Showing posts with label Silence of Solitude as Charism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Silence of Solitude as Charism. Show all posts

22 July 2022

The Silence of Solitude as Charism or Gift to the Church and World (Reprise)

John Kasper, Allen Vigneron, Marietta Fahey
and me (kneeling) at perpetual profession
First posted 5 years ago, 8/27/17. [[Dear Sister, thanks for posting what you have about diocesan hermits. You say that your vocation is a gift to the Church and to the world. I am having a hard time describing to a friend how it is that this is so. I don't mean that I don't believe it, only that I cannot explain it. Could you say specifically what you mean when you speak of the charism of your vocation or the gift it is to Church and World? Thank you!]]

Great question! Thanks. The eremitical vocation, and in my case the solitary eremitical vocation, is always very clearly a gift of God to the hermit. It is the way she comes to freedom from various forms of bondage, the way she experiences redemption and grows to wholeness and holiness. It is the way God shapes the weaknesses, deficiencies, as well as the gifts and talents of the hermit's life into a coherent whole so that all of these things witness to the grace of God. When I try to speak of what this means in my life I have sometimes said that God transformed what was often a scream of anguish into a Magnificat of praise. (Neither part of this illustration is hyperbolic.)  But, because this is the work of God, because vocation is ALWAYS the work of God, it must be a gift to others as well and especially, it is a gift to the Church even as it is a gift to the whole world. It is by reflecting on the way the vocation transforms and transfigures my own life that I come to understand how it is a gift to these as well; when I do one phrase from canon 603 begins to sound in my heart and mind, namely, the silence of solitude. I think this phrase describes the charism or specific gift quality of the solitary eremitical vocation both in my own life and as that life is lived for the sake of the salvation of others. So let me summarize what I mean by "the silence of solitude" and why it is the unique gift I am asked to bring to the Church and world.

There are all kinds of silence but I think they can be divided into external or physical silence and inner silence. The silence of solitude is a combination of both of these but what I want to focus on throughout this response is how "the silence of solitude" reflects more than anything an inner wholeness and silence we each seek and need --- an inner wholeness and silence we are really called to by God. This silence is the quiet of inner peace, a silence that sings with the presence of God, and resonates with the love one knows as part of the Body of Christ, part of the family of mankind, and part of the Mystery of Creation more generally. It is the silence of belonging, of knowing one's value and the meaningfulness of one's life, the silence of the cessation of striving for these things or the noise of existential and unfulfillable yearning for them. The Jewish term which might best be applied to this particular silence is shalom. I say this because it is a dynamic, living thing which pulses with the life, peace, and promise of God even as it quietly and confidently contemplates that same God in wonder and love.

What you may notice is how intrinsically related to God and others, and to one's deep or true self too, this "solitude" is in what c 603 calls "the silence of solitude". The "silence of solitude" does involve an external silence and physical solitude; the hermit cannot live the inner reality without this. But in a deeper way the silence of solitude is a paradoxical reality I have to describe in terms of harmony and music and life and singing and relating to and resonating with others. The "silence of solitude" referred to in c 603 describes not only the outer environment of the hermitage, but the inner reality of loving and being loved in a way which witnesses to the truth that God alone is enough for us. So long as the relational element is missing from our definitions or descriptions, and so long as the "musical" or living dimension is omitted we can be sure we have missed the point of this phrase in the canon. But when we include it we begin to understand why the hermit's vocation is truly a gift to the Church and others.

The hermit lives alone; she lives in relative silence. And yet, the consecrated hermit, the solitary canon 603 hermit or the hermit living in a canonical community also consciously embraces an ecclesial vocation where the dimension of commissioning by and for the Church is never absent. These hermits have Rules and formal relationships (legitimate superiors, delegates, faith community expectations) which qualify or condition the quality of their solitude at every point. They are engaged in ongoing formation which empowers continuing healing, growth, greater maturity and even genuine holiness. 

They do this in order to witness to the grace of God and its place in transforming the isolation and alienation of every life into something hermits recognize as the Person glorifying (i,e, revealing) the God we know as Love-in-Act. Individualism, isolation, alienation, the muteness and anguish of bondage have no place here. Powerfully and paradoxically the hermit stands against each and all of these in the freedom and profound relatedness canon 603 refers to as "the silence of solitude." As one called and commissioned to live this reality she witnesses to the possibility of being genuinely whole, truly happy, complete and capable of the relatedness, generosity, and love God's grace makes possible in every life --- even when the person has no worldly status, no physical wealth or power, no family or friends, and perhaps no place even to "lay her head". This is the charism of her vocation and life, the gift God bestows on Church and world through consecrated eremitical life.

I can spell some of this out more concretely perhaps, but I am hoping it gives you the beginnings of an answer to your question. To summarize: in a world torn apart by divisions of all kinds, by the rampant individualism marking and driving so much of its terrible dysfunction and disorder as well as by a grasping at and use of others with distorted forms of "love" and relatedness, the hermit ostensibly stands alone, but really is made whole and of almost infinite value by the continuing power and presence of the God she knows as Love-in-Act. She proclaims the potential held by each and every life and the way in which that potential can be realized by the grace of God. To stand apparently alone in the name of the Church, witnessing to the possibility, power, and presence of Love and the indispensability of deep and harmonious relatedness with God, self, and others ("the silence of solitude", the song of shalom), that is her charism, the charism or gift of her solitary eremitical vocation.

04 May 2022

Looking at the term Charism: Does it Mean Anything for the c. 603 Hermit?

[[ Hi Sister Laurel, Sisters I know talk about the charism of their communities', and their missions. Does eremitical life have a charism? How about Consecrated Virginity? Can you help me understand what the word means? I was wondering if it would be helpful for lay people to have a sense of the charism of their own vocations. Does it make a difference for you?]]

First time questions, I think. Many thanks. In my life I identify the silence of solitude as the charism of solitary eremitical life. Because I identify solitude with more than external aloneness (I see it as a place of quiet and wholeness where the noise of human woundedness, struggle, and pain come to rest in the deepest truth of life and the peace of God), and I identify silence less with physical silence and more with hesychia or a kind of stillness that results when one's life is rightly ordered in terms relationships with God, self, and others, the silence of solitude represents the completion and fullness of life in relationship that occurs when God completes one and she exists in communion with God and God's creation (including one's own deepest and truest self).  This completion/fullness is a gift of the Holy Spirit and the fruit of the life of prayer, stricter separation, silence and solitude. The word charism reflects this gift quality (gifts = charisma) and it reflects a form of community absolutely foundational others also need and are made for.

Generally, a congregation's charism refers to a unique gift quality their life and ministry represent for both Church and world given as the Holy Spirit acts in conjunction with human beings to meet significant contemporary needs. When I think of eremitical life and especially that under c 603, assiduous prayer and penance are not unique to it, nor is stricter separation from the world. The Evangelical Counsels are not unique to it either, although all of these elements are gifts of God to the hermit and others. The one central element of c 603 which, it seems to me, orders all other elements towards significant contemporary needs is the silence of solitude.  Always more than the sum of its parts, the silence of solitude takes up all of the other elements of the eremitical life, and of c 603, and transforms them into a whole that can effectively proclaim the Gospel to every person.

You see, I understand the silence of solitude as a countercultural reality which speaks not only to religious persons, but to anyone seeking reassurance that the isolation of alienation which so marks and mars our world can be borne creatively and transfigured and transformed in the process.  Eremitical solitude is antithetical to alienation and isolation; it is relational through and through. The silence belonging to this solitude is not an anguished cry of emptiness, but a distinct song that rejoices in God's love as that love-in-act completes us as human beings and we come to live in union with God and the whole of God's creation. The term silence of solitude refers to the human person made whole and holy through the power of the Holy Spirit. It refers to what occurs when we are healed of the wounds that cause us to cry out in anguish or withdraw in fear and exhaustion from the struggle to live fully. It is the human being as language event brought to her most perfect and powerful fulfillment in God.

Think what it is like to sit quietly with a friend, without strain or competition or the need to prove oneself or be anyone other than the persons we are while resting in the presence of another. That moment of selfhood achieved while at rest in the life and presence of a friend (and in fact, is, in part,  made possible by that presence) is one of the silence of solitude. We all recognize such a moment as one in which alienation is overcome, the noisy striving of everyday life is quieted, and the human potential and need for profound relationship is, for the moment, realized. When the hermit rests in and enjoys the company of God in a similar way, when, that is, she becomes God's covenant partner and allows God to be hers in all she is and does, something similar but even greater and more definitive occurs. It is this that I believe c 603 recognizes as the silence of solitude; moreover, it is something every person yearns for and hermits witness to with their lives. Thus, I identify the silence of solitude as the context, goal, and charism of the eremitical life.

Does the fact that my life is charismatic and has a specific charism make a difference for me? Yes, absolutely.  For instance, because I have a sense of the charism of my vocation it means recognizing that my life is lived for others and therefore, that the call to wholeness and holiness in silence and solitude can never be allowed to become or remain a selfish or me-centered reality. It means recognizing and committing to living this vocation well because, as Thomas Merton once said, this life "makes certain claims about nature and grace"; to live it badly is to fail to allow it to witness to the truth of such claims, namely, that whoever we are and in whatever situation or condition, our God delights in and desires to complete us and bring us to fulness of life with and in God himself. It means insisting that dioceses and candidates understand this charism so that vocations to c 603 life are understood as significant and needed vocations, and discernment and formation processes (including the ongoing formation processes of consecrated hermits as well as those of candidates for profession/consecration) are undertaken carefully with equally significant rigor. 

When we forget the charism of this vocation (or any other vocation for that matter), we open the door to professing and consecrating those who can neither live nor witness to others in the way a c 603 hermit is called to do. I have been convinced for some time that it is in neglecting the charism of this vocation (that is, in forgetting that this vocation has a charism and is essentially charismatic) that we open the door to fraudulent hermits and stopgap vocations that are disedifying and even scandalous. Once dioceses identify the charism of this vocation, they will have a better way of discerning vocations to eremitical life under c 603. I think that the same is true of any vocation, including the vocation to lay life in the Church, Understanding the gift quality of any vocation helps one to live it well and to commit to growing in this ability for the whole of one's life.

14 July 2021

Understanding and Preventing Abuses of Canon 603

[[Dear Sister Laurel, why is it that bishops and others misuse canon 603? Have you thought much about this? I wonder how it is we can prevent this from happening, whether by bishops or by those who are not hermits at all. Have you written about this already?]] 

Thanks for your questions! In light of several of my recent posts I think it is clear that they are important questions, and perhaps as neuralgic today as they were in the days of the first implementation of canon 603. So while, yes, I have written about this in the past, it is probably time to look again at the problems involved and the multi-part solution.

Your first question gets to the heart of the matter: "Why do bishops misuse or allow the misuse of canon 603?" is the way I would restate it. (There are many reasons individuals seek to be professed under canon 603 only one of which is valid --- namely, they have discovered they are called to human wholeness and holiness as a hermit and now wish to bring the gift of this call to the whole Church and world in the way only a public and ecclesial vocation can do.) That is, they seek to live this gift for the sake of others and others are allowed to know and take encouragement from this. However, it is up to the church (via bishop and his curia/staff) to discern both the genuine presence of this gift and the call to live it canonically. For this reason, I changed your question so that the weight and focus of it falls to the seeker's bishop. So, why do bishops misuse or allow the misuse of canon 603?

I think in the main the answer must be ignorance. It may be the bishop knows nothing really of the canon or its history. Sometimes they may not know anything substantive rather than merely superficial about eremitic life itself. Sometimes, even when they know something of eremitical life, they do not understand its charism, the unique way it is a gift for the individual hermit and for others, and they may have no sense at all that this is truly a significant vocation entrusted to the church by God. Added to ignorance there may be degrees of arrogance and carelessness as well then --- and here I mean carelessness in both the sense of "I couldn't care less" and in the related sense of sloppiness or negligence in discernment, implementation, supervision, etc. This is only logical because the carelessness we sometimes see with bishops who abuse or misuse canon 603 necessarily follows from a failure to understand either the nature or significance (especially in the sense of the charism) of the vocation itself. One cannot value appropriately what one does not understand, and one cannot treat with appropriate attentiveness what one does not value.

For me the most significant form of ignorance is a failure to understand the charism or gift quality of the vocation. I identify this as what canon 603 calls "the silence of solitude" because it is unique to this vocation not only as context for the life, but also as its very goal and in this way, it becomes a gift to church and world (cf Silence of solitude as charism). Hermits recognize the call to wholeness and holiness is realized in the quies and shalom achieved by the individual in communion with God. This union of human and divine lived toward and realized in an eremitical context is what we rightly identify as the reality of true silence and the fullness of solitude. Where we are one with God our hearts are whole and at rest, just as where we are truly with God we are one; our hearts are not seeking or striving for meaning, nor do they cry out in anguish or groan in emptiness. (The anguish of compassion is another matter entirely!) In union with God we are truly ourselves and that self is a covenantal or dialogical event. This is what makes the solitude the hermit lives in and towards so very different from isolation. Too, it is from this eremitical silence that the song that is the hermit is spun out and into our world. And how desperately our world needs the witness of such lives!!

But how very few, relatively speaking, are those called to human wholeness and holiness in this specific way! While all are called to union with God and made to become God's very prayer in our world, very few are called to achieve this via eremitical life. Bishops need to understand this. They must learn to appreciate the gift the eremitical vocation is, not seeing the hermit as a kind of "prayer warrior", another, though perhaps, more subtle way of gauging the meaning of a life in terms of productivity and even busyness, but rather as a vivid illustration of the fundamental truth that we are each completed and find our lives to be supremely meaningful in our communion with God --- something which comes to us as grace as we learn to rest in God in the silence of solitude. I think few bishops come close to understanding the gift of the eremitical vocation in this way, and for that reason, they fail to see how much such vocations have to offer a society and culture where so very many are marked and marred by isolation and struggle with a sense of emptiness and meaninglessness in their lives. 

Without such a vision of the vocation's nature and charism it is a small step to bishops treating c 603 vocations as though they are unimportant, able to be used as stopgap solutions for problematical priests who, despite all their seminary discernment and training are unsuitable for parish ministry in the contemporary church, to serve as a canonical slot into which they shoehorn cranky nutcases who might be appeased and quieted with consecration, or a relatively obscure sinecure into which a "failed religious" who wants to continue in active ministry might fit without making waves for anyone. Each of these represent ways c 603 has sometimes been used by bishops, and each is marked by ignorance and a correlative arrogance and carelessness. The most common result of such a lack of vision, however, is the profession of lone isolated individuals who may be pious and well-intentioned, but who are not, and will never be hermits in anything more than name only.

How do we prevent this from happening? 

I don't have an answer to the question of prevention. I have been asked in the past if canon 603 needed to be enlarged, or if there need to be more canons created, and once or twice whether the church needed to publish some other document on the vocation. At this point I would like to see some instructions** not only on the significance and charism of the vocation but also on who one admits to profession along with some suggested time frames for such a step. For instance, that one is already a (lay) hermit in some essential sense and approaches the diocese only after living as such for at least five years for a discernment process which will last anywhere from 2 to 5 years before admission to temporary vows, is one of these. (Someone coming from a background in religious life still needs a meaningful period of transition, discernment, and formation as a hermit though the number of years required for this are likely to differ.) 

I would also like to see some general instructions on what it means to write a Rule of Life and the amount of time such a project requires and why. Especially I would like dioceses and candidates to understand that writing a liveable Rule requires experience living the life as a prerequisite, and also that writing several Rules over a period of years can assist the hermit, her director, and the chancery as well with both discernment and formation. So, to answer the question I once said no to, perhaps there is a need for a document of instructions on the nature and appropriate use of c 603 along with commentary on the central elements of the canon. Many bishops have taken the time to educate themselves on this specific vocation and implementation of the canon has worked well for them in the occasional vocations they have admitted to consecration.  However, abuses and misuses will probably still occur even in the presence of such an instruction; it will not stop misuses until and unless bishops and others working with candidates for c 603 profession take it (and other forms of education) seriously and use them to instruct inquirers and those admitted to serious discernment. Only in such cases will such an instruction put an end to the ignorance that leads to abuse and misuse.

** Note: A reader reminded me of a resources document put out in 2002 by CICLSAL which was helpful and open to development. My thanks to him. There is certainly room for c 603 hermits/dioceses to share their wisdom re living and implementing canon 603 along with their ideas on this document and the ways it might be enhanced today.

14 May 2020

Clarification: Inconsistent Answers?

[[ Dear Sister O'Neal, thanks for your responses. You wrote recently that the most crucial issue in the discernment and formation of canon 603 vocations was an understanding of the charismatic quality of the vocation and enlarged on that by referring to how important it is to understand the gift quality of this vocation. In your response to my question about whether the canon is being implemented more appropriately your wrote that one area requiring improvement in implementing c 603 was the role of bishops in the ministry of authority. Are these two things linked in some way? If not it seems that you have answered the same question in two contrary ways. Thanks.]]

Another good question, thank you. The two responses are linked but the point I was making about charism is more foundational for everyone's esteeming this vocation; it may or may not be implicated in a bishop's failure to adequately supervise the vocation of a c 603 hermit in his diocese. You see,  the charism of solitary eremitical life is the silence of solitude. What I mean by this is that the real gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church and world in this vocation is "the silence of solitude", The central elements of the canon refers not only to the environment of the hermit's life and hermitage (physical silence and solitude), but as I understand it, it is both the gift of the Spirit but also the very goal of what the hermit is seeking in this eremitical life, namely, the silence or stillness (shalom, quies, hesychia) and solitude (wholeness, integrity, union) of one who rests entirely in the love of God (cf., Silence of Solitude as Goal of the Eremitical Life). My sense is that most of the misuses of canon 603 that occur, whether by the folks petitioning for admission to profession and consecration under c 603, ultimately stems from a failure to understand and esteem this gift quality and goal of the vocation.

Specifically, it is lack of understanding of just how eremitical life is a gift to the Church and world which allows bishops to dismiss or give short shrift to c 603 hermits. It is this which allows lone individuals who will never be hermits to be professed. This same lack of esteem or regard for the charism of eremitical vocation allows individuals and dioceses to use canon 603 as a stopgap to profess those who would like to be a religious without being or becoming a true hermit. A lot of abuses and misuses would fall away if dioceses understood what a gift of the Holy Spirit this vocation is and took care to honor that. Having said that I think it is clear that a bishop not understanding the charism of the vocation or even its charismatic nature might fail in his obligations to a hermit professed in his diocese just as he might fear to use the canon at all or seriously discern with those who may well have a solitary eremitical vocation which is ecclesial and canonical. So yes, the two are related but the failure to understand the charismatic nature of the vocation is the more fundamental one and bishops may or may not fail in their own obligations because of this just as they may fail for others reasons as well.

23 November 2017

On Thomas Merton and Monastic Garb

Dear Sister Laurel, I read the following quotation from Thomas Merton which I thought was terrific. I wondered what you would say about it since you wear both cowl and other monastic garb. Would you mind commenting on it? I guess I also wonder if you agree or disagree with Merton's practice. [[I am deliberately discarding everything that can conjure up the artificial image of the monk in a cowl, dwelling in a medieval cloister. In this way I intend obviously, not to disparage or to reject the monastic institution, but to set aside all its accidentals and externals, so that they will not interfere with my view of what seems to me to be deepest and most essential.]] Thomas Merton, "Notes on a philosophy of solitude," Disputed Questions.
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Thanks for what is indeed a truly terrific question from one of the Merton texts I personally love the best. Let me say I agree completely with Merton's intention or aim in structuring his discussion. I also generally agree with the way he has chosen to illustrate this intention; insofar as this was the way that worked best to allow Merton so explore what is deepest and most essential about the eremitical vocation I agree completely with his choice. It is important to remember that Merton remained a Trappist living on monastic grounds, supported by his Trappist community at Gethsemane. I think this strictly monastic context allows Merton to deal with anything that struck him as artificial or a matter of mere "externals", especially in the portrait of contemporary eremitical life. But more than this, as I recall, the entire discussion including what you have cited is part of a long note introducing the topic of a philosophy of solitude; it was meant to point to the fact that contemporary solitaries need not be monks at all, but might be lay persons.

Thus Merton's comments, when read in this specific context were not contributions to a discussion of whether or not one should wear a habit and/or cowl. Instead Merton wanted to examine the essence of a call to solitude where the individual lives the most basic or essential existential isolation and loneliness common not only to every person but to God as well. More, he wanted to do so in a way which demonstrated its enormous and universal challenge and meaningfulness. To do this he did indeed eschew those things which are "accidentals" or mere externals and which pull the discussion in the direction of monastic life alone so that he might also include folks like Thoreau. Solitude as Merton portrayed it, is a fundamental existential characteristic of human and Divine life. To embrace it as vocation is to serve both God and Mankind in a radically significant way. So Merton stripped his discussion of artificial elements which would only speak to and of a monk in his cowl or a Medieval cloister.

But your question to me broadens the discussion some to include the notion of wearing monastic garb like a habit and/or cowl. Does doing so indicate one is more concerned with accidentals and externals than with those things which are most essential and of greatest import? Depends, of course. My own sense is that this is much more a problem at the beginning of vocations when wearing a habit is a novelty, when one is not really comfortable in it yet (and perhaps not even in one's own skin!), and before one has had the time to take seriously the essentials or that which is deepest. After all it takes time for one to begin living any vocation in a way which plumbs and reveals the depths of that call. Reflecting on what is deepest or essential  demands time and some intellectual formation and focused attention. One needs to become acquainted with the thought and lives of those who have gone before in whatever tradition is involved; additionally one needs to have lived and struggled with this same tradition enough to discover the depths of one's own faith and identity in Christ.

If you notice Merton's own practice you will see that he wore a habit at times and ordinary monastic work clothes at other times. I don't think he rejected monastic garb, nor do I think he was all that concerned with what he wore --- and this would include not eschewing the Trappist habit as something external as much as it might have included embracing it as something which was not merely external. Merton was a Trappist and part of that tradition and life was the Trappist habit. Diocesan hermits today may or may not wear a habit and/or cowl. Those coming to c 603 life from some form of religious (cenobitical) life  will tend to wear a habit  which is a modification of what they already wore.

Those without any history in religious life may or may not wear a habit and if this is a first-time thing they will go through the same "stages" as anyone else: initial novelty and self-consciousness (often with a misplaced pride or sense of specialness), loss of self-consciousness and increasing identification with the tradition represented by the habit (often with an increased internalization of the values which transmute "specialness" into mission), and finally, the gradual or eventual making of the habit truly one's own (which may involve a sense that by the grace of God one's life embodies a special gift or charism to Church and world). Each of these "stages" represents a kind of deepening of one's appreciation of the vocation and the way one lives it. Each represents a shift to greater humility and communion.  The last stage (which is not really last but accompanies the other stages) emphasizes the way one's life imbues the habit with one's own story, while the penultimate stage (again not really a separate stage but a dimension present in each) emphasizes the way one's own story is shaped and sustained by a specific eremitical (or spiritual) tradition.

Eduard Schillebeeckx, a 20th C. Dominican theologian describes this same process in his essay entitled "Dominican Spirituality" in God Among Us.  [[For the most part people live by stories. I myself live by my own story. When I became a Dominican I linked my life story with the family Story of the Dominicans; as a result, my life story took on a new orientation and I picked up the thread of the story of the Order in my own way. So my own life has become part of the Dominican family story: a chapter in it. Through the story of the Order I have attained my own identity. Stories of the Dominican Order keep us together as Dominicans.

Without stories we should lose our memories, fail to find our own place in the present and remain without hope or expectation for the future. Thus as Dominicans we form a group by virtue of being our own storytelling community, which hands down its own traditions within the wider story of the many religious communities, within the all embracing story of the great community of the church, and within the even greater community of humankind. This makes us our own special family, recognizable from all kinds of family characteristics. Some are major, some are minor, but none of them can be hidden. 


In saying this, I have already said something about Dominican spirituality. The story of my life can be my own life story only in so far as it has become a chapter of the Dominican family story. The story of my own life extends and enriches the history of Dominican spirituality, while as a small almost infinitesimally small – almost infinitely small – chapter in it, it is at the same time relativized and criticized by the already older and wider story of the Dominican family. This makes me ask whether I really am not distorting this family story. So I am already others as a norm for Dominican spirituality. Furthermore, thank God, there are still Dominicans alive today. In other words, our story is not yet exhausted, completely told; there is still something to be said.]]

I understand the wearing of (and often, the well-considered choice to relinquish the habit in certain circumstances) is part of this process of making a particular story one's own and assuming responsibility for being a living chapter in that story. It is only a part of the necessary deepening of an ecclesial vocation such as c 603 eremitical life, but in such a process, when lived well it is certainly more than something which is merely an external and superficial element of living out one's call. For the solitary canonical hermit who must live "stricter separation from the world" in the midst of the world, the habit can be an especially challenging as well as indispensable piece of embracing both the mission and charism of her vocation. Those who choose not to wear a habit (and lay hermits who may not do so anyway because they have not been given the right) embrace characteristics like the call's hiddenness differently and  tell the eremitical story in a different way. So long as each hermit is acting in considered and prayerful ways they are an important part of the essence of the call and an expression of the depth such vocations demands.

I hope this helps as a start on this topic of habits.

27 August 2017

The Silence of Solitude as Charism or Gift to Church and World

[[Dear Sister, thanks for posting what you have about diocesan hermits. You say that your vocation is a gift to the Church and to the world. I am having a hard time describing to a friend how it is that this is so. I don't mean that I don't believe it, only that I cannot explain it. Could you say specifically what you mean when you speak of the charism of your vocation or the gift it is to Church and World? Thank you!]]

Great question! Thanks. The eremitical vocation, and in my case the solitary eremitical vocation, is always very clearly a gift of God to the hermit. It is the way she comes to freedom from various forms of bondage, the way she experiences redemption and grows to wholeness and holiness. It is the way God shapes the weaknesses, deficiencies, as well as the gifts and talents of the hermit's life into a coherent whole so that all of these things witness to the grace of God. When I try to speak of what this means in my life I have sometimes said that God transformed what was often a scream of anguish into a Magnificat  of praise. (Neither part of this illustration is hyperbolic.)  But, because this is the work of God, because vocation is ALWAYS the work of God, it must be a gift to others as well and especially, it is a gift to the Church even as it is a gift to the whole world. It is by reflecting on the way the vocation transforms and transfigures my own life that I come to understand how it is a gift to these as well; when I do one phrase from canon 603 begins to sound in my heart and mind, namely, the silence of solitude. I think this phrase describes the charism or specific gift quality of the solitary eremitical vocation both in my own life and as that life is lived for the sake of the salvation of others. So let me summarize what I mean by "the silence of solitude" and why it is the unique gift I am asked to bring to the Church and world.

There are all kinds of silence but I think they can be divided into external or physical silence and inner silence. The silence of solitude is a combination of both of these but what I want to focus on throughout this response is how "the silence of solitude" reflects more than anything an inner wholeness and silence we each seek and need --- an inner wholeness and silence we are really called to by God. This silence is the quiet of inner peace, a silence that sings with the presence of God, and resonates with the love one knows as part of the Body of Christ, part of the family of mankind, and part of the Mystery of Creation more generally. It is the silence of belonging, of knowing one's value and the meaningfulness of one's life, the silence of the cessation of striving for these things or the noise of existential and unfulfillable yearning for them. The Jewish term which might best be applied to this particular silence is shalom. I say this because it is a dynamic, living thing which pulses with the life, peace, and promise of God even as it quietly and confidently contemplates that same God in wonder and love.

What you may notice is how intrinsically related to God and others, and to one's deep or true self too, this "solitude" is in what c 603 calls "the silence of solitude". The "silence of solitude" does involve an external silence and physical solitude; the hermit cannot live the inner reality without this. But in a deeper way the silence of solitude is a paradoxical reality I have to describe in terms of harmony and music and life and singing and relating to and resonating with others. The "silence of solitude" referred to in c 603 describes not only the outer environment of the hermitage, but the inner reality of loving and being loved in a way which witnesses to the truth that God alone is enough for us. So long as the relational element is missing from our definitions or descriptions, and so long as the "musical" or living dimension is omitted we can be sure we have missed the point of this phrase in the canon. But when we include it we begin to understand why the hermit's vocation is truly a gift to the Church and others.

The hermit lives alone; she lives in relative silence. And yet, the consecrated hermit, the solitary canon 603 hermit or the hermit living in a canonical community also consciously embraces an ecclesial vocation where the dimension of commissioning by and for the Church is never absent. These hermits have Rules and formal relationships (legitimate superiors, delegates, faith community expectations) which qualify or condition the quality of their solitude at every point. They are engaged in ongoing formation which empowers continuing healing, growth, greater maturity and even genuine holiness. They do this in order to witness to the grace of God and its place in transforming the isolation and alienation of every life into something hermits recognize as the Person glorifying (i,e,, revealing) the God we know as Love-in-Act. Individualism, isolation, alienation, the muteness and anguish of bondage have no place here. Powerfully and paradoxically the hermit stands against each and all of these in the freedom and profound relatedness canon 603 refers to as "the silence of solitude." As one called and commissioned to live this reality she witnesses to the possibility of being genuinely whole, truly happy, complete and capable of the relatedness, generosity, and love God's grace makes possible in every life --- even when the person has no worldly status, no physical wealth or power, no family or friends, and perhaps no place even to "lay her head". This is the charism of her vocation and life, the gift God bestows on Church and world through consecrated eremitical life.

I can spell some of this out more concretely perhaps, but I am hoping it gives you the beginnings of an answer to your question. To summarize: in a world torn apart by divisions of all kinds, by the rampant individualism marking and driving so much of its terrible dysfunction and disorder as well as by a grasping at and use of others with distorted forms of "love" and relatedness, the hermit ostensibly stands alone, but really is made whole and of almost infinite value by the continuing power and presence of the God she knows as Love-in-Act. She proclaims the potential held by each and every life and the way in which that potential can be realized by the grace of God. To stand apparently alone in the name of the Church, witnessing to the possibility,  power, and presence of Love and the indispensability of deep and harmonious relatedness with God, self, and others ("the silence of solitude", the song of shalom), that is her charism, the charism or gift of her solitary eremitical vocation.

06 November 2016

Inner Work and the Silence of Solitude as Goal of the Hermit's Life

[[Hi Sister Laurel, thanks for writing more regularly again. I hope you will continue to do so on canon 603 and issues which are central to it. I was moved by your writing about the personal inner work you did this last Summer and early Fall.  You haven't always shared that kind of thing and personally I appreciated that a hermit might need to do this kind of work in a way which was both intense and prolonged. I was also happy to hear a little more about your own life. You said you felt it was necessary as part of your vocation. My question has to do with the link between that statement and canon 603. Does this inner work have to do with what you have written about "the silence of solitude"? It has intrigued me that you have written about "the silence of solitude" as the charism of your vocation but also that you have written about it as the goal of your life. I wondered if the inner work you were engaged in had to do with understanding "the silence of solitude" as the goal of your life?]]

WOW!! Now THAT is a wonderful and perceptive question!! So, the short answer is YES, that is exactly the case. Since the silence of solitude is not only the essential environment but also both the charism and goal of my life this inner work was absolutely essential. In fact, I found the work necessary for three reasons related to my vocation: 1) obedience (my commitment to listen deeply and to respond appropriately in faith to the voice of God) required it; 2) assiduous prayer and penance required it, and 3) the silence of solitude as charism and goal of this vocation required it. (Consecrated celibacy also required it but in a more indirect way than the others.)

When I have written about the silence of solitude I have emphasized that it is not simply about external silence or physical solitude; it is about the silence of living in communion with God. That includes the inner silence that results from communion with God, the stillness that comes from being loved with an everlasting and unconditional love, and the wholeness that allows one to stand with integrity no matter what or who this means standing without or against. Because I am committed to living this element of the canon and witnessing to the result of living the love of God in this very specific way (in and as the silence of solitude) the inner work was an integral and essential part of opening myself to that love.

 Imagine a hermit who claims the charism of her vocation is the silence of solitude but also that she need not do the inner work it takes to allow that to be realized as fully as possible in her own life. Imagine a hermit who claims that the love of God can transform the muteness of isolation into the silence of solitude but who resists the work such a transformation requires. Imagine a hermit  whose inner anguish or inner woundedness leaves her an inarticulate cry of pain but who also does not undertake the inner growth work necessary to allow proper healing. I suspect that most hermits have to look at their motives for embracing such an unusual and apparently unnatural vocation. The question of whether one's withdrawal is unhealthy and motivated (rather than partly occasioned) by woundedness or whether it is a healthy and valid anachoresis is not one we look at once at the beginning of our lives in eremitical solitude. Instead it is something that recurs every time our own woundedness becomes evident. At the same time a commitment to assiduous prayer and penance means that our woundedness (as well as our great potential) becomes evident again and again, day in and day out.

I wrote somewhat recently that there must be a redemptive experience at the heart of each hermit's life and that it must occur in external silence and physical solitude. Otherwise there is no way to discern that God is the source of this supposed "vocation," or that this is in fact a vocation.  The inner work I spoke of is a primary way in which God's redemption is mediated to us over time. It is made possible by time spent in silence and solitude, and for the hermit it leads back to even greater internal silence and solitude (a deeper relationship with God alone and greater wholeness and integrity as a person) lived in an even more profound commitment to God in the silent and solitary life of the hermitage. Moreover it will empower the hermit to reach out to others in love despite as well as because one is living a solitary life within the hermitage. In other words, the inner work I have written about opens one to God's redemption. The healing and energy of this experience of redemption leads to the strengthening and purifying of the hermit's silence of solitude, not only as the environment of her life, but as the charism or gift quality of her life as well as its goal. In fact it helps establish and even underscores the truth of the hermit's witness to the silence of solitude as both charism and goal.

20 July 2016

Nothing Can Make up for the Absence of Someone Whom We Love

A couple of years ago or so I wrote about Jesus' cry of abandonment on the cross; I suggested that it was the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the mutual love of Father and Son  that maintained their bond of love while keeping open the space of terrible separation  experienced as abandonment and occasioning the suffering of both Father and Son which reached its climax on the cross and Jesus' "descent into hell". Both connection and separation are necessary parts of the love relationships constituting Trinitarian life marked by mission to our world and thus, by kenosis eventuating in the cross.

Similarly, in writing about eremitical life I noted that stricter separation from the world was an essential part of maintaining not only one's love for God but also for God's creation because without very real separation we might instead know only enmeshment in that world rather than a real capacity for love which reconciles and brings to wholeness. In everyday terms we know that the deficiencies and losses we experience throughout our lives are things we often try to avoid or fill in every conceivable way rather than to find creative  approaches to genuinely live (and heal) the pain: addictions, deprivations and excesses, denial and distractions, pathological withdrawal or superficial relationships of all kinds attest to the futile and epidemic character of these approaches to the deep and often unmet needs we each experience.

While we may expect our relationship with God to fill these needs and simply take away the pain of loss and grief we are more apt to find God with us IN the pain in a way which, out of a profound love for the whole of who we are and who we are called to become, silently accompanies and consoles without actually diminishing the suffering associated with the loss or unmet needs themselves. In this way God also assures real healing may be sought and achieved. It is a difficult paradox and difficult to state theologically.  Today, I found a quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer written while he was a political prisoner of the Nazis and separated from everyone and everything he loved --- except God; it captures the insight or principle underlying these observations --- and says it so very well!


Nothing can make up for the absence
of someone whom we love,
and it would be wrong
to try to find a substitute;
we must simply hold out and see it through.
 
That sounds very hard at first,
but at the same time
it is a great consolation,
for the gap --- as long as it
remains unfilled ---
preserves the bond between us.
 
It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap;
God does not fill it
but on the contrary keeps it empty
and so helps us to keep alive
our former communion even
at the cost of pain.
 
from  Letters and Papers From Prison
 "Letter to Renate and Eberhard Bethge: Christmas Eve 1943"
by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
 
 
As a hermit embracing "the silence of solitude" I know full well that this charism of eremitical life is characterized by both connection and separation. It is, as I have written here many times a communion with God which may be lonely --- though ordinarily not a malignant form of loneliness! --- and an aloneness with God which does not simply fill or even replace our needs for friendships and other life giving relationships. Sometimes the pain of separation is more acute and sometimes the consolation of connection eases that almost entirely.

Sometimes, however, the two stand together in an intense and paradoxical form of suffering that simply says, "I am made for fullness of love and eschatological union and am still only (but very really!) journeying towards that." This too is a consolation. Today I am grateful for the bonds of love which enrich my life so --- even when these bonds are experienced as painful absence and emptiness. I think this is a critical witness of eremitical life with its emphasis on "the silence of solitude" --- just as it is in monastic (or some forms of religious) life more generally. Thanks be to God.

29 March 2016

Why is Silence so Important to a Hermit's Witness?

[[Dear Sister, why is silence so important for the witness of a hermit? One hermit's blog writes a lot about hearing God speak to her and getting messages from Saints so I was wondering if that was typical? My pastor has spoken of silence being necessary to hear God speak to us in the depths of our hearts but that seems pretty different to me than having God send messages and making "assignments". Is silence part of the "experience of redemption" you recently said was so central to the hermit's life?]]

Really excellent questions --- especially the last one about the experience of redemption and silence. I think that silence is central to the hermit's experience of redemption and that it is an important piece of the witness she gives for precisely this reason. One of the really difficult experiences accompanying and often intensifying people's sufferings is the apparent silence of God. Folks who leave the Church often complain that their prayers went unanswered, that God was silent and unresponsive. They conclude either that God is unloving or uncaring, or perhaps that God is simply too remote, truly impersonal, and thus too, entirely irrelevant. They may similarly conclude that God is powerless or simply non-existent and that prayer is useless and the result of juvenile or at least naive wishfulness.

Novelists write powerfully about the silence of God and the way God is indicted by this. In the work, Silence, Shusako Endo pits the incredible suffering of the people against the apparent silence of God. Survivors of the Holocaust put God on trial because their prayers were apparently met with silence; they accused God of having failed to keep the covenant God had made with his people. They had been his People but the evidence of the holocaust's millions murdered indicated God had failed to be their God. The silence of God is one of those realities which challenges us most profoundly and to which our faith is most vulnerable. It is also a reality which is central to the eremitical life both as a challenging and penitential context expressing our yearning for God, and as a consoling element reflecting our wholeness and completion in God. Silence can be an expression of isolation, meaninglessness, and the seeming unresponsiveness of God or it can be an expression of the covenantal solitude in which we are completed as persons and come to quies, or shalom.

I can't say that God speaks TO me directly very often but I can say that God is frequently, even continuously speaking me, that is, calling my name and summoning me to fullness of life and wholeness. I have learned that most profoundly in silence and in the life that comes in silence. So many times silence reflected my own emptiness and incapacity --- just as it does with all of us. At one point before I became a hermit I thought I had reached the end of my strength, the end of my ability to see any meaningfulness in my life, any potential for serving God or his People. I had nothing to say except the single question, "WHY?!" and in asking this, I expected no real answers. It was most usually the silent cry of anguish I myself was. Only rarely was I able to pose it directly, to speak it aloud or claim it as my identity which called for an Other. Silence in those times was a terrible trial; but it was also a gift which opened me to a transcendent truth and love beyond anything I could have imagined.

In my own life I needed a God who would not simply answer my facile or sometimes desperate prayers but would instead embrace me in all of my poverty, emptiness, and inarticulateness, a God who would love me enough to bring life and  wholeness out of these. That required entering into these realities in silence to plumb their depths --- depths beyond words, thoughts, images, even beyond my more usual cries of anguish, apparent yearnings, etc both to meet God there and to open these realities to God. Isn't this the very nature of prayer Paul speaks of in Romans 8:26: [[the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words;]] In time it (silence) became a necessary condition for the gift God would make of my life and the circumstances of that life. It became a piece of what my life witnesses to --- namely the importance of entering silence in all of its depths and painfulness precisely so that God can bring life out of death and an articulate and meaningful "word" even out of complete muteness. All of this is something that happens in silence.

As a result I generally distrust the notion of a spirituality which is or seems to be little more than a series of "messages" from God or "assignments" or "locutions," and "visions." I distrust this especially in one claiming to be a hermit. Not only are these seductive and potentially idolatrous, but, except in rare instances which are truly of God, they seem to me to be distractions from the silence of solitude. I don't think they are typical of eremitical spirituality at all. Hermits grapple with silence; more importantly though, they grapple with their own frailty and poverty in silence. They allow the absolute Silence and cosmic Song we know as God to embrace even their life's worst and most painful silences, and transfigure these so that they too may sing their part in what hermits call "the silence of solitude" --- the covenantal "quies" and communion with God the authentic hermit (indeed, the authentic human being) truly is.

As noted above, out of our personal and external silence and physical solitude comes EITHER what the tradition refers to as "the silence of solitude" and the achievement of quies or hesychasm which result when human emptiness and divine fullness meet one another and powerless muteness is embraced by the Love we know as God, OR our lives are and remain a searing indictment of God and God's silence. It is, I think, a terrible temptation in such circumstances to "hear" God speaking to us in locutions, to find God in visions and in the facile assurances of some fraudulent spirituality or shallow form of piety, but it is my experience that the revelation of God's presence and power generally comes in silence. (That is, it generally comes silently in a way which embraces and transfigures our own deepest silence.) Redemption itself comes in the meeting of our own profoundest silence which is deeper than, but encompasses all the joy and anguish, all the poverty and potentiality we know, and the incredibly fecund silence of the Love-in-Act which grounds and summons the cosmos into existence out of nothing.

Because the encounter of these deep silences is redemptive, then yes, silence is a central part of the redemption to which a hermit witnesses. This is so just as entering the terrible inarticulateness and even muteness of apparently meaningless suffering or the silence of senseless death while encountering the terrible silence of God is part of the redemption achieved in the Christ Event. In that event what could have been the most damning indictment of God's silence becomes instead the most profound witness to the scope and power of Divine Love's embrace.

As I have noted here before, our culture knows little of dwelling in silence. It fears it, considers it fruitless and perhaps significant of failure; knowing it is both associated with suffering and can unmask and occasion suffering, we generally fill it with sound of every kind. We deflect it and distract from it and when noise becomes too great we layer more noise on top of it rather than embracing  greater silence. We all know the truism that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God --- or to meet ourselves in the silences of our own hearts, much less to plumb these to their depths. We also know, I think, that as a result shallowness and superficiality mark our lives and relationships.

In our relationship with God we may fill our side of things with prayers and should we somehow meet the silence of God during a prayer period, we are apt to claim instead that God was absent or uncaring or simply failed to hear us. But hermits witness to the need for silence and solitude in becoming truly human --- in becoming the prayer God has made us to be. Beyond the need for external silence and physical solitude they witness to the silence of solitude that results when we allow ourselves to struggle with(in) and fall through these lesser silences deep into the hands of the Silent, Living God whose Word we are meant to enflesh and whose counterparts we are made and called to become.

17 February 2016

Witnessing to the Truth that God Alone is Enough

[[Dear Sister Laurel, am I right when I say you are writing that it is not only about living alone or even the other things hermits do, but WHY they do these things that is most important? Also, I see why you say that being a solitary is not always the same as being a hermit but isn't that just a matter of externals? Don't solitaries and hermits witness to the same thing?]]

Thanks for the questions. It is always good to hear from someone grappling with what I write. It is also terrific to get a chance to clarify when I haven't been clear enough. So, let me give that a shot.

First, it is true that it is WHY hermits do what they do that is most important but it is also the case that what they do and why they do it are inextricably wed. What I mean is that they are called to witness to Christ's redemption precisely by living as they do. If they live in some other way the witness they give is a different one. Let's say that the witness one is meant to give is that redemption in Christ empowers one to give one's life in service to others, that it allows one to let go of other ways of validating one's life and simply give one's life for those Christ loves. If this is the case then one must live a life geared to ministering to others. All kinds of active ministries are possible and many different living arrangements will support and contribute to this witness.  At the same time, if one wishes to witness effectively or credibly to the redemptive power of the Christ Event one cannot live in a way which contradicts that witness.

So, let's say that because of the message of the Cross one believes that God redeems and makes infinitely meaningful the life of one who is responsive to God's grace even when they are otherwise incapable of anything else, even when the discrete gifts they have been given have been lost or made unusable, even when their weakness or sinfulness or failure is their main or only other contribution to the situation. How would this person live in order to proclaim this message? Again, there are many ways but it seems to me that one of these is more radical than all the others, namely, eremitical life.

Traditionally it has been said that the essential proclam-ation of the hermit's life is that "God alone is enough." When we unpack this statement it is a restatement of the message of the cross: God can and DOES complete us as human beings, only the God of Jesus Christ can and does  redeem us, only that same God can and does make infinitely meaningful and fruitful those lives which have been marked and marred by death and senselessness in all its forms; only God can make freely and sacrificially loving those lives that have been isolated, reviled, rejected, and betrayed at every turn. Only God can make a gift of our lives when the circumstances of life and our denial of or collusion with those circumstances have made of them all that I described above.  Only such a God can and will still the scream of anguish one becomes or transforms the muteness and emptiness of a failed and relatively loveless life without God into a jubilant canticle empowered by an inexhaustible Love-in-Act. Only the God of Jesus Christ raises the demeaned, absurd, and alienated inhumanity of a sinful and godless autonomy to New Life which is essentially "theonomous".

Moreover, the statement "God alone is enough" implies the corollary that such a God is worth entrusting our entire lives to. It says the Gospel of this God is worth giving our entire lives for. This God and his Gospel are worth letting go of all worldly possibilities, relinquishing every discrete gift and talent, every potentiality we may possess EXCEPT for hearts and lives which are open to being completed and transfigured by him in his Christ. Entrusting our lives in this way is the essence of faith. In Christ when we are empty we are full, when weak powerful, when we seem most alone we exist in communion with God and all that is grounded in God, when silenced and mute our lives can and will sing with the grace and justice of heaven. When every prop is kicked out or otherwise relinquished, God alone is enough.

This paradox is the radical form of the gospel truth which animated and flowed from Christ's own profound obedience unto death --- especially death on a cross. Similarly it is the paradox which stands at the heart of the hermit's vocation that she must (and can really only) witness to as radically as she is called to do in the silence of solitude. For this reason canon 603 defines a desert spirituality which seeks not only to define a contemplative life given over to God in prayer, but in which the externals of one's life reprise the loneliness, muteness, weakness, and  incapacity, of the cross of Christ. Again, the obedience, that is, the openness and responsiveness to God we cultivate in the personal poverty, asceticism, silence, and solitude of the desert is transfigured into the silence of solitude, the joy-filled quies of rest, stillness, and eternal life in God. THAT is the witness of the hermit's life and it is important that the externals correspond and contribute to this witness.

A Final Note on the Noun Solitary:

A solitary in the sense Anglicans use the term with regard to canon 14.3 may not live a desert spirituality. I am sure they each do witness to the redemption achieved in Christ but most apparently do not feel called to live as hermits or need to witness to the paradox of the cross with the same radicalness.** Nor, of course, is there anything wrong with that so long as the two terms are not used interchangeably. The Anglican Church recognizes solitary or "single religious" who do not need to be hermits. The Roman Catholic Church on the other hand, does not; thus, in her tradition solitaries tend to be hermits who are part of a coenobitical community but who live in cells apart from the others. Grimlaicus' Rule for Solitaries was written for just such hermit monks. Thus too, when Roman Catholicism speaks of solitary hermits she may now also mean diocesan hermits professed and consecrated under canon 603, hermits who are not part of a monastic or eremitical community. These might be considered solitaries but most use the terms hermit or anchorite as reflected in canon 603.

 **N.B., especially in this context radical does not mean better; instead it implies a kind of fundamental truth and simplicity. It is important to remember that throughout the history of the Church the fact that hermits did not engage in active ministry nor live in community led to the inevitable question of how loving and how Christian such a solitary vocation could be considered. Within the Body of Christ there are many members and, as a recent Sunday lection reminded us, they are all important to the functioning of the whole.

Hermits are spoken of as existing at the heart of the Church. Sometimes this is meant to refer to their prayer and there is certainly profound truth in this --- especially so long as we understand prayer to be the work God does within each of us in our poverty. ([[In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.]] Rom 8:26) And of course prayer would also be the language of the silence of solitude, the unique charism of eremitical life but that eschatological quies to which we are all called and from which all legitimate ministry itself flows. To witness to this basic and universal foundation and call is an act of love hermits commit to on behalf of the entire body of Christ --- another reason to insist on the ecclesial nature of such a vocation. What sense would it make otherwise?

16 February 2016

More on the Roman Catholic Canon 603 versus the Anglican canon 14.3

[[Dear Sister, I understand you feel the Anglican Canon is inadequate to guide those living an eremitical life. Do you think maybe the Episcopal Church doesn't mean it to guide eremitical lives? Maybe they only wanted to allow for individual religious without the interference of others. Maybe their solitaries don't think of themselves as hermits or at least maybe this doesn't happen a lot.]] (Second set of questions included below.)

I don't really know what most Episcopalian solitaries think of themselves. However, besides the criticism by an Anglican solitary regarding 95 % of solitaries who misleadingly call themselves hermits that I referred to here before, I have read blogs by those who think of the terms solitary and hermit as synonyms. (See also the references to one Anglican solitary and an Orthodox solitary who disagree with the notion that the two terms are synonymous at the end of this question's response.)

Hermits and Solitaries as Synonymous:

One Episcopal solitary, for instance, in responding to the question, [[What is a Solitary?]]  writes, [[ A Solitary is the modern name for a Hermit. . . . They are monks and nuns who are under vows held by a bishop instead of the superior of a community, and they are professed to be single [religious] and not a part of a community. Since the married state is a form of community, Solitaries are, by definition, celibate.]]  In this passage I think it is clear that the author sees hermits simply as "single religious", that is religious who do not belong to a community.

Later, when asked how one received training as a solitary he responds that it is the novitiate (that is, in religious community) which is indispensable. When he notes that one may then decide that one is called to go in a solitary direction, there is absolutely nothing implied in the use of the term "solitary" besides being a religious who then goes apart from a community, nor that (once one has sufficient human formation in community of whatever kind) one can only be prepared for eremitical life in solitude itself. Even later he does write that a hermit needs to ALSO spend some significant time in solitude during formation but the sense given is that this is additional to the more critical novitiate and optional, not integral to the life of a hermit. Unfortunately, a hermit is defined by this solitary as a religious who is single, that is, not part of a community. (In fact, this blogger writes that hermits are professed to NOT belong to a community --- as though this negative criterion is the real point and content of their profession! He opines this means ANY community including a parish community and thus, in this way too he underscores the individualistic character of the Anglican vocation.)

Maggie Ross (Sister Martha Reeves), a well-known Anglican solitary and fine writer, writes somewhat similarly when she observes that we are all solitaries or that there is nothing particularly unusual about hermits. [[We have made everything about the church much too exotic and the solitary life is an extreme example of this. The solitary is saying, "everyone is a solitary; in that inner solitude is the kingdom of heaven; don't be afraid, behold." ]] While I agree completely that solitude is the most universal vocation in the sense that we are each and all of us irreducibly solitary in our historical existence and while I think we are pretty close together with regard to her comments on inner solitude, where we differ is in her application of the terms "a solitary" and hermit.

While we may all be solitary, not everyone is "a solitary" in the vocational sense. Neither are all of us called to be hermits nor can we all be called hermits despite the ontological or existential solitude that marks us or the inner solitude of our hearts.**  Nor is it the case then that hermits are common-place, or that eremitical life and solitariness itself are identical realities. A piece of the desert vocation of the hermit is certainly its witness to the ontological solitariness of human being and even more fundamentally it witnesses to the communion between (union of) God and human beings that constitutes the human person. Beyond this, however, it witnesses to the redemption that occurs when human aloneness or solitariness is completed by that communion and is thus transfigured into eremitical solitude; further, it does so in a life wholly dedicated to God in the silence of solitude --- something few are called to do with their lives. In this way especially, the hermit represents a special and relatively rare commission to participate in the ministry of reconciliation to which every Christian is called.

In these two cases it appears that Anglican usage treats the terms  solitary and hermit as synonyms. Sister Reeves also seems to agree with you that solitary life is one which is so autonomous that there should be no interference from hierarchy or the Church at large. Apparently she argues this to support the freedom of the "hermit" and the prophetic character of the vocation (which seems to mean the person is in a position to criticize the Church in various ways.) It does seem to be fairly individualistic in her conception --- and even adverting to the role of the Holy Spirit in such a life, critical as that is, does not really compel one to believe the Episcopalian model of solitary religious or eremitical life is other than individualistic. The way the two terms are collapsed into one another, whether one starts with ontological solitude as Sister Martha does, or with "single religious life" as Br Randy does, simply underscores that fact.

Ignorance of the Nature and Charism of Eremitical Life:

Even more startling to me are Br Randy's following comments. Despite identifying himself as a canonical hermit with more than ten years in perpetual vows and a number more in temporary vows he writes, [[I know absolutely nothing about what a hermit is and don't claim to. I have experience of what it is for me to live the life of a hermit, but no imperical (sic) knowledge. What I claim to believe may change from time to time.]] How can this be the case? How can, even in what may really be a confusing nod to Apophatic theology, a publicly professed, or canonical hermit claim to know absolutely nothing about what a hermit is? From my perspective such a confession is genuinely stupefying. How, after all, can a person claim to be living as a hermit, be professed to live into this vocation more and more fully and yet have absolutely no idea what it means to BE a hermit? More troubling yet, how can a Church perpetually  profess someone in this situation --- or not dispense their vows if, over such a significant period of time, this is the confession the person is forced to make??

It is one thing to say, "I know in general what a hermit is; I know what this vocation expects of me and what I am professed to live and I both grow in and fall short of this vision every day of my life." It is another to say, "I have absolutely no idea what a hermit is!" Even the confession of having fallen short of one's profession depends on one knowing what it means to BE what one is professed to be! Imagine that a priest (or a candidate for ordination!) said this about his vocation. Would we ordain him? For that matter, what if I came to my Bishop, asked him to perpetually profess me as a solitary hermit under c 603 and then, as he asked me to discuss the gift this vocation would be to the church and world, I confessed I actually had no clue what a hermit actually was? Likewise, what if someone asked to be professed under canon 603 and, when asked about the canon she proposed to live her life by, showed no sense of ever having read it, much less having allowed it to define and shape her entire life! In this confession the author not only underscores the completely individualistic nature of his vocation but, in something I find even more troubling, he seems especially unaware of the charismatic nature of the eremitical vocation. What I mean is there is simply no indication in his comments that he possesses an understanding or appreciation of the very specific gift of the Holy Spirit this calling is to the Church whose mission is to proclaim the Gospel to our contemporary world.

At the very least I think we have to conclude the Anglican canon #14 is not generally used to profess individuals who have experienced and can actually witness to the gift (charisma) or specific gift quality (charism) of eremitical life. That is especially true if, as I argue often here, the charism of eremitical life is "the silence of solitude". There is evidence that generally the Anglican (Episcopal) Church treats the term hermit as a synonym for solitary and even for "single (non communal) religious". As such they build a basic misunderstanding into their use of Canon 14 to profess lone individuals as "hermits." In a world where exaggerated individualism is a critical problem that betrays the very nature of humanity, this basic misunderstanding is a correlative betrayal of eremitical life's witness to a solitude defined in terms of personal completion and rest achieved in union with God alone. Such a solitude differs radically from individualism or individual isolation. If this skewed portrait is NOT the vision of eremitical life they wish canon 14.3 to govern it does seem to me they are failing to provide a normative vision which would serve them better. As I understand the situation there is no other canon (norm) which does provide such a vision.

(I find the posts of one Anglican religious solitary under c14 refreshing here. Amma Sue, the author of the blog www.singleconsecratedlife-anglican.org is such a solitary and is very clear that she is not a hermit while she writes some about the "qualitative distinction" between herself and hermits. (She claims to quote me in this article but to be honest, except for the term "silence of solitude," and a reference to solitude as communion, I don't find my own words in what she writes.) She is cited in the exceptional blog City Desert (cf CityDesert on Solitary religious Life ). CityDesert (named after the classic by Derwas Chitty) focuses on solitary life in its variety of forms, especially as these are translated into contemporary situations and terms, and is always a wealth of information. Its author is a priest in the Oriental Orthodox Tradition who lives as an urban solitary in a city in Australia)

[[Should the Roman Catholic Church add a canon like the Anglican Church? Do you think it's a good idea to have [single] religious? I am thinking that if the RCC did this we could increase vocations and also those who don't feel called to eremitical solitude could still be professed.]]

One thing I think should be clear. When the Roman Catholic Church establishes a vocation to the consecrated life she does so because she has recognized a way of living which is a specific and significant gift of the Holy Spirit. A charism is the result of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit meeting the needs of the contemporary world. When these two dimensions intersect, individuals may recognize that their own lives replicate the same needs and the same inspiration. Alternately, a person may perceive that their own gifts and talents are such that they may help the Church mediate the Spirit's Presence in ways which heal and transform the world into one shot through with the presence of God. In other words, these individuals recognize they are called to embody this specific charism (or gift) in ways the world urgently needs it. At times the Church re-establishes vocations or specifies them as states of perfection because of their value in proclaiming the Gospel in the contemporary world. She does not do so otherwise.

Remember that when the Church reprised the eremitical vocation and decided to admit solitary hermits to public vows and the consecrated state she did so in part because at Vatican Council II Bishop Remi de Roo published an intervention listing about a half dozen positive reasons for doing so, a half dozen ways in which the vocation represented the work of the Holy Spirit and was a gift to the Church and world. When the Church and her hermits look at the individualism rampant in the world or the growing isolation of so many elderly, bereaved, chronically ill, etc, they are also able to see that hermits (those who live the charism of the silence of solitude and the rest of the vision of c 603) speak to these persons with a particular vividness. They proclaim the redemption of isolation and its transformation into solitude in Christ.

Similarly, when the Church reprised the vocation of Consecrated Virgins living in the world she did so in part as a reflection of a newer (and more Biblical)  eschatology where heaven and earth interpenetrated more and more, where secular vocations were being re-valued, and where there was a serious need for a vocation of eschatological or consecrated secularity which reflected all this in ways religious life per se could not. Thus, the Church did not ask CV's to make religious vows which distanced them from or qualified their relationship with the secular world in significant ways. Instead she consecrated them as Brides of Christ and icons of the whole Church; she consecrated them to embody the relationship with Christ every person is ultimately called to, but commissioned them to do so here and now in every possible way and arena, i.e., "in the things of the world and the things of the spirit." Likewise, in a world whose nearly entire approach to sexuality involves its trivialization and profanation, CVs living in the world are called to be a witness to a counter-cultural reality in which sex is held to be sacred (and even sacramental) and the whole person is to be given to Christ for the sake of others. 

While both eremitism and consecrated virginity are ancient vocations the Church did not restore them for this reason alone, nor because, relatively speaking, a few people felt called to them. She did so because they represented gifts of the Holy Spirit which spoke powerfully to the needs of our contemporary Church and world. This is the way the Church always determines authentic vocations. Numbers per se are not the issue nor are the private vocational senses of individuals. Discernment of ecclesial vocations is always a mutual matter with both the Church and the candidate discerning such a vocation and this mutual discernment always includes an assessment of the charismatic significance and impact of the vocation.

Therefore, to answer your questions, unless the Church determines "single religious" (who are non-eremitical) represent a similar vocation representing a significant charism, there is no reason to think the Church should or will establish it canonically. Since canon 14.3, seems, in a clearly individualistic impulse, to be merely meant to create "single religious" with no necessary commitments to others in community, no intrinsic, much less defining sense of ecclesial responsibility or relatedness ("a solitary is professed to NOT be part of any community including a parish community"), and no sense of living a very specific and specifically valuable gift of the Holy Spirit either, I would argue that this is not an example the Roman Catholic Church would want or feel much drawn to follow.

** Sister Martha has apparently been questioned about this position that we are each "a solitary". She also wrote at another point in her blog, [[I have, for a long time, been saying that 'we are all solitaries'. And this is true: communities of all kinds are only as healthy as the solitudes that make them up; and those solitudes have the responsibility to the community to do the work that will help them to be spiritually mature. But that does not mean that everyone who likes their solitude should take vows. You can be ihidaye, have singleness of heart, within a marriage, community, and even alone in the woods. It does not mean you are 'a solitary' or should or, more importantly, could, from an eremitical point of view, make vows.]] I believe Sister Martha is right here and should retain the vocabulary of solitudes v solitaries. We are all existential "solitudes" --- a philosophical term reflecting our ontic state, but only some of us are solitaries --- a religious term which can include hermits, anchorites, and recluses.