the reader's question in the first place! In any case, the first part of my explicit answer I focused on those friendships and relationships which were essential to the well-being of my vocation because they fulfilled my own needs. In this second part I want to say something about the shape of community in my life because of the diocesan hermit's responsibility that her solitude be a fruitful reality and a gift to the Church and world.

Diocese and Parish as Ordinary Community of the Solitary Hermit

For any diocesan (c 603) hermit the diocese and parish within which they finds themselves, and from which they have actually been called to live the silence of solitude is ordinarily their primary faith community. It is usually here they celebrate or receive the Sacraments, here they are nourished on the proclaimed Word of God, here they meet the people they are praying for and with, and here they come to understand the complex challenges which are currently facing those living life outside the rarefied environment of the hermitage. I meet truly holy persons here whenever I come for liturgy. It is also here though, that the hermit witnesses to the contemplative and eremitical life and the gift (charism) of the silence of solitude lived in their midst! Personally I find it a significant, if complex, relationship and presence in my life. I am sure that my presence and involvement in the parish is both somewhat other than straightforward and yet fruitful as well!

You see, I cannot take on the responsibilities or ministry that a ministerial Sister can and does ordinarily take on. While I am actually part of the parish staff (pastoral assistant) I do not generally attend Staff meetings nor retreats, nor do they look to me to fill staff roles at parish events. They know I cannot do that and that my real ministry is contemplative life and prayer in solitude. I do minister otherwise in a limited way when I attend Mass (I rotate in as Sacristan, cantor, lector, EEM, etc), and I lead Communion services when we have no priest. Occasionally too I will write a reflection on the day's readings, do a presentation for Lent or Advent or for the school kids (on prayer and being a hermit).

So, I am present and active and certainly personally integral to the parish. People actually miss and pray for me when I am spending more time in solitude and cannot be at daily or Sunday Mass, but at the same time this means there are very real limitations which my parish generally understands (or tries to understand!) and respects! (One small but telling way they show me they understand and regard my vocation, for instance, occurs when they quietly slip a small note with a particular prayer request into my hand because somehow they know it will go into a handmade bowl near the Tabernacle in my hermitage where it will be held in prayer. That the story of the "prayer bowl" has gotten around the parish and to members I don't really know yet suggests, I think, that my presence is discussed and valued.) When I speak of a diocesan hermit belonging to a parish it is this integral yet "eremitically" limited relationship I am speaking of.

On Being a Bit of a Mystery

I suppose for many in my parish I am a bit of a mystery and of course, that is okay! If my presence sparks questions or real curiosity then that is well and good! If people admit they don't understand what a hermit is or how there can be such a thing as a hermit in the 21C. much less right here in this relatively well-to-do suburban parish, then also well and good. (If they ask me about these things directly and we have an opportunity to get to know one another a little and (among other things) dispel a few stereotypes or misperceptions, then even better!) If our school kids hear me cantor or lector and wonder about me singing and reading Scripture even at home, if they have questions about my habit or cowl, if they ask their teachers what the heck it means to be a contemplative or pray all day, if they ask me to come to talk to them about all that occasionally or sometimes also slip me notes with their most urgent prayers on them, and if they can see that I am a pretty joyful person who likes to laugh even while I am also pretty serious (humor can be serious business!), then I think my presence is an effective one and over time will bear real fruit in addition to that which already comes from prayer itself.

Am I "like" these folks? Well, no, in many, many ways I am not; but in some much more fundamental ways I am VERY like them; my sense of that fundamental sameness is a grace that I thank God for almost every day! The bottom line here though is that I belong to this community because we are a Christian faith Community. (cf Belonging vs Fitting In) Different as most of our lives are, I truly love them and they love me as well. We make it work because that's what Catholics living in and for Christ do; love transcends differences and builds community! It is significant, I think, that our parish motto is "All are welcome." So long as I allow it to be so, that is true even (and, I think, especially) for a hermit! 

A Slight Detour and Return

I remember when I was in Graduate School in Theology. The Catholic students and faculty (which meant a LOT of religious, priests, theologians, liturgists, and ministers from all over the Diocese were converging on "Holy Hill" on Sunday mornings and celebrating some of the most fantastic liturgies I have ever attended. The St Louis Jesuits were "in residence" at that time (they were also students, but attending JSTB) and every Catholic theological school had some group that sang during the week for their school's Mass and came together as part of this more general Mass on Sundays. The assembly naturally participated fully, were knowledgeable and were inspired by this Sunday liturgy. But there was also something wrong with this picture! It was elitist in a certain way but more to the point, it deprived all the parishes in the Diocese of Oakland of the liturgists, theologians, homilists, musicians, religious, and priests those parishes could have used as resources so their own liturgies and the music, homilies, and other aspects there were equally participative and  perhaps more genuinely inspiring. So, Bishop John Cummins decided to let us all know that he wanted us in those parishes so that the liturgical and faith life everywhere might be enhanced and he closed the Sunday morning GTU Mass down!

Originally I was disappointed by this action but over time it is the wisdom of what John Cummins did that has stayed with me. Vatican II renewed the importance of the local community, first diocese and then parish! Every Catholic is related to the local Church in some way and that means that every hermit is as well. As has been said many times in the history of eremitical life, Catholic hermits live our lives of solitude in the heart of the Church; each hermit is an "ecclesiola" --- but not in some form of independent solitary splendor. In other words, we live eremitical solitude in real, concrete circumstances within the heart of real, concrete faith communities. We may be seen but rarely; our lives may not be understood, nor may we even "fit in" (or seem to "fit in") all that well in some things, but I, for instance, know without question that the profound questions that drive my life and quest for union with God are the very same questions the rest of the people in my diocese/parish pose with their lives and this means to the extent we hermits are in touch with these and the God who grounds us all, we are more the same than we are different!  That too is an important witness the hermit can give to those who focus more on differences than on what unites us or what we hold in common.

In conscience, but also theologically and spiritually I believe it is both right and necessary for the hermit whose vocation is ecclesial to find ways to be a gift to her parish --- even and especially if a large part of that gift is the silence of solitude so many seem to fear and resist (but which we all need to learn to embrace as we age and come up against other liminal experiences in our lives)! The paradox is that to do so we have to belong! (cf Belonging vs Fitting In) In any case, in my own eremitical life, I have to belong in this way, limited though it is, or I cut myself off not only from one of the main ways my life of solitude bears fruit, but from one of the main sources of Divine presence and spurs to personal growth in holiness and authentic solitude in my life. All the diocesan hermits I know or know of live in eremitical solitude and "stricter separation" but that means they do so in relation to (and relationship with!) a parish or monastery or other religious community. Eremitical solitude, once again, is not isolation. As I noted in earlier posts from last week, even actual reclusion requires we be profoundly and mutually related to a faith community of some sort. Thus it is with ecclesial vocations!

25 September 2014

On Belonging vs Fitting In

One of the questions I get asked in various ways has to do with "fitting in". Some wonder if a hermit could really fit in with other parishioners, and, if the hermit is a consecrated hermit with public vows, if they can fit in with lay people. Recently the question came up in a rather humorous way when one blogger opined that perhaps it is harder for a hermit to "fit in" if no one knows she is a hermit; if, the blogger suggested, one is known to others as a hermit then folks can accommodate her a little better; one wondered if this meant making allowances for the hermit's  eccentricities (it sounded that way to me); it certainly meant, as was explicitly suggested, that folks could consider the hermit's "differences" to be part and parcel of belonging to a different vocational category within the Church. In any case what was at least implicit in all of the comments I read, including these, was the fact that this blogger believed hermits are really kind of strange folks who are different from ordinary people and really do not "fit in" unless helped along in some significant way! So, last Friday as I was having coffee with some of the folks who attend daily Mass and get together on Fridays after the service, I asked if they had been accommodating me (cutting me some slack was the way I put it) for the past seven or eight years because they know I am a diocesan hermit! This got a great and gratifying round of laughter. One person pointed out she thought it was often the other way around! And of course the mutuality of all this is exactly the point (more about that later!).

The question of "fitting in" is a serious one and though I am speaking mainly about hermits here this is true for everyone. In this blogger's piece (and others written in the same vein), being a hermit is also linked to the idea that stands on the other end of the "fitting in "pendulum, namely, the idea not that a hermit is eccentric and needs to be accommodated for her various personal quirks and deficiencies, but that they are spiritually superior in some way. (Of course the two could -- and in this same blogger's view --- do coincide if the hermit is given to unusual "spiritual" experiences AND thought she was somehow superior because of this.)

A corollary for those holding this side of the question (the hermit is spiritually superior)  is the suggestion that a parish is no fit place for religious or even lay hermits whose primary community would ordinarily be the parish. This is supposedly so because of the (mistaken) notion that a parish is tailored to the lowest spiritual denominator or is a place where folks don't want "more" or are not particularly hungry for the nourishment of the Gospel and a serious spirituality. While it IS true that not everyone attending necessarily wants what is offered and some are definitely only nominal Christians, I don't think we can draw such simplistic conclusions, especially when they are given a kind of Gnostic or elitist cast. In that case, the question can be an even more seriously misguided one than the notion of parishes accommodating the supposed weirdnesses of individual hermits! Both conclusions build on stereotypes and both mistake the place and the challenge of any Christian in a faith community. After all, life in community of ANY sort but especially that of Christian community is not primarily about "fitting in" but BELONGING and making others aware that they too belong or are welcome to belong. Again, this is, of course, true for anyone --- not just hermits.

My own sense is that truly "fitting in" is a function of and always follows belonging, not (at least in an authentically Christian community!) the other way around!  It occurs to me that when we think about the ways of the Kingdom vs the ways of " the world" we really are talking about which of these terms has priority, fitting in or belonging. In the Kingdom one belongs because God has freely invited, initiated, and welcomed one into the Kingdom; God has, in the process, changed the way we think, feel, perceive and relate to reality --- especially to others we might otherwise consider different, "alien," or strangers -- but we ALL belong because God has welcomed us.

The change that occurs in us then, it seems to me, has occurred through our belonging -- belonging to God, to one another, and no longer exclusively to ourselves. A Kingdom identity is familial; it is rooted in a love which embraces all differences and diversity. How often does Paul speak about this to his troublesome Corinthian community? But putting the accent on "fitting in," making that a precondition for belonging is a matter of what ancient writer would call "worldly thinking." It is other things too: elitist, self-aggrandizing or arrogant (one's own nature, attributes, preferences, etc are made the criterion for approval of others; if they are not like you, then woe in the form of a blackball unto them), and of course it is selfish, exclusionary, uncharitable, unjust (remember that love does justice!)  and simply contrary to the Gospel Jesus proclaimed with his life, sinful death, resurrection and ascension.

In some ways, although belonging is a gift we give to and receive from others, belonging is more challenging than fitting in. Belonging is deeply and personally costly, fitting in is less so. The expense of fitting in is altogether more superficial and less personally demanding (costly) --- unless of course we are speaking of the costliness of losing our true selves and embracing our false selves. When we belong it is our whole selves that are implicated, not a single set of interests or values, for instance. When we affirm another as belonging we open ourselves to the whole of that person and, at least potentially, must deal with, accept and love the whole of them --- even if they don't "fit" or even believe they can! At the same time, if we choose to belong, we will be obligated to love others in the same way! We can't be elitist ourselves, we can't judge others on the basis of characteristics, attributes, and preferences we find attractive or unattractive. If we belong, belonging is a gift we will give others as well, a quality we will empower in them rooted in our openness to them and our commitment to love them as fully as we are able.

While we invite people to belong, we cannot make it happen. To accept the invitation to belong means to accept the invitation to love and be loved. Many would rather fit in (or insist they never can!) when the real problem, the true issue is these persons refusal to love or be loved. They wrap themselves in their differences and eccentricities like a cloak or a shield marking either their supposed "superiority" (including "spiritual superiority") or their fear of vulnerability and lack of generosity. Belonging requires a real humility which cannot be faked (cf. Abba Motius on Humility); it is this fundamentally honest sense of self in relation to God and others which grounds and allows both vulnerability and generosity. At the same time then belonging --- or encouraging another to allow themselves to belong is not the same as saying, "Anything goes," or "The sky's the limit!" It is not the same as saying, "You need do nothing at all!" To belong and invite another to belong is to say, "Whatever ways you 'fit in' in "worldly" terms, and whatever ways you don't, what is critical here is to love and to allow yourself to be loved by others. Nothing else works in a Christian community."

In my parish I think there is no doubt that folks accommodate me in some ways and I them in others (not least re the length of the reflections I occasionally do for them -- they are very patient --- and (sometimes) the degree of conversation and noise that can occur before Mass! --- I am not always so patient with them in this matter). But this has nothing to do with the fact they know I am a hermit. It has to do with the fact that we love one another and accept each other as equally significant members of the community. (By the way, I would personally argue it is charitable for a hermit, no matter whether lay or consecrated, to let others in her faith community know this because the eremitical vocation involves limitations that all in a community need to be aware of lest misunderstandings occur. In the case of a publicly professed hermit, she has embraced an ecclesial vocation with public rights, obligations, and necessary expectations on the part of those who know her and her public commitment. In short it is God's gift to this community and the Church as a whole. It would be irresponsible and more than a little uncharitable to keep her status hidden even if, in the main, her life is essentially so.) 

The bottom line in the discussion at hand however is that we accommodate one another because we are family; we belong to this community and, in a certain sense, to one another. Because of this, any "accommodation" that occurs is not simply a superficial toleration of the person's differences or eccentricities nor is acceptance based on superficial likenesses. Instead accommodation will represent a mutual process involving more profound change on behalf of the other. This kind of accommodation involves changing ourselves so the other CAN belong just as it involves the other in the same conversion and transformation of heart and mind out of love for us. So long as we love one another our differences will be transcended and every diversity can contribute to the sense of the richness and giftedness of this community.