Mental Illness and the Vocation to Eremitical Life

[[Dear Sister, when you have referred in the past to "nut cases" wanting to be hermits, are you speaking about the mentally ill? Could and should the mentally ill (a form of chronic illness, after all) be hermits?"]]

This is a great question and points to a place I should be more careful with my language. Thanks for implicitly pointing that out! In fact, no, I am not speaking primarily about the mentally ill, at least not in any generally diagnosable way. In referring to "nut cases" I have generally been speaking about people who want to be hermits because it validates a kind of strangeness and anti-social bent in them. Sometimes this phrase simply means these people are bizarre and feel that eremitical life is the same and thus gives them permission to remain as bizarre as they wish. They are not so much concerned with discerning a vocation which is divine in origin or edifying to others as they are seeking a way to enshrine and institutionalize their own personal mental and emotional idiosyncracies and eccentricities.

Especially they are often seeking a way to validate their own misanthropy, excessive or distorted individualism, and sometimes even a kind of selfishness and narcissism rather than looking for a way to love God and others effectively. When their motives are more positive and valid, it is sometimes the case that eremitical life will witness to the wrong things in this particular life, and so, not be edifying --- that is, it will not build up the Body of Christ or be sufficiently prophetic in the contemporary world. Now, let me be clear. Sometimes such persons may well ALSO be mentally ill, but this is not the main concern I was expressing when I have referred in the past to "nut cases."

The next questions are also quite good and more difficult to answer. Mental illness comes in many different forms and degrees of control and stabilization. My general answer to the first part of your question is yes, some mentally ill persons COULD be hermits, but not all and not most. Regarding the second portion of the question, those that COULD be hermits are those whose illness is well-controlled with medication and whose physical solitude definitely contributes to their vocations to wholeness and emotional/mental well-being. There should be no doubt about this, and it should be clear to all who meet them. It should assist them in loving themselves, God, and others rather than detracting from this basic responsibility. In other words, solitude should be the context for these persons becoming more authentically human and maturing in that fundamental or foundational vocation for the whole of their lives. With this in mind I am thinking too that some forms of mental illness do not lend themselves to eremitical vocations: illnesses with thought disorders, delusions, hallucinations, fanatical or distorted religious ideation, and the like are probably not amenable to life as a hermit.

On the other hand, some forms of mental illness or disorder would (or rather, could) do quite well in an eremitical setting so long as the anachoresis (that is, the healthy withdrawal) required by the vocation is clearly different from that caused by the illness and does not contribute to it, but instead, even serves to heal it. Certain mood disorders, for instance, cause a defensive or reactive and unhealthy withdrawal, but it is not the same as the responsive anachoresis of the hermit. The person suffering from clinical depression who also wishes to be a hermit should be able to discern the difference between these two things and this requires a lot of insight and personal work. However, if a person suffers from clinical depression (or has done in the past) I would say it should be pretty well-controlled medically, and no longer debilitating or disabling before the person is allowed to make even temporary profession as a diocesan hermit. At the same time, provisions for adequate ongoing and emergent care and treatment should be written into this hermit's Rule of Life.

In any case, I think the decision to become a hermit when mental illness is a factor is something which requires the candidate and her spiritual director, psychiatrist or psychologist, and the diocesan staff to work together to discern the wisdom of. Mental illness per se should not always automatically preclude this vocational option, but there is no doubt that eremitical silence, solitude, prayer and penance can exacerbate rather than help with some forms of mental illness. Even in the completely healthy person eremitical solitude can lead to mental problems. Ordinarily we are made for a more normal type of communion or social interaction with others, and this is a particularly significant area for caution when dealing with mental illness. This is another place where some years spent as a lay hermit, especially under direction and regular and effective medical care, are especially helpful in discerning a vocation to eremitical life -- if initial permission to pursue such a thing is deemed wise at all. So, once again, thanks for your questions. They are quite good and, among other things, remind me to take greater care with language.

Question on Chronic Illness and Urban Eremitical Vocations

[[I have degenerative disc disease, diabetes and asthma. I spend most of my time at home (alone) and use a wheelchair when I go out. Could you please elaborate on the relationship between chronic illness and the life of an urban hermit?]]

Thanks for the question. Please do look up earlier posts on this topic, especially the original article published in Review For Religious. I think those will really help you. You can do that by looking at the labels listed in the upper right sidebar and clicking on the appropriate links. Those posts will flesh out the brief response below.

For most people chronic illness results in some degree of dislocation and isolation. Sometimes this is extreme, sometimes not, but the basic root of the problem is the same in any case: the rest of the world simply does not move to the same tempo or rhythm nor do they share the same concerns or limitations. Further we live in a world in which worth is measured by productivity, what we do, what we earn, how successful in these terms we are, how educated, how active in civic and church affairs, et cetera. Because a person with chronic illness often simply cannot measure her life in these terms (or does so and comes up only with "failure" as the mark received) this also is especially isolating.

Now, isolation is not the same as solitude but it does call for redemption. It is meant to be transformed (at least in many cases and in the life of the hermit) into solitude. What I mean by this is that one central reality that remains to all of us when life robs us of other values, abilities, activities, relationships, and so forth is our God and the possibility of a relationship with him. That relationship is capable of redeeming all other loss and completing us as human beings; it is, afterall what we are made for. If we enter into that relationship wholeheartedly what was isolation becomes transfigured into solitude. Solitude is an expression of communion with God and eremitical solitude (a solitude which is more radical and extensive) is something that chronic illness can predispose us to embracing.

Likewise, the gospel gives us a set of values which are countercultural. Not only does Scripture teach us that we are precious to God no matter our success or failure in worldly terms, but discipleship is marked by "the great reversal" --- that is, what the world values is not the same as what is valued in the Kingdom of God. Success in the Reign of God is measured differently and not in terms of productivity, earnings, power, prestige, etc, as it is meaured instead in terms of self-emptying and one's faithfulness to God's call. Even more it is measured in terms of God's grace, freely given and received. The first shall be last, the last first. Those who allow themselves to be gifted by God will be first and richer than those reject God's gifts and attempt instead to wrest things from God's hands by the measure and tools of the world's judgment and success. Few people are in a better position to give the countercultural witness of the disciple of Christ than the chronically ill are.

What I am talking about here is not eremitical life, however. It is a vocation to be chronically ill within the church and world, a prophetic witness that human beings are precious for who they are, not for what they do, how much money they make, how much power they accumulate or exercise, etc. I believe that all chronically ill are called upon to give this kind of witness and that they can do it with a vividness and depth which few others can match. However, of these people who are chronically ill, SOME will also be called to eremitical life. These persons will, in their relationship with God, allow isolation to be transfigured and transformed into genuine solitude and the silence of solitude which serve as the context, goal, and charism of their lives. They will witness to all the things any person with a vocation to chronic illness with witness to and additionally they will say with their lives that "God alone is enough for us." They will witness to the essential wholeness and abundant life that comes from communion with God in Christ, and they will remind the rest of the church and world with a special clarity and power that we are all on a journey towards something far more lasting and fulfilling than this world with all its seductions and false promises --- and also, of course, that this reality is present and accessible to some extent right now interpenetrating our world with its presence.

Chronic illness is not ordinarily part of the eremitical life per se but for a relative few I believe that chronic illness will point to and predispose a person to embrace an eremitical call. In terms of urban eremitism this will specifically be a call to witness to the redemption of those unnatural solitudes which so characterize life in cities, the life of illness, bereavement, and old age marked by separation and lack of connectedness. Urban hermits (whether lay or consecrated) will witness to the redemption of such unnatural solitudes generally, but the hermit who is also chronically ill will do so, again, with a greater vividness and depth.

I apologize for the brevity for this response. It is more an introduction than anything else. Still, I hope it does help and even that it will raise more questions for you!

Personal Questions on the Vocation to Chronic Illness

 I have received several questions, some of them followup, during an email correspondence. Since they may reflect questions others are asking I have decided to post them here.

[[Sister O'Neal, you have written about chronic illness as vocation and explained the sources of your interest in your profile. Is your interest more personally motivated though? You write a lot about the God whose power is made perfect in weakness, and you adopted that as your motto for perpetual profession. That makes me think your interest is more personal than I have read up until now. I hope this is not too personal to ask about, but I understand if you choose not to answer.]]

Well, there is no doubt it is a personal question, and one I have not dealt with on this blog on purpose; neither is it one I will deal with again probably unless it raises significant questions for readers and I think saying more can actually help them; but yes, my interest in chronic illness as a vocation (or better, my conviction that there is such a thing) has a personal basis as well as the other reasons I have mentioned.

Since I was a young adult I have suffered from a medically and surgically intractable seizure disorder (epilepsy). For some years it went undiagnosed (or inadequately so), and for many more years (25 or more) it was life-threatening on a regular basis. It also resulted in injuries, some of which led to chronic pain because of Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy --- a condition characterized by neuropathic pain which results when soft tissue injuries do not heal quite properly. Today, the seizure disorder is relatively well, though not completely controlled (seizures are triggered by some types of external stimuli which are more prevalent today than in the past), but the chronic pain continues as a daily reality. Evenso, I take Rx pain relievers (which I believe is the only responsible thing to do here), and the med I now take for seizure control has a happy side effect of helping diminish neuropathic pain as well! The bottom line is that I function well in spite of these things, and am (Deo Gratias!!) graced by God in ways which cause other things than these to dominate!!

My real interest in the idea of God's power being perfected in weakness is first of all a function of my interest in Pauline theology which I began to develop in 1971 under John C Dwyer's tutelage. There is no doubt that Paul's Christology is kenotic, that is, it is centered on the self-emptying of God in creation which culminates in the Christ Event. Kenosis translates into asthenia or weakness. Our God is one who limits himself in order to create and enter definitively and exhaustively into our world. Further, redemption is effected only through Jesus' complete self-emptying in obedience to the will of God; obedience is an openness and responsiveness to God, a complete dependence upon him which implicates God in those places from which, by definition, he is otherwise excluded: the realms of sin and death in particular. It is above all the story of a God whose power is made perfect in weakness: his own, Jesus', and mine or yours as well; undoubtedly I was predisposed to hear this message with a particular keenness.

But it was not only Paul's theology that captured my imagination here. Throughout the Gospels we are confronted by a message where the values of God are not those of this world, where the poor are truly rich, the alienated and marginalized assume places at God's right hand, etc. These kinds of paradoxes intrigued and excited me; they still do, because they spell out the possibility of a life which is prophetic precisely because it does not measure up to, but rather criticizes ordinary worldly standards of productivity, status, value, etc. Still, in Pauline terms what they mean for me practically is that weakness in my own life has been capable of becoming the place where God's power is perfected, not because he delights in this kind of weakness or its attendant suffering (I sincerely believe he does not), but because he enters into our situation exhaustively and heals, transfigures, and redeems it. It can indeed become the place where his own power (love) is perfected in our world. Thus, 2 Cor 12:9 became not just the summary of Paul's gospel, but the summary of my own personal story as well.

Most importantly, it was the isolation occasioned by illness that demanded I confront unhealthy withdrawal, and eventually, to move through it to the legitimate anachoresis (withdrawal) of the eremitical life. That left me sensitive to legitimate and illegitimate forms of anachoresis, as well as to appropriate and inappropriate motivations for embracing the eremitical life, but it helped me to let go of the inappropriate and embrace the appropriate. (Yes the desert vocation involves contending with demons, and they are mainly our very own!!) It also forced me to confront my own essential poverty apart from God and learn how infinitely valuable and precious I am as one made in his own image. In light of his regard for me, and especially as one who (in Christ) is his counterpart --- called to assist in the coming of the Kingdom despite my weakness and personal inadequacies --- I am chosen as God's own bride and dignified beyond all counting by his love. What I discovered was that the call to eremitic life was in every way a call to wholeness, love, and joy. Additionally, it is a call to koinonia in solitude, not to an isolation masked in piety. There is withdrawal (anachoresis), yes, but there is a more profound connectedness or relatedness than is often apparent to those not living the life. In particular, for the diocesan hermit there is community on so many levels beginning with God that it is hard to describe the richness of relationship(s) within the solitude.

So, yes, my reasons for being interested in chronic illness as vocation stem from my own personal medical history as well as my experience as a hospital chaplain and work in neurosciences or clinical lab. Sometimes we witness to the power of the gospel in our weakness. As I have written before, I don't for a moment believe that God willed my illness nor desired the anguish and other suffering that accompany it, but I am convinced beyond all doubt that he willed to teach me how sufficient his love (grace) for me was in ANY situation. My own circumstances became a means to an end despite the fact that God did not will or send them. I came to hunger intensely for God's love, and for the capacity to return it very early on in my life; I also came to be aware of others' needs for it although I could not have explained that coherently at that point. And of course, God filled that hunger, even as he also sharpened it, and he commissioned me, as he commissions each of us, to bring that love to others in genuine compassion and service!

The story about how this all came to be is a complex one and unimportant in this context. What is important to say is that in my emptiness, weakness, brokenness, hunger, anguish, and pain, I met the God who brings meaning, strength, wholeness, satiety, joy, and delight out of all these things. The vocation I discovered is the vocation to witness to THESE latter things, to AUTHENTIC HUMAN EXISTENCE and the God who makes them possible in spite of and through the weakness and brokenness that besets us. God does not will the illness, pain, etc, but he does will their redemption, tranfiguration, and especially their transformation into a life of essential wholeness and compassion. THAT, afterall, is what a vocation to chronic illness is all about.

The reason you do not hear about the personal reasons that brought me to an understanding of this vocation is that while illness or injury remain problematical on a daily basis (this is mainly true of chronic pain), they do not define who I am. Especially I am no victim. Instead, my life is defined in light of God's grace and who that has made me; I want very much for that to be clearer and more primary to readers of my posts than these other things. God wills that I live as fully and lovingly as I can in spite of them. He has (with my cooperation) brought wonderful people into my life who have assisted in this including doctors, directors, teachers, pastors, friends who accommodate me in various ways, et al. In all these cases they have helped and challenged me to grow beyond an identification with illness and pain, and into an identification with God's grace, fullness of life, and growing personal holiness. Unless that is clear in what I write, live out, or otherwise proclaim, the suffering itself is meaningless and certainly not edifying; on the other hand, if the effects of the grace of God which transfigures both suffering and life IS clear in my writing and living, then there is rarely any need to focus on the suffering, and doing so would be a disedifying distraction!

[[Do you think it is important for people to know how to suffer? Do you think you have a responsibility to teach people how to suffer or to speak about your suffering?]]

While I think it is important for people to learn to suffer, and while I think suffering well is one of the things we are least capable of today, I believe that the way to teach (model, or witness to) that is NOT by focusing on suffering itself. In particular, speaking about my own situation is rarely necessary (or helpful) except when it is important to remind someone what is possible with the grace of God. For instance, occasionally a client will wonder if healing is really possible, or if it is possible to transcend a given set of circumstances. In such a situation I will refer to my own illness or pain. Here my own suffering is important, but only so long as it does NOT dominate my life or define me, and only in order to underscore the possibility of healing, essential wholeness and humanity along with the capacity to be other-centered and compassionate in spite of negative circumstances. God's grace ALWAYS heals and brings life out of that which is antithetical to these things, so what one wants to witness to is the transformation of one's life as one moves from faith to faith and from life to more abundant life. His love ALWAYS transfigures our reality, not least because he is WITH US in ways which remind us of how precious we are to him, how much he wants for us, how much he longs to share with us, etc.

Even in situations where it is helpful to speak of one's suffering one needs to recall that it's a lot like a single microdrop of skunk spray: a very little goes a very long way and "scents" everything in its path --- for a very long time!! Also, if you think about the stories of suffering that really inspire and move you, they are ordinarily the stories where courage, patience, joy, wholeness, dignity and selflessness predominate and the pain or suffering is recognized but allowed to disappear into the background. They are the stories where humanity triumphs (and this means a person living from the grace of God); they are not exercises in navel gazing or detailed and repetitive accounts of one's pain. Suffering well is, after all, about courage, about affirming life and meaning in spite of destruction and absurdity, and especially, it is about LIVING AS FULLY as one is able. There is no way to do this if one focuses on the suffering per se. This kind of focus is ALWAYS self-centered and can be temptingly and distractingly so both for oneself and for others; it is ALWAYS a bid for attention to self (even when appropriately used this is the case). It is also focused on the thing which God's grace helps overcome rather than on the effects of that grace (or the one who gives it). Neither of these (self-centeredness, or a focus on evil) is generally edifying, and can be quite disedifying except in certain limited circumstances. The question is always what does one want to witness to; viz, what do you want others looking at, God's grace and the possibilities for hope and wholeness or one's own self, brokenness, and suffering? For these reasons if one MUST refer to or focus on these latter things one must ALWAYS do so rarely and briefly.

What I am saying is that in "teaching" (I would prefer to say assisting or encouraging) people to suffer well, as far as I know, the only way to do that is to teach them how to live, how to pray, how to give themselves over to God's grace, and especially how to cope so that life and not pain per se is the focus. In my experience, a sure way to FAIL to suffer well (or to fail to inspire someone to bear their own pain well) is to focus on the suffering per se. By the way, "teaching" someone to suffer well presupposes one DOES that oneself, and I wonder how many of us can say that is honestly true of us? It is another reason to focus on life, on hope (both of which are the result of God's grace), and on placing oneself in God's hands so that he may redeem and transfigure the situation as far as possible. We need this encouragement and focus on a continuing basis as much as anyone we might witness to.

The vocation to Chronic Illness,

I received some questions about the notion of "chronic illness as vocation", and I am aware that there have been a number of visits to the article here in the blog about Eremitism as a vocation for the chronically ill and disabled. While I will write those who emailed me with questions, I thought I should also write a bit more about this idea here, not only because the Review For Religious article on Eremitism which was reprised here was a relatively brief introduction to the idea, but also because as positively provocative as the phrase "vocation to chronic illness" is, it is also easily misunderstood.

What a Vocation to Chronic Illness is NOT

First, therefore, let me say something about what a "vocation to chronic illness" does NOT mean!! In no way do I mean to suggest that God wills our suffering, much less that he calls us to this, especially in the forms of chronic illness or disability! We need to make sense of suffering, and we need to take seriously the sovereignty of God, but we cannot take these two pieces of the human puzzle, facilely slide them together as though they are related as effect and cause, and conclude that God wills suffering. In fact, I don't think we can speak of the suffering human beings endure as positively willed by God in any way, shape, or form with the single exception of Christ's own exhaustive participation in our human condition. (The permissive will of God is another matter, and, except for agreeing that it is real, I am not addressing that here.)

Our Essential Vocation: Authentic Humanity

The conjunction of human and divine often strikes us as paradoxical: expressions of brokenness, sin, alienation, weakness, hatred, untruth, and distortion stand in conjunction with wholeness, goodness, unity, power (authority), love, truth, and beauty themselves. But, to be less abstract, the human-divine equation, the community or dialogical event we are each called to be often looks to be composed of incredible contradictions: our sinfulness becomes the place where God's mercy/justice is exercised most fully; our weakness and brokenness the place where God's own strength and wholeness (holiness) is most clearly revealed; our fundamental untruth and distortion the place where God's own truth verifies and hallows us, authoring us in Christ as his own parables to speak the Gospel to a hungry world.

There are few images of human sinfulness and brokenness so vivid as that of illness, and especially of chronic illness or disability. It is not the case that the ill person is a worse sinner than others who are well or relatively well. Neither is it the case that illness is the punishment for sin, especially personal sin. Still, it IS the case that the chronically ill bear in their own bodies the brokenness, estrangement from God, and alienation from the ground of all wholeness, holiness, and truth, which are symptoms of the condition of human sinfulness. What is expressed in our bodies, minds, and souls is the visible reminder of the universal human condition. Chronic illness itself, then, is symbolic of one side of the truth of human existence, namely, that we exist estranged from ourselves, from others, and from our God. We are alienated from that which grounds us, establishes us as a unity, and marks us as infinitely precious and our lives as richly meaningful and fecund. We live our lives in contradiction to what we are TRULY called to be.

We sense this instinctively, and this is the reason, I believe, personal sin has so often been associated with illness as its punishment (rather than simply as consequence or symptom). We know that this state (estrangement symbolized by illness) is not as things SHOULD be, not as we are meant to exist, not appropriate to persons gifted in their capacity for dreaming and effecting those dreams beyond anything else known in creation. Chronic illness, in particular, is an expression of what SHOULD NOT BE. It is a metaphor for the reality of (the state of) sin; of itself, it is paradigmatic of ONE PART of the human condition, that of brokenness, alienation, and degradation. Of course, there is another part, another side to things for the Christian, especially, and it is this which transforms chronic illness into a context for the visible and vivid victory of God's love in our lives.

The Image of sinfulness transformed

Authentic humanity is modeled for us and mediated to us by Christ. And above all, it is a picture of a life which implicates God in every moment and mood of this existence. More, it is a life which is an expression of the deep victories and individual healing and unity God's grace occasions when it is allowed to reign. Whether to the heights of union with God, or the depths of godless sin and death, Christ's life is an expression of that openness and responsiveness to God which constitutes truly human being, and the supreme example of what it means for God's creative sovereignty to triumph over human sinfulness. Paul expresses the paradox in this way: "My grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness." Jesus' entire life is an expression of the response to the vocation to allow this truth to be realized in human history in a way that makes it a possibility for all of us. It is an image of the unseen (and sometimes unfelt) God whose presence transforms human sinfulness into abundant and eternal life and wholeness. It is, in brief, what we ourselves are called to, and to what those with chronic illness and disability in particular can make manifest with a unique vividness and poignancy.

During the Christmas season, there is another figure who particularly captures our attention in her own capacity to embody the paradox which Paul affirms. Mary, in her own way, is an exemplar of the dynamic of God's power, which is made perfect in conjunction with human weakness and even barrenness. The result is a fruitfulness beyond all imagining, a truly miraculous and awesome humanity, which, precisely in its lowliness, can, through the power of the Holy Spirit, spill over with the majesty of God's own life in our world. This too is what we ourselves are called to, and what those with chronic illness and disability can especially reveal with special poignancy and vividness.

What a Vocation to Chronic Illness Actually IS:

First of all, then, a vocation to chronic illness is a call by God to live an authentically human life. It is a vocation to ESSENTIAL wellness and wholeness. This will mean it is a human life which mirrors Jesus' own, as well as that of Mary, and the other Saints, in allowing God to be God-with-us (Emmanuel). Concretely, this means living a life which manifests the fact of God's love for us, and the intrinsic inestimable worth of such a life despite the ever-present values of a world which defines worth (and happiness!) in terms of productivity, earning power, wealth, health, and superficial beauty.

After all, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news that there is NOTHING we can do to earn God's love, and nothing we NEED DO except allow it! God loves us with an everlasting love, and he does so, as Ezekiel tells us, for the sake of his own self, for the sake of his own "holy Name". It is further, therefore, the very good news that with God being for us, nothing and no one can prevail against us. God has entered into our human estate and done so definitively. Objectively, there is no dark corner, no place at all from whence God is absent --- for Jesus has implicated God even into the realms of sin and sinful or godless death. In fact, these become the privileged places which reveal God's face to us, the places where he is definitively present. I personally believe we have to say the same, therefore, of illness, which is ordinarily so clearly a metaphor for human brokenness, alienation, and godlessness. For the Christian, chronic illness in particular can become a metaphor for the triumph of God's love in the face of such brokenness. It can become a sacrament of God's presence in a world that needs such sacraments so very badly.

The vocation to chronic illness or disability is, like all Christian vocations, a call not to remain alone and self-sufficient, but instead to rest securely in God and in the esteem in which he holds us so surely. Like all Christian vocations, it is a call to holiness, that is to ESSENTIAL WHOLENESS and perfection in and of God's own power, God's own "Godness". This requires we accept an entirely different set of values by which we live our lives from those put forward so often by our consumer-driven, production-defined world. It is a call to find meaning in a life lived simply with and for God, and to carry our convictions about this to a world that is so frantically in search of such meaning.

And, it means to learn to accept the suffering that comes our way as best we can so that He may "make up what was lacking" in the sufferings of Christ and one day be all in all. (Let me be clear that in no way is Paul suggesting Jesus' death was inadequate or did not definitively implicate God into the world of sinful godlessness; however, Paul is also clear that God's victory is not yet total; God is not yet all-in-all. Each of us has a part to play in the extension of Jesus' victory into the concrete and very personal parts of our own stories, where God ALSO wills to be triumphant. While Jesus's victory makes God present here in principle, because these realms are personal, we must also allow him in to them. Even so, we do so IN CHRIST, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, so this victory is an extension of Christ's, not our own in some falsely autonomous sense.)

Christians, above all, do not suffer alone, nor are they ultimately dehumanized by their suffering. On the contrary, suffering, as awful as it still can be, now has the capacity to humanize. This is not because of some power suffering has of itself. Rather, it is because suffering opens us to rely on someone larger and more powerful than ourselves, and to allow meaning to come to us as gift rather than achievement. It can open us in particular ways to the power and presence of God because it truly strips us bare of all pretensions and false sense of self. At the same time then, suffering can humanize because ours is a God who ultimately brings good out of evil, life out of death and barrenness, and meaning out of meaninglessness. This is, after all, the good news of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. If those with chronic illness can live up to their calls to allow these simple truths to be realized in their own lives and become clear to others, they will, in large part, have accepted and fulfilled their vocations.

Eremitism: Call to the Chronically Ill and Disabled

(First published in Review For Religious @ 1986. Reprints available in "Best of the Review #8, Dwelling in the House of the Lord, Catholic Laity and Spiritual Tradition, or through Ravensbread Newsletter for hermits)

While applauding the end of a long period of narcissistic privatism in the church, Thomas Merton in his posthumously published, Contemplation in a World of Action makes an important case for the eremitism (that is, the lifestyle of anchorites and hermits) as a significant monastic lifestyle. Almost twelve years later in the 1983 Revised Code of Canon Law makes room explicitly for the inclusion of "nonmonastic" (that is, not associated with monasteries per se) forms of eremitism through canon 603, which outlines a life "in which Christian faithful withdraw further from the world and devote their lives to the praise of God and the salvation of the world through assiduous prayer and penance." Despite this attention, this little-known and mostly ill-regarded vocation has been ignored for far too long, and it is time to ask what vision Thomas Merton, perhaps the best-known of contemporary hermits, had of the eremitical life, and what vision others have of the nature and significance of this vocation in a contemporary church. In particular, with regard to this latter vision, I would like to explore the idea that the chronically ill and disabled may represent a specific instance of the eremitic life today.

At a time when religious and consecrated persons are described within their communities and the church as Poets, Prophets, and Pragmatists, the solitary vocation has achieved new vigor and significance. In some senses the eremitic vocation has always served to challenge society and the institutional church. Always hermits find themselves on the margin of society. Always they live at extremities which, whether gently or harshly, confront and challenge others in the mainstream of things. Unfortunately, the extreme marginal position has not always been one of marked sanity. Often hermits have justifiably earned and borne the label of lunatic, eccentric, rebel, heretic, or fanatic. But truly, whether the individual hermit functions as a prophet or as poet, the vocation is an eminently pragmatic one marked by sanity and profound sense, and is often possessed of a deep and significant conservatism. In fact, the vocation of the hermit today is seen by some as preeminently a vocation of healing, wholeness, and essential well-being in a society characterized by the sickness and disorder of alienation and disaffection.

Both theoretically and practically Merton has prepared the way for this understanding, while others, mostly in the Anglican confession, have confirmed it in their own living. Contemporary hermits live on the margins of society, but they neither remain on nor belong to its periphery. Instead, through simple and uncomplicated lives of prayer and penance, lives essentially free from the "myths and fixations" (Merton) imposed by and inordinately artificial society, they occupy a central role in calling a fragmented and alienated world back to truly human values and life. Above all, it is eremitism's characteristic and conservative witness to wholeness and spiritual sanity (sanctity) which is so very vital to a contemporary church and society.

Solitude is, after all, the most universal of vocations, and a specifically eremitic vocation to solitude serves to remind us of its basic importance in the life of every person, not only as existential predicament, but, as Christian value, challenge, and call. All of us struggle to maintain an appropriate tension between independence and committedness to others which is characteristic of truly human solitude. At the same time, all of us are, in some way, part of the societal problem of alienation, whether we are members of the affluent who contribute materially to the alienation of the poor even while struggling perhaps to do otherwise, or whether we are members of the impoverished who are consigned to what Merton refers to as "the tragically unnatural solitudes" of city slums and ghettos. It is to the church in and of this society that the hermit speaks as prophetic witness. In fact, it is as prophetic witness that the contemporary hermit is part of the answer to society's problems, and it is to that answer that we now turn.

Two dominant scriptural themes are absolutely central to the eremitic vocation. The first is that of wilderness, and the second, and related motif, is that of pilgrimage or sojourn. Together these make up the desert spirituality that is characteristic of eremitism, and constitute the major elements of the powerful criticism of the world of which it is a part. Additionally, in a world which is truly more characteristically "rite of passage" than anything else, these two themes and the life of religious poverty and consecrated celibacy which they attend provide a deeply apologetic spirituality which is an effective answer to lives marked and marred by the affectation, artificiality, estrangement, futility, and emptiness of our contemporary consumerist society. Perceptively, the church today recognizes that she is made up of a "pilgrim people." Hermits are quite simply individuals who choose to stand on the edge of society as persons with no fixed place and witness to this identity with absolutely no resources but those they find within themselves and those they receive through the grace of God. Further, they attest to the fact that these elements alone are indeed sufficient for a genuinely rich and meaningful life. Above all, in a world whose central value seems to be acquisitiveness, whether of goods, status, or of persons, the hermit lives and affirms the intrinsic wholeness and humanity of a life that says, "God is enough."

Even the hermitage itself testifies to the eminent sanity of the hermit’s vocation. As Merton observed, the first function of the contemporary hermitage is “to relax and heal and to smooth out one’s distortions and inhumanities.” This is so, he contends, because the mission of the solitary in the world is, “first the full recovery of man’s natural and human measure.” He continues, “Not that the solitary merely recalls the rest of men to some impossible Eden. [Rather] he reminds them of what is theirs to use if they can manage to extricate themselves from the web of myths and fixations which a highly artificial society has imposed on them.” Above all, as Merton concludes, “the Christian solitary today should bear witness to the fact that certain basic claims about solitude and peace are in fact true, [for] in doing this, [they] will restore people’s confidence first in their own humanity and beyond that in God’s grace.” The hermitage represents for the individual and society that place where the hermit “can create a new pattern which will fulfill (her) special needs for growth. . .and confront the triple specters of ”boredom, futility, and unfulfillment, which so terrify the modern American.”

One group of people are prepared better than most to assume this prophetic role in our world,and I think may represent a long-disregarded instance of the eremitic call to solitude. These persons are members of the chronically ill and disabled, and in fact the prophetic witness they are prepared to give is far more radical than that already suggested. The idea of a vocation to illness is a relatively new one, stemming as it does from renewed reflection on the meaning of illness and the place of the sacrament of anointing in the life of the church. But in fact the idea that the ill might be called to solitude rather than the cenobium dates back at least to the Council of Vannes (463) in a phrase reading "propter infirmitatis necessitatem." If no more than a suggestion, there is at least a similarity between this older notion and the one I am presenting here. The difference, however, stems from the fact that, far from suggesting a somehow inferior cenobitic religious life which must be accommodated by extraordinary provisions for solitude, I believe the call to chronic illness is itself, at least for some, an eremitic vocation to "being sick within the church" as a solitary whose witness value is potentially more profound because such a person is generally more severely tyrannized by our capitalistic and materialistic world.

In the first place, the chronically ill, whose physical solitude is not so much clearly chosen as it is accepted, testify to the poverty of images of human wellness and wealth that are based upon the productivity of the individual in society. They are able to clearly challenge such images and testify further to the dual truth of the human being's poverty and genuine human possibilities. Humanity possesses not only great richness, but an innate poverty as well, which is both ineluctable and inescapable --- a poverty in the face of which one must either find that God is enough or despair. It is a poverty that cannot be changed by a life of busy productivity or by any infusion of accomplishment, and it is a poverty that points to the essentially paradoxical "unworthwhileness" and simultaneous infinite value of the human life. The chronically ill and disabled live this "poverty of worthwhileness" and yet witness to the fact that their lives are of immeasurable value not because of "who" they are (Status) or what they do, but because God himself regards them as precious.

In the second place, the chronically ill person who accepts his or her illness as a vocation to solitude is capable of proclaiming to the world that human sinfulness (existential brokenness and alienation) can and will be overcome by the powerful and loving grace of God. Once again this is a radical witness to the simple fact of divine sufficiency, and it is a witness that is sharpened by the reintegration achieved in the recontextualization of one's illness.

In this recontextualization, illness assumes its rightful position as rite of passage, which, although difficult, need be neither devastating nor meaningless, and it appears clearly as a liminal (or boundary) experience which testifies to transcendence. In accepting this as a call to solitude, the chronically ill person is freed from the false sense of self provided by society, and, in the wilderness of the hermitage, assumes the identity which God himself individually bestows. And finally, the chronically ill solitary says clearly that every person, at whatever stage in his or her own life, can do the same thing --- a task and challenge which eventually eludes none of us.

Today the church has moved to appropriate more completely a lifestyle that has been part of her life since the 3rd century, and one which is rooted in her Old Testament ancestry. It is my hope that those doing spiritual direction, hospital chaplaincy, and so forth, will familiarize themselves further with the spirituality which undergirds this significant way of life, and, whether dealing with the chronically ill or not, maintain an attitude of openness and even of encouragement to their clients' exploration of eremitism as a possible vocation. This is particularly true with regard to those whose vocation "to be sick within the church" may represent a vocation to eremitical solitude. As Merton concludes, in a society fraught with dishonesty and exploitation of human integrity, the Christian solitary stands on the margin and,

[[in his prayer and silence, explores the existential depths and possibilities of his own life by entering the mystery of Christ's prayer and temptation in the desert, Christ's nights alone on the mountain, Christ's agony in the garden, Christ's Transfiguration and Ascension. This is a dramatic way of saying that the Christian solitary is left alone with God to fight out the question of who he really is, to get rid of the impersonation, if any, that has followed him to the woods.]]

Breaking away from the exorbitant claims and empty promises of contemporary society is crucial for each of us. The solitary, and especially the chronically ill solitary, fulfills this challenge with special vividness.