Returning to "i am a little church" as a Source of Contemplation

 Dear Sister Laurel, many thanks for putting up e e cummings i am a little church!! I have been thinking about the imagery and how well it fits a hermit. I don't live out in the country or near mountains but as a hermit, I think I understand what e e cummings was saying --- even if he was not writing about hermits himself. For example, I love the line about the perfect patience of mountains or "winter by spring i lift my diminutive spire to/ merciful him Whose only now is forever!! They are images of eremitical life!! Does that make sense?? What are your favorite lines?

Oh yes! It makes wonderful sense! Thanks for sharing. I agree with you completely and love the entire poem. All of the lines have struck me profoundly at one time or another. Right now, because of work I am doing in direction it is, perhaps, the last line that has resonated within me most this past week  ---(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness). What I am coming to know deeply is that there is a profound rhythm to human growth and while I love God's light I am coming more and more to trust the darkness as well, because (as Bonhoeffer says) while "not everything is the will of God,. . . nothing is outside the will of God," and God does indeed bring light out of darkness so that even evil can become the source of grace. And sometimes, of course, the darkness is our own, for many different reasons. We cannot know the whole plan of God in our lives; sometimes we see light whereas other times we only see darkness. The ability to stand tall in both is surely a grace of genuine humility; for me this line encapsulates the very goal, not only of spiritual direction, but of spiritual life as a whole.

The other piece of this poem, that I think fits eremitical life very well is the following verse: around me surges a miracle of unceasing/birth and glory and death and resurrection:/over my sleeping self float flaming symbols/of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains. Because of Peter Damian's cosmology I am reminded that contemporary theologians and spiritual writers remind us we are made of "star stuff". Each hermit carries within herself that miracle of unceasing birth and death and find echoed within us the flaming symbols, the stars, that cummings envisions floating above us as we sleep (or pray). 

And each day is a new opportunity to share in the amazing life and dynamism of life with and in God who creates, sustains, and recreates us every single day by minute by second by nanosecond. I certainly do not have the perfect patience of mountains, but they speak to me of this call to monastic (eremitical) stability. Especially, I recognize that the rhythm of monastic and eremitical life helps situate us with the deeper rhythms of the cosmos and helps us hope in God despite the "smaller rhythms" that make us either fear change or align ourselves with the chaos of our world's disorder or the frenetic pace and choices of the adrenaline junkie!! Situating ourselves within this deeper rhythm and accepting we have a significant place in it despite our fragility and the apparent fleetingness of our lives, it seems to me, is the source of perfect patience.

Anyway, I love this poem and and the way it reflects on the mysteries of life. Almost any line speaks to me of God and eremitical life, of finding ourselves witnessing to the larger perspective of eternity and the ultimate security we share because of life in God. The verse I therefore come back to often is this one: i am a little church(far from the frantic/ world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature/ -i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;/i am not sorry when silence becomes singing. I found it spoke to me when I was younger and it speaks to me now in a different way when I am older. I always found silence culminating in singing, whether that was the way Office was chanted well because it grew out of silence, because of the way the rests in a line of sound create music (remember, I am a violinist), or, much more personally, because I as a person moved from a kind of muteness (and sometimes being a scream of anguish) to becoming the very different "language event" I associate with Mary's Magnificat. 

And finally, there is the verse that captures the profound way eremitical life is a life of deep compassion and bonds to every part of God's creation in and through God!! my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;/my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving/(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children/whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness. For me, one of the greatest gifts of eremitical life has been growth in compassion -- in the ability to feel and share in the suffering of the world so that I might also be able to convey the hope of God in ways that convince with its authenticity. And like cummings, I have come to this clumsily. receiving, giving, sometimes harvesting, other times experiencing drought, in both joy and discouragement (or other suffering). Cummings was always concerned with the truly human person, and when I apply what he said to hermits, it is because we are striving for the same thing cummings so esteemed! One way to define Jesus is as the compassionate One, the truly human being who suffers for and with others. I think this verse of cumming's i am a little church captures this really well!

So much more could be said about this poem and the gift it is to the person of faith!! So much more could be said about the way it echoes the Magnificat (or the Te Deum!!) of the hermit life!!! But I will leave this here for now. I originally offered this poem as an incentive to contemplation. Thank you for taking it in that direction and for allowing me to return to that as well!!!

How Do We Live as House Churches When We Live Alone?

Dear Sister, how is it a person living alone can be part of a "house church" or "domestic church"? Our parish has a lot of people who live alone. How is it they can feel part of the church when they are isolated because of COVID-19? Are you suggesting people should think of themselves as hermits?

Really good question! This problem of living alone and still being an integral part of the faith community is something hermits have had to deal with throughout the history of eremitical life. It is a constant tension in the eremitical life, and something every Christian hermit learns to live well, or cease to be a true hermit. (They might instead be a lone individual, but not a hermit.) One of the Saints associated with Camaldolese Benedictinism is Peter Damian and he wrote a really significant letter (#28) in response to a very similar question. It is sometimes called "The Lord Be With You" (Dominus Vobiscum) letter because it was occasioned by someone asking what they did with certain prayers during liturgy when they referred or were actually directed to other people. While the question was prompted by a narrowly defined situation it really leads to considerations of the validity of eremitical life, the ecclesiality of such a life, and also more general questions on the nature of being church when physical isolation is required. As you can imagine given your own questions, while Peter Damian wrote during the 11th and 12th centuries, this specific issue is quite contemporary.

Peter Damian's response is summarized in the following statement: [[(11) Truly the Church of Christ is so joined together by the bond of love that in many it is one, and in each it is mystically complete. Thus we at once observe that the whole Church is rightly called the one and only bride of Christ, and we believe each individual soul, by the mystery of baptism, to be the whole Church.]] A bit later, Damian writes, [[(13) And so we can conclude from what was said above that since the whole Church is symbolized in the person of one individual, and since, moreover, the Church is said to be a virgin, holy Church is both one in all and complete in each of them; that is to say, simple in many by reason of the unity of faith, and multiple in each through the bond of love and the various charismatic gifts, since all are from one, and all are one. . . .  (15) If they are one who believe in Christ, then wherever an individual member is physically present, there too the whole body is present, there too the whole body is present by reason of the sacramental mystery. And whatever is fitting for the whole, is in some way fitting for each part, so that it is not out of the question for an individual to say what the assembly of the Church says together, just as that which an individual properly utters may also be voiced by many without reproach.]] 

Some folks  may want to think of themselves as hermits for the time being, but since being a hermit really includes a commitment to long-term silence and solitude (and even to growing to reach fullness of humanity in and even as the silence of solitude) most will not find this fits for them. Still, what does fit universally is that each person by virtue of their baptism/Christian initiation is called to come to see themselves as Church, and to allow themselves to live from the same sources the Church lives, especially the Scriptures, liturgical (liturgy of the hours) and private prayer, and mealtimes celebrated as Eucharistic moments.

One of the dimensions of my own eremitical life I write about a lot is its ecclesial character. Because I am consecrated by God through the mediation of the Church, this partly has to do with its canonical nature and the fact that I am called and missioned by the Church to live eremitical life in her Name. Still, given the current pandemic and the fact that each and all of us are called by the Church to shelter-in-place and to be Church in enforced solitude, we must be able to see this ecclesial dimension as a call coming with our own baptism. While this does not mean folks are necessarily called to be hermits, and especially not consecrated/canonical hermits, nevertheless the call is profoundly ecclesial in its own way: if we live alone each of us is called, at this time and place, to live solitude in the name of the Church by virtue of our Lay/baptismal standing.

Every home in our parish, for instance, (and in fact, in our diocese), is called to represent the life of the Church in the fullest way possible without access to Eucharist. This is a challenge Vatican II stressed in its valuing of Lay life. The catch-phrase, "We ARE Church!" was meant to capture this sense in opposition to standard usage identifying the clergy/hierarchy as "the Church". Today, when ordained clergy have been rendered much less effective given our mandatory social-distancing and inability to come together for Mass, we are truly challenged to take on the call that Vatican II identified as integral to our baptized state and dignity as a "priestly people". It is not merely that each of us is part of the Church, though that is certainly true; it is also that each of us is called to be Church, to grow in faith, to do all that any disciple of Christ must do to come to recognize and know the Risen Christ, and allow Him to be recognized in/through us by others.