Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel: on St Teresa's Eremitism

[[Dear Sister, I am still surprised at how you write about solitude. Your accent on the communal nature of it just seems different from what I understand hermits to be. It's hard to get it into my head. Do all hermits see eremitical solitude as a communal thing? How does a person know when they are living what you call eremitical solitude and when they are just wrecking that with contact with others? Do you measure your time in percentages or something like that, 90% solitude and 10% community, or something to be sure you are mainly living solitude?]] 

Great questions! I can't answer about all hermits but more and more the truth that becomes clearer to me is that hermits of all traditions see the integral link between solitude and community. Cornelius Wencel, Er Cam, stresses this in his excellent general approach to hermit life in the book The Eremitic Life. This week, partly because of today's Feast of OL of Mount Carmel, I was going back to Ruth Burrow's work, Essentials of Prayer. There is a chapter near the end of the book on Carmelite eremitism which draws not only from Burrow's experience but from the writings of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. What was striking in this chapter (which I had completely forgotten!) was Teresa's demand that her Sisters become not only nuns but also hermits. 

The basic point was that these Sisters entered Carmel in order to know truth and love -- both the truth of themselves and of God as they come to love themselves, their Sisters, and their God, more truly and deeply. This requires both solitude and community. (Here she seems using the term solitude somewhat differently than I do because it does not seem she is describing solitude as communal, but I suspect that I am mistaken in that conclusion. It is clear that though Burrows contrasts community and solitude, she also knows well that even the Sister's solitude in Carmel is a profoundly communal reality; not only is it lived for the sake of the larger community/charism, but it is lived because the community supports, ensures, and nurtures it. In all of this, the Cistercian and Carmelite approaches (and also that of the Camaldolese) to both solitude and community seem very close indeed.)

Below is some of what she says; I think you will also find real similarities to what I have said about solitude throughout the years here, along with what the Cistercians, the Camaldolese, the Franciscans, and even what the Carthusians say regarding the relationship of solitude and community. In all of these spiritualities there is a tension between solitude and community and each group works out this tension (or, maybe better said, negotiates and lives this tension creatively) in somewhat different ways. The tension is never simply ignored or obviated; it is lived faithfully, and the result is either a healthy and authentic coenobitism or a healthy and authentic eremitism.  Again, St. Teresa, for example, wanted nuns who would also be hermits and therefore, she created a coenobitical "eremitism" which at once cut Carmel off from the world around them with a strict enclosure -- stricter than occurred with the origin of the Order, perhaps; but at the same time, the desert she created was meant to allow for an exposure to reality (to God and one's deep self as well as to one's Sisters); it was a "solitude in which a woman's life could develop and expand"! Ruth Burrows, OCD, writes:

[[To be alone with Him Alone is, at bottom, to be detached from self, with mind and heart directed to pleasing God only --- something that is impossible without generous effort, searching purification, and --- let us not overlook it --- personal maturity. It is possible for someone to live in physical solitude, to follow a strict Rule of life, pray, experience great devotion or desolation, yet remain basically egotistical, undeveloped, and emotionally stunted: alone, not with God, but with the self and its projections of God. John of the Cross insists that we simply cannot, of ourselves, divest ourselves of our egotism. God has to act both directly and indirectly. Other people are his chosen instruments, and we have an absolute need of them in order to mature emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually and to learn how to love --- our life's greatest task.]] Later Burrows writes:

[[All human maturation and growth towards union with God demands a creative tension between solitude and community. Understood in a truly spiritual/Christian sense, we cannot have the one without the other, and each thrives in mutual proportion. Each of us must stand absolutely alone before God, assuming full responsibility for our attitudes and choices. At the same time, none of us can come to self-knowledge and maturity without others. The more truly solitary and personal the individual member, the more authentic the community --- a genuine communion of mind and heart. . .. Understanding the meaning of solitude and being faithful to it, and at the same time forgetting self in the service of community, enables divine Love to bring to being our true personhood. When that is so then, most truly, we are alone with God alone.]]

Regarding your question on percentages, I never measure anything regarding solitude and community in that way. It is not helpful at this point. Instead, I recognize I am called to live with and for God alone and I do what is necessary to ensure that. That will mean meeting with my Director regularly, joining with my faith community at the parish when I can, doing the personal work I have committed to as part of my ongoing personal formation, and being accessible if someone needs to meet with me, including spiritual direction clients. But it will also mean living most, if not all of every day, with God for the sake of God and others --- alone in my hermitage. So long as prayer continues to support these activities and these activities continue to call me back to prayer in solitude, and so long as I continue to experience God calling me to all of this and find myself growing as a person in Christ, I think I am living exactly the kind of solitude God calls me to. And, though I am not a cenobite, I think it is the same kind of solitude St. Teresa wanted for her Sisters, specifically, "a solitude in which a woman's life could develop and expand," and do so in and with God. 

Personal growth in God (that is, in Love) will always be the key, I think. Because of the way I understand the two things, I live community with an accent on solitude and solitude with an accent on its communal nature. I hope this makes sense to you because it requires giving up the kind of calculus you (and most others, by the way), understandably propose and ask about. Meanwhile, all good wishes and prayers for my Carmelite brothers and Sisters. I am thinking especially of Ruth Burrow's Carmel and also the Carmel in Reno where friends are celebrating with the community today! May this Feast be a gift in every way it possibly could!!

All quotations taken from Essence of Prayer, "Alone with Him Alone: St Teresa's creative understanding of eremiticism", by Ruth Burrows, OCD, Hidden Spring Press, 2006.