On the relationship of Chronic Illness to Eremitical Solitude

 

[[Dear Sister Laurel, it seems to me that your insistence that eremitical solitude is not a matter of isolation but an experience of community has close ties with the way you experience chronic illness. I realized recently that isolation is a key problem for those with chronic illness and was led to your blog. As a result of my reading I wondered if you have been sensitized to the relationship of isolation to solitude by both chronic illness and eremitical life? Do you ever think about the way these two pieces of your vocation are related?  Assuming you do, have you ever wondered if your own chronic illness has led to an illegitimate conclusion about the relationship of isolation and solitude in eremitical life?]]

Wow! Really excellent observations and questions! Definitely make me want to ask you about your own background  (psychology, theology, spirituality, etc). Thank you. I would answer all of your questions in the affirmative except the last one about an illegitimate conclusion. That one I would argue has to be answered in the negative. In one way and another I have thought about the relationship between isolation and solitude and the way chronic illness is related to eremitical life not just occasionally but in an ongoing way for the last 50 years!

While both my own chronic illness and eremitical life sensitized me to the relationship between isolation and solitude and their distinction from one another, they did so in a mutually illustrative way. Moreover, it was precisely my move to eremitical solitude which represented a final move from the isolation of chronic illness to solitude itself. This move from isolation to solitude, something which comes with and requires growth and healing in an ongoing way, is part of the redemptive experience I have said is necessary in discerning an eremitical vocation --- at least it is part of the redemptive experience at the heart of my own eremitical vocation! If eremitical life is about isolation rather than solitude, or if these two things are not distinguishable, then eremitical solitude would have increased the isolation associated with chronic illness and could in no way have been redemptive for me. It has done just the opposite. Because of this, because the fruit of eremitical life actually was the redemption of isolation associated with a medically and surgically intractable seizure disorder couple with a Regional Complex Pain Syndrome, I have been able to move back and forth in my own reflection on eremitical solitude, between solitude's nature and quality, the ways the isolation of this illness can be redeemed, and also the idea of chronic illness as (potential eremitical) vocation. These three elements especially are interwoven in my thought and writing.

 Originally I dealt only with chronic illness and the tension between my own need and desire to be part of ordinary life in the ways "everyone else" supposedly is. I was educated in systematic theology and had prepared to teach and otherwise minister in the Church and Academy but could not because of chronic illness. Eventually, because of my engagement with theology (especially Paul's theology of the cross and a strong theology of language or theological linguistics), my work in spiritual direction, reflection on Scripture (especially Paul and Mark), and my own prayer, I came to think about chronic illness as vocation. The heart of the gospel message I heard was: "My grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness!" (2 Cor 12:9) In 1983 canon 603 was published as part of the Revised Code of Canon Law and that triggered some more thought while it led me to the idea not just of chronic illness as vocation but as a potential vocation to eremitical life. In all of this I was looking at the way a person who is chronically ill is searching for ways to live a meaningful life and see their life as one of genuine value. When illness prevents so much, especially meaningful ways of giving of oneself and living community, what does one do? How can one look at things and find meaning? How can one be who one is most deeply called to be? Does chronic illness need to prevent one finding and living the answers to these questions?

After some time living an experiment in eremitical life I decided I had discovered the context for living my own vocation to authentic humanity. It was here I began thinking and praying in a more focused way about the distinction between solitude and isolation. I realized more and more that the two were different and was beginning to see more clearly that eremitical solitude (only one kind of solitude afterall) might, in fact, represent the redemption of isolation -- both generally and for me specifically. Out of this experience came a number of strands of thought: physical v inner solitude (a perennial distinction in the thought of every hermit), stereotypes of eremitical life, the distinction between validating and redeeming isolation, the way God alone is sufficient for us --- what this means and does not mean, becoming the Word of God, person as question and God as completing answer, relinquishing discrete gifts for the gift one is made to be by God, the necessity of a redemptive experience at the heart of one's eremitical life in discerning such vocations, the communal nature of solitude, the indispensable place of spiritual direction in eremitical life, and especially the silence of solitude as context, goal, and charism of eremitical  life. At the heart of all of these is the redemptive activity of God and especially the way the grace of God transforms isolation into solitude and renders chronic illness and the life touched by chronic illness richly meaningful and profoundly humanized. Illness raised the existential question of meaning for me; Eremitical life proved to be the context mediating God's own answer to that question --- the answer that God alone can be for every person.

Because of all of this I would have to say that chronic illness has led me to understand some things about eremitical life I might not have appreciated as much otherwise. I believe chronic illness has thus been a gift which sensitized me to dynamics inherent in the hermit vocation, not only the nature of eremitical solitude as an experience of community and the way it cannot be used to validate misanthropy and isolation from others, but also the way the person we become through God's love is the gift we bring to the Church in place of discrete gifts and talents we may have to give up or leave unrealized. At the same time chronic illness is part of the way God has shaped my own heart into the heart of a hermit. Far from agreeing that it has led me to an illegitimate conclusion re the relationship between isolation and solitude. I believe it prepared me to raise the question in a particularly urgent and acute way while opening me to the answer embodied in or represented by eremitical life.

I suspect you were not looking for such an autobiographical answer, and to be sure, I could have outlined my answer in a less personal way; however, I really have been living the question and the answer in one way and another through the whole of my adult life. I sincerely hope this is helpful!

A New Heaven and a New Earth: God With Us

In Friday's reading from Revelation we heard John's vision for the future, a vision that might be really different than that which many of us have entertained over the years of our faith, and yet it is a profoundly Christian vision and one which is meant to carry us into and through Advent.

Now, there is no doubt that Revelation is a difficult book, and not one most Catholics (nor many mainline Protestants for that matter) have sat down to read. It is filled with imagery that needs to be decoded for us; the theology has been connected to cultic movements, some of them quite destructive, books about rapture and the antiChrist (despite the fact that neither word appears in Revelation), and generally associated with something very far from that of the other canonical books of the Bible. Critics have referred to its author as a drug addict, characterized its theology as that of a slaughtering Christ, spoken of its inclusion in the canon as an evil, and in less critical moments pointed out that at the very least it requires a revelation to decode it.

But if we think of the Bible as a library of books we might be surprised to find that Genesis and Revelation begin and end a great deal of history with very similar visions. Genesis begins with a view of God and human beings dwelling together in a garden. They walk together and it is only human sin that alienates human beings from this state. Today we read this text in two ways: 1) synchronically as a narrative about the original nature of the human/divine relationship and vision of the nature of earthly existence, and 2) diachronically as a vision of what human beings are therefore made for and what a renewed heaven and earth will one day look like. In Revelation, difficult and confusing details aside, John (et al) gives us a vision of an ultimate new creation, a "new heaven and a new earth" where "God is all in all" and death and sin are destroyed. God and human beings exist in communion with one another and God is revealed as God with us in the fullest sense.

The theme of "God with us" and the idea that this is truly the will of God occurs again and again throughout the Old and New Testament Scriptures. In Exodus God writes his law on the hearts of his people and gives them the Law -- a sign of the covenant between them, the covenant where God's faithfulness always means God is with his People in ways limited only by human sinfulness. God gives them explicit and detailed instructions on constructing the Tabernacle ("mishkan") a symbol of his dwelling (tabernacle or mishkan means dwelling) with his people in a way which allows his Shekinah or glory be revealed.

Similar instructions are given for the construction of the Temple in which heaven and earth meet and heaven (wherever God's sovereign presence is shared with and by others) interpenetrates our world. In his definitive revelation in Christ, Jesus, the new Temple of God, the One who penetrates the realms of sin and death and breaks down  the boundaries between sacred and profane, is explicitly named Emmanuel or God With Us. In the sending of the Spirit we are given a consoler so that God may be with us in a new and pervasive way while in the Church, her Eucharist and other Sacraments God reveals himself again and again as the One who would be God-With-Us. The Incarnation is not God's bandaid solution to the problem of human sin (though it does effectively deal with sin) but the definitive act in which God is revealed (made known and made real) in space and time as Emmanuel.

John's vision of a new heaven and a new earth in which God and human beings dwell in union with one another, where God is all in all, is not a vision we are used to imagining. We are more used to thinking in terms of dying, going to heaven and eventually being re-embodied in a resurrection there in heaven. But throughout our Scriptures the theme of creation and recreation, the remaking of heaven and earth into a single reality and a God whose will is to dwell with us, "walking side by side" with us (as is celebrated in Genesis' poetic imagery) recurs again and again.

Our own move into Advent invites us to open ourselves and our imaginations to God doing something new (kaine or qualitatively new!!) --- something beyond the historical Jesus we look back to, or even the risen Christ we know now. It is an invitation to share John's vision in Revelation and imagine the complete destruction of sin and death that was begun in Nazareth so long ago as well as our world's ultimate fulfillment in God's final act of new creation in Christ. Imagine a Kingdom in which human beings have a dwelling place in God's own heart while God as Love-in-Act is entirely at home in our own transfigured and glorified world. This, after all is John's great vision in Revelation and the image the Church gives us the day before we begin our Advent period of waiting and preparation. It is the vision Israel placed at the beginning of the OT as they characterized God as present and walking hand in hand with Adam and Even in the Garden. With this in mind, I would encourage folks to open themselves throughout Advent more and more to a new way of seeing reality, a new vision that is not only genuinely sacramental and sees reality as it is now, but, because God reveals his very nature and will as Emmanuel, also imagines reality's promised future which culminates in a new heaven and a new earth, a future in which God will be God-with-us in an exhaustive way.

Recommendations for Advent reading:

Elizabeth Johnson CSJ's Ask the Beasts, Darwin and the God of Love (The second part of the book is especially recommended but the whole is wonderful)

Ilia Delio, OSF, From Teilhard to Omega, Co-creating an Unfinished Universe