On Hermits, Mystics, and Misanthropes

[[ Hi Sister Laurel, I gathered from your recent posts that you believe a mystic is not some kind of weirdo or people-hater who can't get along with others. Because you seem to believe mystics are made by God's grace in a journey to wholeness (do you mean holiness here?) in union with God, is it your position that mystics relate better to others than most of us can or do? I was thinking that might be the case because they love others as God does and maybe also because they love themselves in the way God loves. I know you believe that all hermits are to be contemplatives and that some will become mystics so is it also true that if one is a called to be a mystic they are called to do that as a hermit? I mean are all mystics called to be hermits or if one experiences mystical prayer, then should they also think they are called to be a hermit??]]

Thanks for your questions. Let me start with the last one first. Because one is called to mystical prayer I do not believe they are necessarily called to be a hermit. Some may be called in this way to eremitical life, but ordinarily, persons discovering a vocation to both mystical prayer and eremitical life are already hermits; mystical prayer develops later in their lives as a part of the mature hermit life. Also, remember, all persons are called to union with God and that suggests that some people from every state of life will find they are called not only to contemplative prayer, but also the higher levels of contemplative prayer associated with the mystical path.

This leads me to your first question --- one you have already answered yourself very well. Yes, I believe that mystics (those called to mystical prayer) will tend to relate well to others because they do experience the love of God in the way they do in prayer. Such persons have been loved by God as all persons are loved by him, but they have experienced that love in ways most of us can hardly imagine! To be a mystic is to be someone focused on union with God in the "Beatific vision," but more, they are focused on it because they know it experientially and proleptically here in this life. They know their own unworthiness and the way God gives Godself to us in spite of that, just as they truly know their own preciousness and human dignity in light of God's own regard for them. Additionally then, such persons are enabled to see others in the way God sees and is delighted by them --- in spite of the ways all fall short of true humanity. Over time in prayer our hearts and minds are remade in the image of God in Christ. We relate to others and treat them (and ourselves!!) as God treats us. ("I, yet not I, but Christ in me.") How else could it be for someone with the gift of mystical prayer?

You are correct, I do not believe mystics are "weirdos" or misanthropes. More to the point, perhaps, I would say that if they are "weirdos"** and misanthropes they are unlikely to be true mystics. Mystics are lovers who have come to know in immediate experiences of God in prayer, how they and others are loved by God himself. And they are given to God and to others precisely as mystics because in this way God's love for others in Christ can then be made powerfully and effectively present in them. I would agree that mystics are rare and that too, they are not going to love doing many of the things folks commonly love doing in our world. But at the same time mystics are able to take delight in the smallest aspects of God's good creation; they are able to see God in these things and in those that image God more completely, and for this reason they will see things as precious and relate well to them as they are meant to be related to.

** Without a working definition, "weirdo" is likely not really helpful in this discussion. Let me just say that as I use the term it refers to someone who is not particularly down to earth, is unable to make others comfortable in their presence, and may be significantly self-centered in a way which prevents them from truly "being there" with and for others. As I understand the term it does not have to do simply with fitting in or failing to do so, but with refusing to truly belong to the same human community the rest of us belong to. 

One can have the most esoteric interests imaginable, the strangest preferences in clothes or food or friends, for instance, that are similarly imaginable and not be a weirdo. But, one can also have the most common preferences, likes, and dislikes possible and still be a "weirdo" if one believes they are somehow distinct from or fundamentally unlike the rest of the human race. One conviction I believe all genuine hermits and mystics have in common is the sense that foundationally we are the same as everyone else, unique gifts, talents, tastes, and lifestyles notwithstanding.

Purpose of Stricter Separation from the World

I have received an email asking a question I wrote about in 2011, so I am reposting this response here. I am hoping it leads to further questions, not least, those that will help to clarify the validity of stricter separation from "the world" in an eremitical life. I am thinking about a couple of sentences in a new document from CICLSAL re c 603 I believe this begins to address: [[The hermit who distances [herself] from the world does not flee out of fear or contempt. [She] lived in the world and is called, Christianly, to seek to love it and to look at it with the eyes and the love that God revealed to us in Jesus. . .one separates oneself from the world to save it, one moves away to integrate it. The exterior become interior, the distant becomes near, the excluded is desired included. This is why separating does not mean fleeing.]] par 24 The Hermit Life Form in the Particular Church. "Guidance" CICLSAL, 2022.

[Dear Sister, what is the purpose of "stricter separation from the world" in your life? You have mentioned it as an element of hermit life, but I really don't get it. The Sisters I know are deeply involved in this world and it seems to me it is what Christ was all about. Can you help me understand?]]

Great question! I have written a little about stricter separation from the world, especially what it does and doesn't mean, so I would invite you to check out labels leading to those articles for additional thoughts. But you are correct, I have not really written about the purpose of stricter separation, nor have I spoken explicitly about the validity of this approach in spirituality --- which does indeed seem rather different from Jesus' usual way of doing things. In fact, "stricter separation from the world" was not something I would have chosen myself without circumstances which led me to understand it differently than I did as a young Sister. As your own comment suggests, at first or second glance, it hardly seems to comport with a Christian perspective which honors the incarnation and the sanctity of all creation in Christ. For me it always sounded selfish and lacking in charity --- not to mention in generosity!

It is important to remember that separation from the world means first of all separation from that which is resistant or uncongenial to Christ, and that it involves detachment from that which promises fulfillment, meaning, and hope apart from him and the God he mediates. This sense of the term "world" refers to anything which is untrue, distorted, resistant to life, to love, and to all the rest of the values which constitute life in God. But it is not God's good creation, therefore, from which we mainly separate ourselves. It is "the world" of falsehood, chaos, and meaninglessness, and this means that it is not something distinct existing merely outside of ourselves, but instead a reality which is intimately related to the darkness, woundedness, distortions, and sclerosis (hardness) of our own hearts.

Keeping this in mind, there are several reasons then for embracing stricter separation from the world. The first is that such separation distances us from the constant reinforcement of values, behaviors, expectations, and so forth which bombard us otherwise. Consider all the things we each see every day that tell us who we are and must be --- despite the fact that almost none of them are consistent with the values of the Kingdom of God! The second reason has to do with allowing ourselves the space and time --- and the silence and solitude --- to meet ourselves without all the supports, props, and distractions of "the world." It is hard to see ourselves for who we really are otherwise. Once the props are down or removed, we come to experience our own poverty. When we are not measuring (and in fact CANNOT measure) success, integrity, fruitfulness, etc., according to the terms constituting, "the world" we come face to face with what we are really all about. So, the first part of stricter separation is all about reality checks. Conversion, after all, requires confrontation with truth.

The third and most fundamental reason for stricter separation from the world is to allow the space and time needed for a meeting with God. If our hearts (and so, our very selves) are, in part, darkened, distorted, sclerosed and untrue, they are also the place where God bears witness to himself and the truth of who we are. All the elements of the eremitical life, including stricter separation, are geared towards the meeting (and eventually, union) with God which verifies (makes true), heals, and brings to fullness of life. It is in this meeting that we learn how precious we are despite our very real human poverty, here that we learn how constant and secure God's love, here that we begin to have a sense of what we are really capable of and meant for. It is in this meeting with God that we come to know genuine freedom, come to experience an imperishable hope, and are commissioned to go out to others to summon them to something similar.

There is a fourth reason for stricter separation from the world then. We must step away from the distorted perspectives and values that constitute "the world" in order to love it better. We leave it in order to be made capable of affirming the deeper truth and beauty of the world around us. We come to know everything in God and that leads us to see with God's eyes. Hermits assume a marginal place so that they may also serve a prophetic function by speaking the truth in a way that affirms the world's deepest and truest reality. It will also summon to conversion. Stricter separation from "the world" allows us to love God's world into wholeness. It is a servant of true engagement and commitment. Stricter separation from "the world" is a tool for loving the whole of God's creation; it is neither escapist nor selfish and cannot be allowed to devolve into these. Abba Evagrius said it this way, [[The monk is someone who separates himself from all so that he can be united to all.]] Treatise on Prayer #124.

But why a LIFE of stricter separation from the world? Hermits witness to separation from the world as a basic dynamic assisting us to come to the freedom that results from being the person God makes us to be. The hermit reminds us again and again of the primacy of the foundational relationship that grounds our being, and of the task of individuation it summons us to achieve on a day-by-day basis for the whole of our lives. We are made for life with God and we are made for a life loving the whole of God's creation. That requires some separation from the world and the rejection of enmeshment with it. Hermits say this particularly clearly with their lives.

Developing the Heart of a Hermit (Reprise)

As it turns out, this question or others like it have been posed or repeated several times, most recently with regard to some things I said about the hermit heart and the need for friendships. I have reprised it before. Thus, I am going to repost something I first wrote about three years ago or so because I still don't think I can improve on it at this point.

[[Hi Sister, when you write about having the heart of a hermit and moving from isolation to solitude do you mean that someone comes to this through some form of trauma or serious personal wounding and alienation? Is this necessary? Can a person who has never been hurt or broken develop the "heart of a hermit"?]]

Hi and thanks for your questions. When I think of someone with the heart of a hermit I am thinking of someone who has entered a desert, been stripped and emptied in all the ways a desert does, and learned to depend upon God for her very life as well as for the meaning of that life. When I speak of God I mean what the Christian creeds mean, what the NT means and who Jesus reveals, but I also mean being dependent on the One Tillich called the "Ground of Being and Meaning", namely a transcendent ground which both surpasses and comprehends our own emptiness and incapacities and is the source and guarantor of life and meaning.

When I speak of a desert I mean the literal wilder-nesses we know as deserts (the Thebaid, Scetes, Mojave, Sonoran, Sahara, etc), but I also mean any extended situation which demands  or forces a person to plumb the depths of their own personal resources --- courage, intelligence, creativity, sense of security, personal  gifts and talents, sense of self, faith, hope, love, etc --- all the things we need to negotiate the world fruitfully and independently. In such a situation, which may certainly include childhood traumatic situations (Merton once said "Hermits are made by difficult mothers"), a person brings all they have and know to the situation and over time are emptied or reach the limit of these resources. At the same time one can, and hopefully will, experience a sense of empowerment one knows comes not only from within but from beyond themselves as well. When this happens, when the desert becomes a place of meeting with God as well as of stripping and emptying, such a person continues to live with a fresh courage and sense of meaning and hope. They embrace their own weakness honestly as they humbly and gratefully accept the life which is received as complete gift in such situations.

All kinds of situations result in "desert experiences." Chronic illness, bereavement, negligent and abusive family life, bullying, losses of employment and residence, abandonment, divorce, war, imprisonment, insecure identity (orphans, etc), serious poverty, and many others may be classified this way. Typically such experiences distance, separate, and even alienate us from others (e.g., ties with civil society, our normal circle of friends and the rhythms of life we are so used to are disrupted and sometimes lost entirely); too they throw us back upon other resources, and eventually require experiences of transcendence --- the discovery of or tapping into new and greater resources which bring us beyond the place of radical emptiness and  helplessness to one of consolation and communion. The ultimate (and only ultimately sufficient) source of transcendence is God and it is the experience of this originating and sustaining One who is Love in Act that transforms our isolation into the communion we know as solitude.

Thus, my tendency is to answer your question about the possibility of developing the heart of a hermit without experiences of loss, trauma, or brokenness in the negative. These experiences open us to the Transcendent and, in some unique ways, are necessary for this. Remember that sinfulness itself is an experience of estrangement and brokenness so this too would qualify if one underwent a period of formation where one met one's own sinfulness in a sufficiently radical way. Remember too that the hermit vocation is generally seen as a "second half of life" vocation; the need that one experiences this crucial combination of radical brokenness and similar transcendence and healing is very likely part of the reason behind this bit of common wisdom.

In any case, the heart of a hermit is created when a person living a desert experience also learns to open themselves to God and to live in dependence on God in a more or less solitary context. One need not become a hermit to have the heart of a hermit and not all those with such hearts become hermits in a formal, much less a canonical way. In the book Journeys into Emptiness (cf.,illustration above), the Zen Buddhist Master Dogen, Roman Catholic Monk Thomas Merton, and Depth Psychologist Carl Jung all developed such hearts. Only one lived as a hermit --- though both Dogen and Merton were monks.

As I understand and use the term these are the hearts of persons irrevocably marked by the experience and threat of emptiness as well as by the healing (or relative wholeness) achieved in solitary experiences of transcendence and who are now not only loving individuals but are persons who are comfortable and  (often immensely) creative in solitude. They are persons who have experienced in a radical way and even can be said to have "become" the question of meaning and found in the Transcendent the only Answer which truly completes and transforms them. In a Farewell to Arms, Hemingway said it this way, [[The World breaks everyone and then some become strong in the broken places.]] The Apostle Paul said it this way (when applied to human beings generally), "My grace is sufficient for you, my power is perfected in weakness."

Hermit hearts are created when, in a radical experience of weakness, need, yearning, and even profound doubt that will mark her for the rest of her life,  she is transformed and transfigured by an experience of God's abiding presence. A recognition of the nature of the hermit's heart is what drives my insistence that the Silence of Solitude is the goal and gift (charism) of eremitical life; it is also the basis for the claim that there must be an experience of redemption at the heart of the discernment, profession, and consecration of any canonical hermit. While she in no way denies the importance of others who can and do mediate this very presence in our world, the hermit gives herself to the One who alone can make her whole and holy. She seeks and seeks to witness to the One who has already "found" her in the wilderness and found her in a way that reveals the truth that "God alone is enough" for us.

On Merton, Suffering, Solitude, and the Making of the Hermit

[[The contemplation of the Christian solitary is the awareness of the divine mercy transforming and elevating his own emptiness and turning it into the presence of perfect love, perfect fullness.]] [Merton's ideal solitaries] are thus, [[the paradoxical, tormented solitaries for whom there is no real place; men and women who have not so much chosen solitude as been chosen by it. And these have not generally found their way into the desert either through simplicity or through innocence. Theirs is the solitude that is reached the hard way, through bitter suffering and disillusionment.]]

[[Dear Sister, I have wondered for some time what makes a person want to be a hermit. It just never made sense to me unless the person was broken and embittered by life and needed to withdraw from that by giving up on people and even on God. It's the solitude that I can't justify. Community made sense but not solitude unless hermits were people who were unable to participate in community for some reason. When you have written about the creation of the hermit heart in your own life it sounds like it involved a lot of suffering but you don't come across as bitter or broken. Thomas Merton has written about this very thing (please see what I quoted from "The Hermitary" site); have you seen this already? But I wondered what makes your heart a hermit heart and not the heart of an embittered survivor of suffering. Is the answer in what Merton wrote about mercy?

Do you think Merton is correct in characterizing the "ideal solitary" as he does? If this is true it must be really difficult for dioceses to "discern" this kind of vocation. Do you know what I mean? In religious life candidates are screened for their health and wholeness and backgrounds involving suffering raises red flags for the vocation personnel. But if ideal hermits are "tormented solitaries" what does a diocese look for in determining authentic eremitical vocations?]]

Thank you for your observations and questions. I have written recently again, though briefly,  about fraudulent hermits; what you are asking about is really one of the more significant ways people betray the eremitical vocation or substitute an inauthentic version of the life for the real thing. What Merton was saying first of all, as I read him, is that solitude must open the door to the one wishing to live an eremitical life; one cannot simply decide to live solitude and do it without such an opening. The second thing I believe Merton is writing about is how the door of solitude is often opened to a person. One of the main ways is through suffering that isolates in any of the many ways this occurs. But I agree with you that suffering is not sufficient to truly discern an eremitical call; it is a beginning and might be suggestive but it is not definitive.

On Unredeemed Suffering and the Door to Solitude:

Moreover, if a person has nothing but her suffering and if that suffering  remains unredeemed or un-transfigured by the grace and love of God, she will never be a hermit in the proper (Christian) sense; instead she will remain an isolated, broken, and possibly embittered person but one who is largely, if not entirely incapable of proclaiming the Gospel with her life. Such a person ought not be admitted to profession as a canonical hermit because while she may "not have a place" --- one element of Merton's description --- neither can she live out the mission or charism of the canonical hermit. Genuine solitude is redeemed and transformed isolation. It is marked or characterized by its relational tenor, a unique but very significant and paradoxical form of relatedness, of ecclesiality and community. The place the hermit has is unusual but very real. The door solitude opens to us is unlocked in part by significant and long-term suffering a person experiences through the first half of her life, but at the same time the door of Solitude can only said to be opened if the person has come to know the potential healing and transformation of her woundedness by the unqualified love and eternal life of God.

While persons whose first half of life may be marked by significant suffering are sometimes important and illustrative of the way some eremitical vocations are born, as you say they are sometimes also difficult cases in regard to discernment by dioceses. This is especially true if suffering remains the defining dimension of the person's life.  When I began this blog more than a decade ago I wrote about one needing to be a hermit in some essential sense before one approached a diocese with a request to be professed. What I meant then and still hold is that one has to move from being an isolated person for whom physical solitude may merely mirror or even exacerbate the alienation that can come from and be a source of suffering to being one for whom solitude is a relational reality which heals isolation and is the context for real reconciliation. Hermits know more than physical solitude; they know communion -- with God and others. And this means they can (and in fact must) know the healing of whatever suffering marked their earlier years. When dioceses work with potential candidates for profession they must look for those persons for whom physical solitude is a unique form of communion and symptom and source of healing.

My Own Healing and Growth Work:

In my own inner work I have become even more convinced of this truth.  Both of the quotations you cited are important but in regard to becoming the hermit I am called and consecrated to be I especially resonate with the first one. [[The contemplation of the Christian solitary is the awareness of the Divine mercy transforming and elevating [her] own emptiness and turning it into the presence of perfect love, perfect fullness.]] This is the one which mirrors my profession motto, [[(God's) power is made perfect in weakness]] --- a motto I chose precisely because it reflects first the nature of the Christ Event and then my own story with and in light of the grace of God. My own story involves suffering, yes, but far more than that it is the story of God's grace, a grace which, as I have said here many times, brings light out of darkness, life out of death, and meaning out of senselessness and absurdity. What Merton says, what Paul says, what the Christ Event makes real in space and time, and what authentic hermits of all sorts also say is that suffering plunges a person into the depths of isolation and readies her to hear God's invitation to depend on God alone. When, and to the extent that invitation is accepted one's life is entirely transfigured into one of wholeness and holiness, one is defined in a new way. Suffering may not ease entirely and may even increase in some ways, but it will no longer be the thing which drives and defines the person.

 And this means, of course, that one whose defining experience is the mercy of God will show this to those discerning her vocation. The one who wishes to become a diocesan hermit will reveal the mercy of God as the ground and source of her suffering's redemption and her life's transfiguration. Without this her solitude will be nothing more than physical and maybe spiritual, and emotional isolation. She will be a lone individual --- her suffering will have made her this on a number of levels, but she will not be a hermit in the sense the Church uses the term. On the other hand those individuals who have made the journey that Merton describes, the journey through serious suffering and into the mercy and love of God, may well have discovered the eremitical world solitude herself (and only "Solitude" herself) admits them to.

Summary: A Note to Dioceses on the Charism of Diocesan Eremitical Life

To reiterate then, Dioceses which are careful in their discernment will not eschew a person whose life is full of suffering so long as that life is also one defined and clearly transformed by the grace of God experienced in eremitical solitude. Such a diocese is careful to look not only at the suffering but at the fruits of that suffering which would  demonstrate it has been transfigured by the mercy of God. When the latter is not clearly present, when for instance, the person's message is self-centered and full of expressed pain but little else, when, that is, her life is defined by her suffering and not by the grace of God, the diocese will have to wait and watch to see what kind of vocation is actually present. They will give the person some reasonable time in physical solitude to see what changes occur. Generally speaking, if the person is called to be a hermit, isolation and a focus on suffering will be transformed by the love of God into genuine solitude (a unique but very real expression of reconciliation and community in Christ)  and the proclamation with her entire life of the healing and redemptive love of God.

Also generally speaking, all of this reflects the way the heart of a hermit is created and the door to eremitical solitude is opened when there is a background or history of significant suffering. It reflects the way a life comes to reveal the charisma or gift to Church and World c 603 calls "the Silence of Solitude" in such cases.  Suffering of all sorts can hollow one out and make one yearn for answers to the question of self that only God can provide. One lives the questions associated with meaning: does my life make sense? Is it meaningful? Is it moved by love, both as giver and receiver? How can I make sure my life is meaningful by ministering to others in a way which is redemptive for them?  Why have or am I suffering in the apparently gratuitous way I have or am? Where is God in all of this and how can I live for God and others? As important as living the questions is, through the grace of God mediated to one in all the ways it comes to us, one will also come to live the answer: namely, I have lived/am living all of this so that the Gospel of God in Jesus Christ is proclaimed loudly and clearly (or silently but with clarity and poignancy!) and the God whose power is perfectly revealed in weakness resonates within my heart causing it to sing a Magnificat of gratitude and praise.

Developing the Heart of a Hermit (Reprise)

I was asked about the creation of the hermit heart recently and someone else asked what it means to have the heart of a hermit. Thus, I am going to repost something I wrote about 14-15 months ago because I don't think I can improve on it at this point.

[[Hi Sister, when you write about having the heart of a hermit and moving from isolation to solitude do you mean that someone comes to this through some form of trauma or serious personal wounding and alienation? Is this necessary? Can a person who has never been hurt or broken develop the "heart of a hermit"?]]

Hi and thanks for your questions. When I think of someone with the heart of a hermit I am thinking of someone who has entered a desert, been stripped and emptied in all the ways a desert does, and learned to depend upon God for her very life as well as for the meaning of that life. When I speak of God I mean what the Christian creeds mean, what the NT means and who Jesus reveals, but I also mean being dependent on the One Tillich called the "Ground of Being and Meaning", namely a transcendent ground which both surpasses and comprehends our own emptiness and incapacities and is the source and guarantor of life and meaning.

When I speak of a desert I mean the literal wilder-nesses we know as deserts (the Thebaid, Scetes, Mojave, Sonoran, Sahara, etc), but I also mean any extended situation which demands  or forces a person to plumb the depths of their own personal resources --- courage, intelligence, creativity, sense of security, personal  gifts and talents, sense of self, faith, hope, love, etc --- all the things we need to negotiate the world fruitfully and independently. In such a situation, which may certainly include childhood traumatic situations, a person brings all they have and know to the situation and over time are emptied or reach the limit of these resources. At the same time one can, and hopefully will, experience a sense of empowerment one knows comes not only from within but from beyond themselves as well. When this happens, when the desert becomes a place of meeting with God as well as of stripping and emptying, such a person continues to live with a fresh courage and sense of meaning and hope. They embrace their own weakness honestly as they humbly and gratefully accept the life which is received as complete gift in such situations.

 

All kinds of situations result in "desert experiences." Chronic illness, bereavement, negligent and abusive family life, bullying, losses of employment and residence, abandonment, divorce, war, imprisonment, insecure identity (orphans, etc), serious poverty, and many others may be classified this way. Typically such experiences distance, separate, and even alienate us from others (e.g., ties with civil society, our normal circle of friends and the rhythms of life we are so used to are disrupted and sometimes lost entirely); too they throw us back upon other resources, and eventually require experiences of transcendence --- the discovery of or tapping into new and greater resources which bring us beyond the place of radical emptiness and  helplessness to one of consolation and communion. The ultimate (and only ultimately sufficient) source of transcendence is God and it is the experience of this originating and sustaining One who is Love in Act that transforms our isolation into the communion we know as solitude.

Thus, my tendency is to answer your question about the possibility of developing the heart of a hermit without experiences of loss, trauma, or brokenness in the negative. These experiences open us to the Transcendent and, in some unique ways, are necessary for this. Remember that sinfulness itself is an experience of estrangement and brokenness so this too would qualify if one underwent a period of formation where one met one's own sinfulness in a sufficiently radical way. Remember too that the hermit vocation is generally seen as a "second half of life" vocation; the need that one experiences this crucial combination of radical brokenness and similar transcendence and healing is very likely part of the reason behind this bit of common wisdom.

In any case, the heart of a hermit is created when a person living a desert experience also learns to open themselves to God and to live in dependence on God in a more or less solitary context. One need not become a hermit to have the heart of a hermit and not all those with such hearts become hermits in a formal, much less a canonical way. In the book Journeys into Emptiness (cf.,illustration above), the Zen Buddhist Master Dogen, Roman Catholic Monk Thomas Merton, and Depth Psychologist Carl Jung all developed such hearts. Only one lived as a hermit --- though both Dogen and Merton were monks.

As I understand and use the term these are the hearts of persons irrevocably marked by the experience and threat of emptiness as well as by the healing (or relative wholeness) achieved in solitary experiences of transcendence and who are now not only loving individuals but are persons who are comfortable and  (often immensely) creative in solitude. They are persons who have experienced in a radical way and even can be said to have "become" the question of meaning and found in the Transcendent the only Answer which truly completes and transforms them. In a Farewell to Arms, Hemingway said it this way, [[The World breaks everyone and then some become strong in the broken places.]] The Apostle Paul said it this way (when applied to human beings generally), "My grace is sufficient for you, my power is perfected in weakness."

Hermit hearts are created when, in a radical experience of weakness, need, yearning, and even profound doubt that will mark her for the rest of her life,  she is transformed and transfigured by an experience of God's abiding presence. A recognition of the nature of the hermit's heart is what drives my insistence that the Silence of Solitude is the goal and gift (charism) of eremitical life; it is also the basis for the claim that there must be an experience of redemption at the heart of the discernment, profession, and consecration of any canonical hermit. While she in no way denies the importance of others who can and do mediate this very presence in our world, the hermit gives herself to the One who alone can make her whole and holy. She seeks and seeks to witness to the One who has already "found" her in the wilderness and found her in a way that reveals the truth that "God alone is enough" for us.

The Desert is a Dangerous Place, Eremitical Life is a Perilous Reality

 Dear Sister, usually when you write about the silence of solitude it is a positive thing but your last piece was pretty dark. I wondered if you were okay and if this was a new discovery you had made about the power of the silence of solitude? Someone else wrote about the suffering you were experiencing. Have I missed something (I ask because I care)!

Please don't be concerned. About three months ago I wrote about doing some inner work with my director which was demanding and challenging. I have continued with that and sometimes it has been reflected in my posts --- though generally it has meant fewer posts or posts which were poorly written and kind of rambling --- probably the result of putting these up before allowing my thoughts to mature and gel. I suspect the person referring to suffering was referring to some part of that constellation of posts. The piece I wrote a couple of days ago on Eremitical silence as harrowing as well as hallowing was not a new insight, no, but I certainly know it more deeply and extensively than I did from previous work. Moreover it is an important dimension of eremitical silence I have needed and now need to treat more explicitly --- especially in light of questions I am receiving about eremitical life and candidates with serious mental illness (I am working on one of these right now), or about topics like formation, the need for careful discernment, the indispensability of competent and regular spiritual direction, the danger of eremitical solitude, and so forth.

I have written before that eremitical silence and solitude are not easy and that the vocation itself is demanding. I have quoted Merton and others, noted that this is not a vocation generally suited for those with mental illness (though when it seems possible for someone who functions well and whose illness is stable this should be determined carefully by chancery, directors, therapists, etc on a case by case basis); I have explained that eremitical solitude is not the normal way to achieve personal wholeness and holiness, and I've described instances of individuals who were clearly decompensating as the result of living in an isolation they called "eremitical". I've even written a few times about battling with demons --- usually those of one's own heart! What I may not have done clearly enough is describe the way desert silence and solitude can strip away defenses and break open one's mind and heart to deeper and deeper levels of woundedness (some would speak of deeper or more foundational levels of sinfulness and alienation here but woundedness seems the better choice to me). This has always been implicit in posts referring to inner work, spiritual direction, and the other topics I have mentioned above and it was more explicit in the posts on battling with demons -- a perennial topic for the desert Abbas and Ammas --- but it needed to be made even more explicit I think.

The Desert is a Dangerous Place:

As I approach this anniversary of my perpetual profession as a diocesan hermit (02. September) I have looked back on some of the topics I have felt passionately (and sometimes written extensively) about. What is clear to me is that most of them have at their core the fact that this vocation is a gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church (and only then to the individual) and thus requires the church to treat it with real respect for precisely the gift it is. This means (or has meant) codifying it in canon law, carefully discerning candidates for profession, demanding Rules be written only after a candidate has sufficient experience living the life under competent direction, continuing direction and regular supervision (legitimate superiors), and providing lists of or even access to resources an individual may draw from in order to get the initial formation she needs to live this life well "in the name of the Church". But the flip side to all of this, the reason the charismatic nature of the vocation must be recognized and adequate care taken in all of these ways is also precisely because solitary eremitical life in the silence of solitude is dangerous for one not truly called to it --- or for one who undertakes it without sufficient support and assistance!

After all, one vows to listen in silence and solitude to the voice of God dwelling in one's heart. Moreover, one vows to give that entire heart over to God to love into wholeness and holiness; in this way one comes to know and reflect the silence OF solitude. That is what obedience is all about. But at the same time, the journey into the depths of one's own heart, as I wrote in the last post, can be a harrowing experience, for though one's heart is meant to belong to God alone, very much more dwells and often has dominance there than God alone. Similarly, while God never abandons us, there are times when God's presence takes the form of darkness and distance precisely so we can come to know those parts of our hearts which war against (him) --- against love and life itself --- and which divide us as persons so that quite often we stand diminished, fragmented and at war with ourselves. I wrote recently that the Holy Spirit maintained (was!) the bond of communion between Father and Son, but that additionally it was the Holy Spirit that maintained distance between them as well --- especially during Jesus' descent into hell, for instance. And so it is in the hermit's sometimes dark silence of solitude. God is experienced as absence or remoteness but it is still God's presence we know in these challenging ways.

Journeying With a Competent Director:

The listening (hearkening, obedience) one does involves a breaking open of the hardened and well-defended heart or false "self", and leads to a kind of stripping away of the false and distorted as well as to a revelation of the fearful, fragile, and (thanks be to God) the rich potential living at the core of ourselves. The result is a vulnerability which is excruciatingly painful and which absolutely requires the assistance of a competent director who knows not only how to do this kind of spiritual or "inner" work, but also when it is time to do it as well as when the hermit is strong enough (in her inner covenantal life with God or Selfhood) to attempt it. At these times some parts of the hermit's Rule may be suspended and other changes made to accommodate differing needs for rest, prayer, food, recreation, direction or contact with one's delegate, etc.

Though one's director need not (and probably will not) be a hermit, it takes someone knowledgeable and personally experienced in the same kind of inner journey to assist and accompany the hermit in all of this. Otherwise one will have the equivalent of the blind leading the blind into the pit and tragedy will ensue. (It should go without saying that a "hermit" attempting to live in the desert without the assistance of a competent director with whom they meet regularly is, from my perspective, perhaps the greatest fool I could name. Unfortunately it happens.) In any case, it is also at this time that the hermit's own knowledge, experience and faith, all tested over time, prove their greatest worth.

On my Anniversary:

Despite all I have said here and in a few recent posts which may have seemed uncharacteristically "dark", let me also reiterate that I could not be happier in my vocation as a diocesan hermit. While the inner work in which I have recently been engaged has been difficult and rending (harrowing) it has simultaneously been a clear source of abundant life (hallowing) as well. There is no doubt in my mind that the temporary suffering of this work itself is a grace of God, not simply a source of grace as much suffering is and can be, but a wounding and profoundly life-giving touch of God (him)self and one that I might never have known but for this vocation and those who assist me in it.

Deep healing and growth in holiness is clearly something God is calling me to "in the silence of solitude" and apart from canonical eremitical life I would have neither the time nor the space and discipline for prayer, the access to sufficient direction or supervision, the commitment of profession which empowers and sustains the work, nor would I have the motivation or have been able to grow as sufficiently as I have needed in the commitment which make perseverance in this specific journey possible. God has truly blessed me in this and though there is pain and a sense of great fragility right now, I approach this anniversary with even more life, strength, and gratitude than I have known in the past. The promise of the future, though still being worked out "in fear and trembling" as Paul might put it, is very full indeed.

Adequately honoring this Gift of the Holy Spirit:

Dioceses that fail to pay attention to the reality and perhaps the inevitability of this experience of God in the darkness and abject suffering of the silence of solitude will be unable to assist hermits they profess. Even more problematically they are apt to profess "hermits" who can neither negotiate nor thrive (come to the abundant life Jesus promises) in the desert of eremitical life. Outright illness or a lack of integrity marked by mediocrity and "vocations" which are thus disedifying and even scandalous to all involved will be the result.

To summarize, the desert is a dangerous place. Eremitical silence and solitude are perilous realities and dioceses professing hermits need to be keenly aware of these facts. Especially they must never believe they are merely entrusting individuals to some sort of prayer-filled life of mere peace and quiet! The eremitical contemplative life of prayer in the silence of solitude is wonderful, yes, but it is also a source of real and deep anguish. Becoming God's own prayer in this world is both hallowing and harrowing, often at the very same time. When Jesus said, "I did not come to bring peace but a sword!" he might very well have been speaking, for those called to it, of the significantly growth-full moments of eremitical life! Again, this is something of which dioceses and candidates to canon 603 eremitical life must be aware if they are to truly and adequately honor this rare, valuable, and mysterious gift of the Holy Spirit.

Developing the Heart of a Hermit

[[Hi Sister, when you write about having the heart of a hermit and moving from isolation to solitude do you mean that someone comes to this through some form of trauma or serious personal wounding and alienation? Is this necessary? Can a person who has never been hurt or broken develop the "heart of a hermit"?]]

Hi and thanks for your questions. When I think of someone with the heart of a hermit I am thinking of someone who has entered a desert, been stripped and emptied in all the ways a desert does, and learned to depend upon God for her very life as well as for the meaning of that life. When I speak of God I mean what the Christian creeds mean, what the NT means and who Jesus reveals, but I also mean being dependent on the One Tillich called the "Ground of Being and Meaning", namely a transcendent ground which both surpasses and comprehends our own emptiness and incapacities and is the source and guarantor of life and meaning.

When I speak of a desert I mean the literal wilder-nesses we know as deserts (the Thebaid, Scetes, Mojave, Sonoran, Sahara, etc), but I also mean any extended situation which demands  or forces a person to plumb the depths of their own personal resources --- courage, intelligence, creativity, sense of security, personal  gifts and talents, sense of self, faith, hope, love, etc --- all the things we need to negotiate the world fruitfully and independently. In such a situation, which may certainly include childhood traumatic situations, a person brings all they have and know to the situation and over time are emptied or reach the limit of these resources. At the same time one can, and hopefully will, experience a sense of empowerment one knows comes from beyond themselves, sometimes radically so. When this happens such a person continues to live with a fresh courage and sense of meaning and hope. They embrace their own weakness honestly as they humbly and gratefully accept the life which is received as complete gift in such situations.

All kinds of situations result in "desert experiences." Chronic illness, bereavement, negligent and abusive family life, bullying, losses of employment and residence, abandonment, divorce, war, imprisonment, insecure identity (orphans, etc), serious poverty, and many others may be classified this way. Typically such experiences distance, separate, and even alienate us from others (e.g., ties with civil society, our normal circle of friends and the rhythms of life we are so used to are disrupted and sometimes lost entirely); too they throw us back upon other resources, and eventually require experiences of transcendence --- the discovery of or tapping into new and greater resources which bring us beyond the place of radical emptiness and  helplessness to one of consolation and communion. The ultimate (and only ultimately sufficient) source of transcendence is God and it is the experience of this originating and sustaining One who is Love in Act that transforms our isolation into the communion we know as solitude.

Thus, my tendency is to answer your question about the possibility of developing the heart of a hermit without experiences of loss, trauma, or brokenness in the negative. These experiences open us to the Transcendent and, in some unique ways, are necessary for this. Remember that sinfulness itself is an experience of estrangement and brokenness so this too would qualify if one underwent a period of formation where one met one's own sinfulness in a sufficiently radical way. Remember too that the hermit vocation is generally seen as a "second half of life" vocation; the need that one experiences this crucial combination of radical brokenness and similar transcendence and healing is very likely part of the reason behind this bit of common wisdom.

In any case, the heart of a hermit is created when a person living a desert experience also learns to open themselves to God and to live in dependence on God in a more or less solitary context. One need not become a hermit to have the heart of a hermit and not all those with such hearts become hermits in a formal, much less a canonical way. In the book Journeys into Emptiness (cf.,illustration above), the Zen Buddhist Master Dogen, Roman Catholic Monk Thomas Merton, and Depth Psychologist Carl Jung all developed such hearts. Only one lived as a hermit --- though both Dogen and Merton were monks.

As I understand and use the term these are the hearts of persons irrevocably marked by the experience and threat of emptiness as well as by the healing (or relative wholeness) achieved in solitary experiences of transcendence and who are now not only loving individuals but are persons who are comfortable and  (often immensely) creative in solitude. They are persons who have experienced in a radical way and even can be said to have "become" the question of meaning and found in the Transcendent the only Answer which truly completes and transforms them. In a Farewell to Arms, Hemingway said it this way, [[The World breaks everyone and then some become strong in the broken places.]] The Apostle Paul said it this way (when applied to human beings generally), "My grace is sufficient for you, my power is perfected in weakness."

Hermit hearts are created when, in a radical experience of weakness, need, yearning, and even profound doubt that will mark her for the rest of her life,  she is also transfigured by an experience of God's abiding presence. A recognition of the nature of the hermit's heart is what drives my insistence that the Silence of Solitude is the goal and gift (charism) of eremitical life; it is also the basis for the claim that there must be an experience of redemption at the heart of the discernment, profession, and consecration of any canonical hermit. While she in no way denies the importance of others who can and do mediate this same presence in our world, the hermit gives herself to the One who alone can make her whole and holy. She seeks and seeks to witness to the One who has already "found" her in the wilderness and found her in a way that reveals the truth that "God alone is enough" for us.