Some Points of Agreement and Disagreement with Maggie Ross

[[Hi Sister, I wondered if you were familiar with what Maggie Ross says about the Rules written for hermits and anchorites in the Middle Ages? She criticizes these as being so filled with devotionals that they allow little time for prayer. That sounds a lot like what you have said about the Rules beginners often write that are likewise filled with devotions. Are the two of you coming from the same place in this?]]

Hi and thanks for the question! Yes, I am somewhat familiar with what Sister Ross says about this. She has commented on this in her blog and I have read that --- though a long while ago. I think we are at least partly on the same page here. It seems to me that filling one's horarium with an unending series of devotionals is a superficial approach to prayer at best and may actually be a way of loading our day with distractions from the difficult and personally challenging realities of silence and solitude as well as of learning to pray contemplatively and the inner work associated with focused healing and growth. I believe Sister Ross probably has seen the same thing, and given her acute sensitivity to silence and what can and does happen to a person in silence, I have good reasons to believe we are agreed in this.

One of the ways new communities of hermits sometimes use devotionals, it seems to me, is to do something similar to loading a day with distractions as noted above, so there is simply no real room for time in quiet prayer with the Holy Spirit. Sometimes there is not even time for taking a walk and just quietly exulting in God's creation!! I have often been left with the impression that these new groups (and some older ones as well!) don't trust their members to learn to pray more deeply or even, perhaps, do something different from one another at any given time. Individuality, which is not the same as a rightly-to-be-rejected individualism, seems suspect and that seems to me to distrust the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. Uniformity is not the defining shape of the Spirit's own unity, I don't think. 

Meanwhile, saying prayers is important, of course, but it cannot substitute for allowing God to speak within us in the silences, or in the wounded and needy spaces of our hearts. We do not permit God to do that if we do not allow those spaces to live and breathe (and often cry out in anguish or yearning) without covering them or distracting ourselves from them with unceasing devotionals. While I also grant, of course that allowing those spaces that turn to deep prayer may be helped by rote prayers which reflect our deepest desires and needs, I am still certain that this will not happen unless one allows devotionals (among other things) to lead us into longer periods of silence when and where the Spirit wills which themselves bear fruit in what c 603 calls "the silence of solitude".

I think that Sister Ross and I are also in agreement that an eremitical Rule cannot be written for the solitary hermit by someone else, particularly if that author is not themselves a hermit. Again, this is about encouraging, trusting, and honoring the place of the Holy Spirit in the individual's life. Only the person can know how God calls them to pray and become God's own prayer in our world --- though of course this is one reason preparation for living the life of a hermit takes time and formation. Another person can certainly write guidelines for the beginner or introduce them to prayer forms, lectio, etc., but it needs the person themselves to finally shape the elements of their Rule in a way which is faithful to God's own working in their lives and within them. As I have said here a number of times, the writing of a personal Rule is one of the most formative experiences one can have on the way to profession as a c 603 hermit. It also serves as a means to educate the diocese discerning with the candidate on the nature of this vocation and the depths and sufficiency of c 603; a diocese that accompanies a hermit in all of the stages leading to her writing a liveable Rule will come to a greater appreciation of the canon and even more profound trust in the Holy Spirit and the solitary eremitical vocation s/he inspires in the Church.

There are several other points where I believe Sister Ross and I are in fundamental agreement -- the idea that solitude is the meeting place between human beings and God is one of these (I speak more strongly I think, in terms of solitude as a unique form of community), and also that we are all, existentially speaking, solitaries. I disagree with her, however, on the idea that we are all hermits. One may be a solitary without being a hermit, and in eliding the two terms in the way she does I believe she is making the mistake Episcopalians have made with their own canon 14. This canon allows for solitary religious, but does not encourage, much less require one be a hermit to be professed under it. Hermits are desert dwellers and embrace a desert spirituality with certain key elements (cf c 603 central elements). We may all be born and die as solitaries, and existentially speaking, remain solitaries throughout our lives, but as I understand and live this vocation, eremitical life is a different animal, one only some are called to and which requires a life of deliberate and specific responsiveness.