Why isn't it Enough. . .?? On Stricter Separation from the World (Reprise from 2008)

I received the following question via email: [[How does one determine one is called to an eremitical vocation? Why isn't it enough to be uncomfortable with the world or to desire to avoid it, and to wish to retire to solitude? Is this at least a sign of a genuine eremitical vocation?]]

In order to answer this (or at least the second part of the question, because I will need to answer the first part, the "how" question, separately), I want to first reprise what I wrote in an earlier post (cf., Post on January 14, 2008, The Unique Charism of the Diocesan Hermit) : [[One embraces eremitical silence, solitude, prayer, penance and greater separation from the world in order to spend one's life for others in this specific way. Whatever FIRST brings one to the desert (illness, loss, temperament, curiosity, a maturing need for the silence of solitude, etc) unless one learns to love God, oneself, and one's brothers and sisters genuinely and profoundly, and allows this to be the motivation for one's life, I don't think one has yet discerned, much less embraced, a call to diocesan (Canon 603) eremitism.

[[. . . let me say something here about the phrase "the world" in the above answers. Greater or stricter separation from the World implies physical separation, but not merely physical separation. Doesn't this conflict with what I said about the unique charism of the diocesan hermit? No, I don't think so. First of all, "the world" does NOT mean "the entire physical reality except for the hermitage or cell"! Instead, the term "the world" refers to those structures, realities, things, positions, values, etc which are antithetical to Christ and PROMISE FULFILLMENT or personal [dignity and] completion APART FROM GOD in Christ. Anything, including some forms of religion and piety can represent "the world" given this definition. "The world" tends to represent escape from self and God, and also escape from the deep demands and legitimate expectations others have a right to make of us as Christians. Given this understanding, some forms of "eremitism" may not represent so much greater separation from the world as they do unusually embodied capitulations to it. (Here is one of the places an individual can fool themselves and so, needs the assistance of the church to carry out an adequate and accurate discernment of a DIVINE vocation to eremitical life.)

reprise continues:

[[Not everything out in the physical world is "the World" hermits are called to greater separation from. Granted, physical separation from much of the physical world is an element of genuine solitude which makes discerning the difference easier. Still, I have seen non diocesan hermits who, in the name of "eremitical hiddenness" run from responsibilities, relationships, anything at all which could conceivably be called secular or even simply natural (as opposed to what is sometimes mistakenly called the supernatural). This is misguided, I believe, and is often more apt to point to the lack of an eremitical vocation at the present time than the presence of one.]]

The simple answer in light of what I have said before, then, is no, it is not nearly enough. We are speaking of a religious hermit --- one for whom the heart of her vocation is love, not only of God, but of all that God cherishes as well. I am interpreting your question to mean that avoidance of the world (in this case I mean the whole of reality outside the hermitage) is the dominating, even sole reason for embracing an eremitical life, that no other reason even comes close. Even if one finds oneself out of step with that world, determines she cannot fathom it, is misunderstood herself by it, and desires nothing more than to retreat from it, this is NOT the basis for an eremitical life, nor is it, all by itself, a sign of a genuine vocation. In fact, it is more likely a sign one is NOT called to such a vocation. This is especially true if one who is a novice to spirituality and eremitism takes one's sense of being out of step with the world, misunderstood by and unable to fathom it, as a sign one is radically different than it.

It is true because it neglects the simple fact that we are each and all of us part of the world, shaped and formed by it, and so, to greater and lesser extents, we carry it deeply in our own hearts, minds, and limbs. This is true whether one is speaking of the world as all of reality outside the hermitage, or "the world" in the strict monastic sense of "contemptus mundi" --- that which promises fulfillment apart from God. We carry the world within us in both senses, and of course, are called to love, transform and heal the world (in both senses) outside of the hermitage. In the negative or monastic sense of the term (that which promises fulfillment apart from God) we bring this to the hermitage in order to deal with it, to subject it to God's love and healing touch. We bring it to the hermitage not because we cannot understand it --- or it us, but because we understand it all too well and know that God's love is the only alternative to our own personal enmeshment in it. The dynamic you described is of a person running from this reality (and, in fact, from the whole of God's world), but the hermitage cannot be used to run FROM ONESELF, nor from God's good creation; it cannot be used as a place of escape but must instead be a place of confrontation and transformation, of love and healing.

To attempt to escape from the demands of the physical (spatio-temporal) world outside the "hermitage" is really to actually transform the "hermitage" into an outpost of what monasticism calls "the world." This is so because one of the signal qualities of "the world" and "worldliness" in the monastic sense is a refusal to face reality, which thus will also involve an inability to love it into wholeness. Therefore too, if the "hermitage" is merely or even mainly a refuge from all that one cannot face, understand, or deal adequately with, it has ceased to be a genuine hermitage in any Christian sense and instead is predicated on the very values of distraction, avoidance, escape, and inability to face forthrightly or love truly or deeply that which constitutes "the world". It is itself an instance of that very same world, an outpost of it and no true hermitage. To bring "the world" into the hermitage in this sense is far and away more dangerous and destructive than bringing in aspects of it openly and cautiously like TV, movies, news programs, computer, etc --- and we know how assiduously careful we must be about (and even generally resistant to) these latter inclusions!

There is a reason hermitages have been characterized as places of battle, as crucibles as well as oases of God's peace. Above all they are the places where, in the clear light of God's truth and love, one is asked to confront the demons one carries within oneself. Thomas Merton once wrote that the purpose of the hermitage was to allow a hermit to face the falseness, and distortions in oneself: "the first function of the hermitage is to relax and heal and to smooth out one's distortions and inhumanities." This is true, he says, because the mission of the solitary in the world is, "first the full recovery of man's natural and human measure." The hermit "reminds (others) of what is theirs to use if they can manage to extricate themselves from the web of myths and fixations which a highly artificial society has imposed on them." However, Merton knew all too well that the battle is waged inside the hermitage as well. One cannot witness to a world one refuses to understand as though one were really all that different from it. One cannot do so because one has not dealt with "the world" one carries deep within oneself, and which, in fact, one IS until one has been completely remade by God's love.

By the way, it is, of course, true that the hermit comes to love the solitude and silence of her hermitage, and she desires to be there, to go about her daily routine, to do all the small and large tasks and chores that come as part of the life there. A certain degree of discomfort with the world outside the hermitage will exist since she wants always to get back to the sacred space of silence and solitude which is her cell. However, and I cannot emphasize this enough, when she is outside the hermitage, she is completely capable of relating empathetically to others and so, understanding them and what drives them; she is able to delight in this world to the extent it is evidence of God's creativity and wonder, and to care deeply for it when it falls short of that glory. These people, places, and things are given her to love, to cherish in so far as they are God's own, and in so far as they possess the potential, no matter how yet-profoundly-unrealized, to mediate God's presence and love. This is a world the hermit knows to be very like herself in every way. Her vocation may be unique, but she is not. To the degree she is really a hermit she carries these persons, places, and things with her back to the hermitage to continue to love them, to pray for them, and also to let them love and shape her own life to the degree that is appropriate.

In NO WAY is the hermitage an escape from the world in this sense. It is the place from which the hermit lives to allow God's presence greater intensity and scope so that he might one day be "all in all" as the Pauline phrase goes. Again, this all gets back to what I said at the beginning: The basis for the eremitical life must be love; it cannot be escape. We are called to greater separation from the world only because love requires distance as well as closeness. But we embrace this separation in order that we may allow God's love full rein and scope, first in our own lives, and then, in the lives of all those others for whom we live.

On Battling Demons and the Mediation of Peace

[[Dear Sister O'Neal, you have written about battling demons as something real in the life of the hermit. I wondered if you were aware of the hermits who say that the stories of the desert mothers and fathers battling with demons are just legends and that the vocation of the hermit is to mediate peace? Do you agree or disagree with this appraisal of the situation?]]

Thanks for the question. I can't say I am familiar with the comments you are recounting but I both agree and disagree with them --- assuming of course, the accuracy of your account.

With regard to the comment about the stories of the desert elders being just legends, I would disagree with the use of the qualifier "just". Legends are powerful stories which can convey a kernel of truth. They can work like myths actually do work. To speak of "just myth" or "just legend" is like saying it's "just a matter of semantics". Such speech  denigrates and neglects the power of language to mediate truth; it disregards the fact that words matter. That said, yes, I would agree that the stories of the desert elders battling demons are legends or rather, are stories with significant legendary features whose purpose is to describe an inner experience or event which is otherwise difficult to speak about or convey. Like myths they may be best honored when we do not take them literally. (Taking myths literally trivializes them and the truth they convey.) At the same time, their deep truth is truly heard when we allow ourselves to imagine the details in ways which fill our minds and hearts so we can really consider or meditate on them --- just as we would do with something which is literally true. We must allow ourselves to enter the stories fully so that they may address us and resonate within us --- just as we do with Scriptural stories, especially the parables of Jesus. Only in this way will we come to receive the truth they seek to mediate to us.

As I have written several times, it is traditional wisdom to understand that eremitical life involves battling with demons; in my own experience, however, those demons are mainly the ones we carry in our own hearts. The demons we battle may be those of insecurity, inferiority, arrogance, perfectionism, and so many others. They may involve memories which reside in both our minds and muscles because they have been profoundly encoded neurologically. They may be the demons of trauma or abuse or poverty and severe lack which so wound and injure our hearts as well. Almost anything that happens to human beings at the hands of others, themselves, or life's circumstances more generally can take on demonic dimensions and be triggered in the face of the love of God which seeks to heal us in the deepest and darkest places within our hearts, minds, and souls. Because hermits live religious poverty in the silence of solitude and spend their lives seeking God in this way, much of the noise and many of the distractions that attenuate or prevent most peoples' attention to their own hearts and to the darkness and demonic voices that dwell there are missing.

Being confronted by and accepting the love of God is profoundly healing, consoling, and life giving but at the same time it can be and often is a tremendously strenuous and painful process. When I wrote recently of the personal work I had been doing beginning June 1st I said the following: [[. . .believe me, when we deal with the parts of ourselves left unhealed, distorted, or broken in childhood and throughout life, the process of healing can be as fierce, demanding, and messy as stories of Desert ancestors battling all day and night long with demons then coming out of their caves torn and bloodied but exultant in the morning! The same is true of the story of Jacob wrestling with God (God's angel) and, painfully wounded though he was, refusing to let go until God blessed him. We enter the desert both to seek God and to do battle with demons; it is a naïve person indeed who does not anticipate meeting themselves face to face there in all of their weakness, brokenness, and [(fortunately), their] giftedness as well! We may well know that God is profoundly involved in what may eventuate into the fight (or struggle) of and for our lives but it can take time, faith, and perseverance before we walk away both limping and blessed beyond measure.]] (cf Sources and Resources for Inner Work)

Yes, it is true that hermits and eremitical life more generally is about the mediation of peace. The purpose of the struggle with demons is precisely to allow the hermit to dwell in peace and to extend that peace to others and to the world at large. When I write about the hermit (or any Christian) becoming the very prayer of God I am pointing to the same reality. Likewise speaking of being mediators of God's love or being the counterpart of God are ways of conveying the same truth. So, yes, I completely agree with the hermits you are referring to in this regard. However, I believe the struggles so often spoken of in the Apothegmata of the Desert Elders, Cassian's Conferences (esp Conf VII), or in the Life of Anthony, for instance, point to a necessary purgative and healing stage of our inner lives as we become the people we are called to be --- people who embody and mediate genuine peace.

Remember that in all of the readings we heard in the past couple of weeks at the liturgical year came to a conclusion judgment was most often portrayed as a kind of harvest --- and one that was not without a kind of violence or struggle. In every act of love, every act, that is, of judgment, God says an unconditional "yes" to us -- to the true self with all its gifts and potentialities, its yearnings and needs, but God also says "no" to anything which is unworthy of us --- to anything within us that cripples, distorts, or represents falseness. God embraces the wheat of our true selves as something in which God delights --- something which will nourish and bless the whole world, but the chaff of falsity and distortion is threshed away and left behind forever. In this way God creates us, summons us to be as fully and exhaustively as we can be. In this way he loves us and all those whom our lives will eventually touch. The result is a holiness occasioned by the love of God while the consequence of such healing and integration is shalom or peace --- not as the world gives, perhaps, but for which the world yearns almost immeasurably.

I sincerely hope this is helpful.

On Struggle, the Peace of Christ, and Authenticity in Eremitical Vocations

[[Dear Sister O'Neal, you wrote, [[(Note, this does not preclude experiments with horarium, etc, nor times when one is ill and needs certain praxis relaxed, etc. Neither does it refer to a hermitage where the hermit sometimes truly struggles with the elements central to her life. Emphatically not!) Hypocrisy [and pretense], however, [are] symptomatic of "the world", not of a hermitage.]] Do you struggle with elements of your life? Does this happen only once in a while or is it an all-the-time kind of thing? I have always thought a hermitage was a tranquil place of peace and communion with God. I also always thought that peace is part of a true vocation and that struggle meant that one does not have such a vocation. Can you comment on this for me?]]

Peace and Struggle are Related

Hi there! These are great questions and I think the heart of the answer has to do with the difference between the peace of Christ and more secular notions of peace which preclude all struggle (or all challenge!). My own experience of the peace of Christ, or the peace of God, is that it is, at the same time, a very demanding reality which empowers an individual to grow and mature with confidence and security because they are aware of who they are in God. More about that below.

So, do I struggle with elements of the eremitical life? Yes, assuredly. Partly that is because one element of the eremitical life IS struggle --- the struggle between truth and falsehood in our own being, but partly (and this, though related, is more to the point) it is because I am growing in this vocation. Eremitical life is an exercise in living and learning to live fully in Christ. It is an exercise in learning to receive the gifts of meaning, and love, and so many other things which are occasioned by abundant life in Christ. All of the routines, disciplines, and concrete praxis in the hermitage, are at the service of this learning. In some ways the hermitage supplies an essentially tranquil context for the deeper struggles of becoming a truly human being.

But sometimes it is the elements of the context itself that give me trouble --- and for the same reason --- because they occasion inner or deeper struggles between truth and untruth and with becoming more truly human; I think that is what you are asking about. So yes, poverty is sometimes difficult for me, and so is one dimension of stability, namely the pilgrimage side of that (we need to be able to move freely and be detached even while we commit ourselves to community, diocese, etc; stability is not a matter of being stuck in a rut or one of "entrenchment". Stability requires detachment and openness to change as well, paradoxical as that sounds. Sometimes that is difficult for me.) Obedience is sometimes a real trial for me. I do not generally struggle with solitude or silence, nor with prayer in a general way or penance, for instance, but I do struggle pretty regularly with some of these other things.

The Paradoxical Nature of the Hermitage

I suppose most people have the idea that a hermitage is a fairly laid-back place of rest, and in a way, they would be right. But as I have also written, hermitages are laboratories or studios where the composition God wishes one to become is worked out --- often with lots of scratched out passages, unscored dissonances, misplayed notes, and very real anguish! The desert Abbas and Ammas were very clear about the fact that the desert was the place where one struggled regularly with demons, and, again, those demons are mainly our own, carried deep within our own hearts. Thomas Merton wrote that the hermitage was the place where we get rid of any impersonation that might be present, and I would affirm that here one works on the destruction of any discrepancy between role and identity and learns to be truly transparent, both before God, to oneself, and --- to the degree it is prudent and pastoral, with others.

The hermitage is the place one lives in a conscious way and as constantly as one is able before the face or gaze of God. That is at once both a wonderfully affirming and recreating, as well as a terribly demanding task and experience. All of those things which prevent us from loving well, all of those things which have wounded and distorted us as human beings eventually must be worked through here. Union with God is the primary goal of the hermitage to which all else is ordered; it is the reason hermitages exist, and while this does not mean a stress-filled vocation, it does indicate an intense one. For me it is akin to playing a Beethoven symphony with an orchestra: we work and work intensely --- individually, together in sectionals, with and without the conductor, with the whole orchestra in ways which are physically, intellectually, and emotionally exhausting, and yet, the invigoration and sheer re-creative power of the work is awesome. When the music is allowed to come to life through this orchestra, and through (for instance) my own heart, mind, and muscles as a functioning part of this orchestra, the experience is indescribably exhilarating and joyful even as it exhausts. Life in the hermitage is like that.

As noted in the beginning of this post, the peace of Christ (as Jesus himself tells us) is not as the world gives. It is a wonderful and deeply invigorating security which allows us to be essentially confident of ourselves and our value --- even when all the usual "worldly" props (success, productivity, achievement, health, etc) are kicked out from under us. We exist in Christ, and because we do, we know who we truly are and how very deeply loved and precious --- even when we are sinning, (". . .he died for us while we were yet. . . ungodly. . .Rom 5:6-8). THAT is the peace of Christ. But that also means it is a challenging reality which constantly summons us to more --- to greater integrity, greater wholeness, greater compassion and sensitivity, greater capacities for love and friendship and humanity. And of course, again, it does this in the face of those demons which are so deeply entrenched in our own hearts!

Peace and the True Vocation

Regarding your question about the nature and signs of a genuine vocation, then, it should be clear that SOME struggles are inherent in a true vocation. If a vocation or vocational path (marriage, religious life, eremitical life, etc) provides the context in which one discovers this peace of Christ and can grow to wholeness and sanctity in light of it, then I think that is a sign one has discovered one's true vocation. If, on the other hand, a person is generally miserable, and finds she is becoming less and less human in the process, less able physically or emotionally, for instance, to be honest with herself, or to live generously and joyfully the truth of who she is, then I don't think this person has found her true vocation --- no matter how intensely she desires it. The same is true when every element of a life is a torment, when they isolate and fragment the person, when they function like saltwater would for a thirsty person.

None of the elements of eremitical life are comfortable all the time (and as I have argued, neither should they be), but on the whole, these elements are life-giving pieces of a context in which one feels deeply at home, profoundly alive and at rest --- a sense one internalizes and carries with one even when one is outside the hermitage, for instance. As an example, it is a vastly different thing to struggle with poverty or stability, or eremitical silence or solitude because these are sources of life and verification (making true) for us, and to feel --- or evidence to ourselves or others!--- that these things stifle or even harm one's authentic humanity. Similarly, it is a vastly different thing to find that the disciplines of a particular vocation strip one of one's false humanity, than to find they actually contribute to the falsification or even destruction of one's true self because one is called to another vocational path. I suspect a lot of the latter dynamic can be found veiled in the language of unhealthy spirituality (often the language of some sort of pseudo-mystical misery), but how ever it is clothed, the bottom line is one often becomes less and less human in such mistaken vocations.

Anyway, I hope this is helpful. As I always say, if it raises other questions or has been unclear, please do get back to me.

N.B., the illustration above is a picture of a painting of St Romuald receiving the gift of tears --- the seminal event in Romuald's spiritual life, and in the life of the Camaldolese. It was done by Brother Emmaus, OSB Cam while at New Camaldoli. (Brother is now at Glenstal Abbey discerning his vocation there.) I chose it because of the joy which permeates Romuald, despite and even because of his tears. In any case, I think it symbolizes well what I have been writing about in this post.

Addendum: I was just informed that Brother Emmaus O'Herlihy has completed his novitiate at Glenstal Abbey and has made simple vows for the next three years. Brother was professed on September 25, 2011.