Eremitical Life and the Security of Man-Made Laws (reprise)

 [[Dear Sister O'Neal, [one hermit] who has chosen to remain non-canonical (not under canon law) and has sometimes written canon 603 is a distortion of eremitical life wrote recently: "It is the animal instinct for some to want to rise above others, to rule the roost, so to speak--to take the prey from the claws of other beasts.  So, too, is often the human instinct to find a sense of security in laws made by humans.  Somehow it brings--falsely, though--a feeling that there are boundaries and structure that will provide stability and formulaic assurance for survival and success."

Do you find that most hermits feel the same way about canon 603 as this hermit seems to feel? You have said that the majority of hermits are not canonical so I was wondering if that is because they don't think living eremitical life under canon law is a valid way of doing this? I can see that a basic insecurity except in God could be desirable for hermits and that law and structure could provide the illusion of security and stability apart from God. I can also see that hermits need a freedom to respond to God in whatever way he comes to them so that laws and structures could be a problem. Is this what you find?]]

I think it is really important to understand that canonical hermits have not sought canonical standing in order to "rise above others" or to "rule the roost". We do so because we recognize that eremitical life is a significant vocation which the Church has recently (1983) affirmed as a gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church, and through the Church to the world at large. We recognize this vocation as part of the patrimony of the Church and believe the Church has a right and obligation to nurture and govern it. The way I tend to speak of this is in terms of the rubric "ecclesial vocation". That is, the vocation belongs to the Church before it belongs to me. Similarly it belongs to me only insofar as the Church mediates it to me and insofar as I belong to the Church and live for her --- for her Lord, her life, her People and her proclamation. Canonical hermits honor the way God works to call us to consecrated life in the Church. We know that in a vocation which can be mistaken for (or tragically devolve into!) an instance of individualism, selfishness, and isolation, this ecclesial context is absolutely critical for avoiding these antitheses to authentic eremitical life.

The insecurity of Eremitical Life:

At the same time, while canonical standing supplies an essential context for eremitical life it does not do away with the insecurity the life also involves. Remember that canonical hermits are not supported by the Church in any financial or material way. Solitary canonical hermits (those under canon 603) are self-supporting and are responsible for taking care of everything the eremitical life requires: residence, insurance, education and specialized training, formation, spiritual direction, library, appropriate work, food, clothing, transportation, retreat, etc. A diocese will make sure the hermit has all of these things in place and is capable of both living the life and supplying for her material needs before professing her, but generally speaking they will not supply these things themselves. (There are anecdotal accounts of occasional instances where a diocese will include a hermit on the diocesan insurance or supply temporary housing in a vacant convent, retreat house, etc, but these accounts are clear exceptions and the hermit remains generally responsible for supporting herself.)

While this does not mean most hermits lack the essentials needed to live (food, clothing, housing) they do have the same basic insecurities as any other person in the Church or world and they do so without claims to fame, material success, family, significant profession, or any of the other ways our world marks adulthood and security. Many hermits live on government assistance due to disability or associated poverty and this mistakenly marks them as failures, layabouts, moochers, and so forth by the majority of the world. The message the hermit proclaims with her life, however, is the message of a God who considers us each infinitely and uniquely precious despite our personal fragility and poverty. This God abides with us when every prop is kicked out; (he) alone loves us without condition and is capable of completing us.

There is additional though more nuanced insecurity in the prophetic quality of the vocation. Both the Church and the hermit risk a great deal in enabling this vocation to exist with canonical standing in the heart of the Church. This is because the Church recognizes the work of the Holy Spirit in the hermit's life and calls her to consecration which may also lead to a life capable of criticizing the institution, the hierarchy, etc,`(consider the lives of the Desert Abbas and Ammas here) --- precisely as a way of being faithful to vocation, the Church, and the Church's own mission. 

When the Church builds eremitical lives of solitude and prayer into her very heart she opens herself to conversion as well. (cf Ecclesiality as mutually conditioning) Sometimes this leads to apparent clashes (as it did when the faithfulness of women religious to their vocations and to the documents of Vatican II led to an investigation questioning the Sisters' faithfulness). The life of the Spirit is unsettling as well as being the source of life and peace. Generally speaking, the Church will respond in ways that allow the Spirit to summon her to new life and to the remaking of her heart and mind, but any time one is called to proclaim the Gospel with one's life --- especially in the name of the Church --- one is also called to live a kind of insecurity in terms of the world of power and institutional standing.

The most basic insecurity however is that one pins the entire meaning of her life on God and life with God. It is clear that most people need and are called to lives of social connection and service. While most hermits are not called to live without relationships, while those with ecclesial vocations must build in adequate relationships to nurture, guide, and supervise her life with God, and while the eremitical life is a life of service even when this looks very different than that of apostolic religious, it remains true that hermits forego more normal society and service and risk everything, including her own growth in wholeness and holiness, on the existence and nature of the God revealed in Jesus Christ and his desert existence. 

It is one thing to live a Christian existence in the midst of society with all that entails. That is a risk and challenge, of course, with its own very real insecurity: What if I'm wrong? What if God's existence is a delusion, a fiction? What if there was no resurrection and Jesus simply "stayed good and dead"? But to pin everything including normal relationships, one's own home and family, more usual profession and avenues for service, etc., on a God whose love sustains, nurtures, completes and makes us truly human in eremitical solitude seems to me to be a very great (though justified) risk attended by significant insecurity. (My experience is that canonical standing attenuates but does not obviate this insecurity because the Church as such discerns and validates this vocation and proclaims all it witnesses to. Any well-grounded eremitical tradition works in this way in the hermit's life.)

An Ordered and Disciplined Vocation:

While there is a necessary and desirable insecurity at the heart of every eremitical vocation which tends to "prove" the vocation and its dependence on God, there is also the undeniable fact that this remains an ordered and disciplined form of life. Remember that one of the essential elements defining the life is "stricter separation from the world" and this means boundaries are required. For that matter "the silence of solitude" requires very real limitations and boundaries which MUST be articulated clearly and written into the hermit's Rule if they are to be lived meaningfully and with integrity. The lay hermit you cited may believe man-made laws and structures have no place, create illusions of stability and so forth, but the simple fact is that without these kinds of things sinful human beings create chaos, slide into slackness and laxness and ease into a state of general deafness to the work and call of the Holy Spirit. The person who honors the presence of the Holy Spirit, for instance, and who wishes to remain open and responsive to her presence will do so through an ordered and disciplined life. I wrote about this before once when I said:

[[ I think that suggesting commitments and structure will get in the Holy Spirit's way (which, right or wrong, is what I do hear you saying) is analogous to someone saying, "Oh I don't need to practice the violin to play it, I'll just let the Holy Spirit teach me where my fingers should go (or any of the billion other things involved in playing this instrument)." "Maybe I'll play scales if the HS calls me to; maybe I'll tune the violin if the HS calls me to. You mean I can't do vibrato without practicing it slowly? Well, maybe I will just conclude it doesn't need to be part of MY playing and the HS is not calling me to it." What I am trying to say is that if someone wants to play the violin they must commit to certain fundamental praxis and the development of foundational skills; only in so far as they are accomplished at the instrument technically will they come to know how integral this discipline and these skills are to making music freely and passionately as the Holy Spirit impels. Otherwise the music will not soar. In fact there may be no music at all --- just a few notes strung together to the best of one's ability; the capacity for making music will be crippled by the lack of skill and technique. In other words, the Holy Spirit works in conjunction with and through  the discipline I am speaking of, not apart from it.]]

Why Most Hermits are Non-canonical:

I am not entirely sure why most hermits are not canonical hermits. However, it is my impression that only a very small minority percentage of non-Canonical hermits actually reject canonical standing because they believe they will not have the freedom to live authentic eremitical lives under canonical standing or because they would like to imitate the Desert Abbas and Ammas. . . .One credible example of the kind of rejection you ask about is that which turns up in the Episcopal Church and is well-represented by a canonical hermit like Maggie Ross is. While I don't personally agree precisely with Ms Ross in this matter, she cogently argues the importance of standing outside the institutional reality so that one can be a truly prophetic presence. (I agree completely with her insistence on being a prophetic presence and I emphatically agree on the marginality of the hermit, but I disagree that one can stand either essentially or completely outside the institution or be free of all legal and structural bonds.)

I will tell you what I have seen in a number of non-canonical hermits, however. First, most of these are self-described "hermits" and tend not to embody or otherwise meet the requirements of canon 603 in what they live. They may not live the silence of solitude nor lives of assiduous prayer and penance. They may not have embraced a desert spirituality but may merely be lone individuals --- sometimes misanthropic, sometimes not --- but generally still, they are not really hermits as the Church understands the term.  Some are married; some treat eremitical life as a part-time avocation; some live with their parents or others and have never known real solitude, much less "the silence of solitude". Many desire to be religious men or women but have not been able to be professed or consecrated in community. 

Today the term "hermit" is far more popular than the authentic lifestyle! This means that all kinds of things are being justified by the term hermit and many of them are actually antithetical to this vocation: individualism, narcissism, active or apostolic life lived by a solitary, etc. Some non-Canonical hermits have petitioned for canonical standing and been rejected; sometimes this is a personal matter, a determination they are not called to this life or are otherwise unsuitable while other times it is because the diocese they are petitioning is still hesitant to try or unclear on how to implement the canon in an effective and successful way. For instance, appropriate discernment, formation, etc are questions they take seriously and are still unclear about. (These are the kinds of questions some c 603 hermits can assist with.)

Summary:

The bottom line in all of this is that because the eremitical life centered on the relationship of the hermit and God alone is, paradoxically, not merely about the hermit and God alone, because, that is, it is a gift to the Church which can proclaim the Gospel and speak in a special way to the isolated, the alienated, and those from whom "all the props have been kicked out", because it is lived in the heart of the Church in a way which allows the Church to nurture, govern, and mediate it, because, that is, it is an ecclesial vocation which belongs to the Church before it belongs to any hermit, the vocation requires some church laws and structures including mediatory relationships (Bishop, delegate, Vicars) to assure it is what it is meant to be. 

If one believes one can support the idea of a vocation without law or structure by turning to Paul's writing on Law versus Gospel one has simply not understood Paul's theology or his esteem for both law and the Gospel. At the same time the person you cited seems not to have understood the importance of discerning, embracing, or representing ecclesial vocations if s/he truly believes the Church professes those who seek to " rise above others" or to "rule the roost." This is simply not the reason canonical hermits have chosen (or are admitted to) hidden lives lived in the heart of the Church or lives of marginality and essential insecurity in worldly terms.

A Contemplative Moment: Being Led into the Desert

 With joy and by the Spirit led the Church of Christ seeks desert paths,

all else forgotten, God alone to worship and to follow there. Amen

There silence shall set free the will,

the heart to one desire restore.

There each restraint shall purify

and strengthen those who seek the Lord.

There bread from heaven shall sustain

and water from the rock be struck

There shall his people hear his word,

 the living God encounter there.

All praise to God who calls his church

to make exodus from sin,

that tested, fasting, and prepared,

she may go up to keep the feast. Amen.

from the Camaldolese OSB office book

Lauds Lenten Hymn for Mondays and Thursdays

On the Hermit Vocation, Inner Work, and the Call to Metanoia

Jesus Meets His Mother**
 by Bro Mickey McGrath OSFS

I received another question on the place and appropriateness  of the "inner work" I have mentioned from time to time here. The questioner specifically wondered how this works in the life of a hermit. Rather than write another response, I decided to reprise one I posted about three years ago. here it is:

[[Hi Sister, when you refer to inner work or the personal growth work you are doing with your director I wonder how this fits in with the life of a hermit. I also wondered if the tears you experienced were really less the "gift of tears" which is bestowed by the Holy Spirit and more the result of some therapeutic process involved in the inner work. No offense of course!]]

No offense taken; your questions are natural and good ones. I know I have spoken of the focus of the inner work I am doing with my director right now but let me restate it as I understand it in case some have not read past posts --- or in case I am mistaken!

We are made in the image of God but in our lives that image is sometimes distorted, often crippled, and almost invariably prevented from unfolding in all its glory due to our own woundedness. We are marked and marred by sin (a state of alienation from God, self, and others) and we ratify that sin ourselves -- often as we meet and react to the sin of others; and all of this has an effect on our being able to be our true selves. The project of our lives, the journey we are making is the journey to the revelation or realization of our true selves which only occurs to the extent we exist in communion and union with God. The goal of this ongoing journey is to become the covenantal persons, the relationship with God we truly are and in which our genuine individuality consists. In Christ, the One who is the very definition of union with God, we are called to become imago Christi: persons who are truly, fully and exhaustively human, and who thus (similarly) reveal God (Love-in-Act) to the world.

The task before us is, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to work through anything that prevents our communion and union with God. In the language of the desert and of monastic life in particular this is the life of repentance, of metanoia. As Hunt notes in Joy-Bearing Grief,  [[The experience of the desert monk is his most active work. "It is a contract [covenant] with God for a second life." according to Klimakos. Through it [the monk] takes responsibility for the exercise of his free will, the working out of his divinely given humanity. . . . The flight to the desert has at its heart relationships, primarily, those between the individual and God and the individual with him/herself. The physical journey may [and is meant to] give way to an interiorized one. . .]]

This approach to the desert rests on the profound relationship between repentance and prayer. The two are inextricably wed in a single dynamic towards authenticity which the Rule of Benedict and monastic and eremitical life more generally call "seeking God". In my own Rule I stress this sense that prayer and repentance are so closely allied in the journey to becoming the person we are called to be that they rely on one another and cannot be easily teased apart. Repentance is empowered and accompanied by prayer just as it also prepares for prayer. The task before the hermit is to become a person of prayer (a person in whom God is powerfully active and who is open to allowing this to be exhaustively true in every dimension of her life); this will also mean participating every day in a process of metanoia, of repentance and conversion. The inner work I have spoken of is one of the principal forms of embracing metanoia and becoming the person I am called to be; it is so central to my vocation that it is actually written into my Rule. It focuses in very specific and powerful ways on the imago dei which exists deep within and on the process of recovering and realizing the potential of that imago in order that I may actually become imago Christ.  

When you ask how inner work fits into the hermit life this is the answer. The hermit seeks God, she gives her life over to this seeking and to God's intimate seeking of her. She realizes she will only be the person she is called to be if her life is lived in obedience (open attentiveness and responsiveness) to the call of God. She is committed to embodying call and response in the single self who is a covenant with God. Only God can complete her. Only God is the source and ground of her human life. She is made in God's image and likeness, made to be a relational being just as the Trinity is relational in every sense. She is thus called to become imago Christi and this means living a life of prayer and repentance or metanoia.  Inner work is an integral part in responding to this vocation.

The Gift of Tears:

I am not sure it is possible to entirely tease apart or distinguish the gift of tears from "ordinary" tears that are the result of the inner work. Both are therapeutic; both can come from the deepest places within us and both are gifts of God. But, there is, I think, also a qualitative difference between "ordinary" tears and the gift of tears. I suppose that at this point --- with what is very limited experience --- I would say that "ordinary" tears are healing in ways which allow us to continue functioning as the persons we are; they express and ease our suffering, they express our joy.  The gift of tears functions to transform us and our hearts in more profound and extensive ways, and it does more as well. This gift opens our hearts to the presence and power of God in ways more "ordinary" tears do not. In a single moment it touches every part of our lives, memory, history and selves --- body, spirit and mind and results in their reconciliation, healing and integration. These tears make us into whole and holy human beings who, in Christ, are instances of embodied spirit, incarnations of the Word of God. My own sense is that the inner work I am doing, for instance, heals and opens me to the deep reality of God alive and yearning to live within me. The paradox here is that I am truly myself when God is allowed to live exhaustively in and through me. Perhaps what I am saying similarly then is that our "ordinary" tears reach their own fulfillment or perfection in what has been called "the gift of tears."

This is a very provisional and clearly basic answer on my part. As with all things this gift will be measured by its fruits --- and, while some will be immediately evident, fruits also take time to grow. I believe I have experienced something singular. I feel sure it is a charismatic gift in line with the penthos (weeping) and katanuxis (compunction) which are central to the desert tradition. I also feel sure that receiving this gift in fullness is something which takes time and that it will come. However, if it is the gift of tears it will need to do the kinds of things the desert tradition says such tears do; it will need to transform my heart into one entirely measured in terms of compassion and the courage, generosity, and self-gift compassion makes possible; in short it will need to allow me to see and relate to the world as Christ sees and relates to the world. It will need to help transform me from imago dei into the historical  embodiment and expression of the Risen Christ we know as imago Christi. It will need to empower me to see and love with Christ's own vision and love. By their fruits we shall know the gifts of God. I am reminded of a passage in Soul Making, The Desert Way of Spirituality. In this work Alan Jones distinguishes the gift of tears from ordinary tears when he writes,

[[The "gift of tears" is  concerned with something much more radical, threatening and life-bearing than the occasional and necessary release from tension that "having a good cry" affords. The tears of which the desert bears witness are not tears of rage, self-pity, or frustration. They are a gift and their fruit is always so. . . Tears flow when the real source of our life is uncovered, when the mask of pretense is dropped. . .[and as Andre Louf writes] "Tears come when we begin to live more and more out of our deepest longings, our needs, our troubles. These must all surface and be given their rightful place. For in them we find our real human life in all its depths.. . "]]

The inner work I have spoken of (part of my own work of spiritual direction) gives the Holy Spirit space to work in my life. This is another reason I am reticent to entirely distinguish between "ordinary tears" from those which are more clearly charismatic. As noted, I feel both are empowered by the love of God, both are the work of the Consoler. Finally, we often and too easily distinguish the "ordinary" from  that which is "super ordinary" or even extraordinary. The truth is that all-too-often we miss the God who comes to us in the ordinary so this is something I bear in mind as well.

** N.B. the picture of Jesus meeting his Mother is Bro Mickey McGrath's painting of the Fourth Station of the Cross. It is available in many different formats from Trinity Stores.

Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel: on St Teresa's Eremitism

[[Dear Sister, I am still surprised at how you write about solitude. Your accent on the communal nature of it just seems different from what I understand hermits to be. It's hard to get it into my head. Do all hermits see eremitical solitude as a communal thing? How does a person know when they are living what you call eremitical solitude and when they are just wrecking that with contact with others? Do you measure your time in percentages or something like that, 90% solitude and 10% community, or something to be sure you are mainly living solitude?]] 

Great questions! I can't answer about all hermits but more and more the truth that becomes clearer to me is that hermits of all traditions see the integral link between solitude and community. Cornelius Wencel, Er Cam, stresses this in his excellent general approach to hermit life in the book The Eremitic Life. This week, partly because of today's Feast of OL of Mount Carmel, I was going back to Ruth Burrow's work, Essentials of Prayer. There is a chapter near the end of the book on Carmelite eremitism which draws not only from Burrow's experience but from the writings of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. What was striking in this chapter (which I had completely forgotten!) was Teresa's demand that her Sisters become not only nuns but also hermits. 

The basic point was that these Sisters entered Carmel in order to know truth and love -- both the truth of themselves and of God as they come to love themselves, their Sisters, and their God, more truly and deeply. This requires both solitude and community. (Here she seems using the term solitude somewhat differently than I do because it does not seem she is describing solitude as communal, but I suspect that I am mistaken in that conclusion. It is clear that though Burrows contrasts community and solitude, she also knows well that even the Sister's solitude in Carmel is a profoundly communal reality; not only is it lived for the sake of the larger community/charism, but it is lived because the community supports, ensures, and nurtures it. In all of this, the Cistercian and Carmelite approaches (and also that of the Camaldolese) to both solitude and community seem very close indeed.)

Below is some of what she says; I think you will also find real similarities to what I have said about solitude throughout the years here, along with what the Cistercians, the Camaldolese, the Franciscans, and even what the Carthusians say regarding the relationship of solitude and community. In all of these spiritualities there is a tension between solitude and community and each group works out this tension (or, maybe better said, negotiates and lives this tension creatively) in somewhat different ways. The tension is never simply ignored or obviated; it is lived faithfully, and the result is either a healthy and authentic coenobitism or a healthy and authentic eremitism.  Again, St. Teresa, for example, wanted nuns who would also be hermits and therefore, she created a coenobitical "eremitism" which at once cut Carmel off from the world around them with a strict enclosure -- stricter than occurred with the origin of the Order, perhaps; but at the same time, the desert she created was meant to allow for an exposure to reality (to God and one's deep self as well as to one's Sisters); it was a "solitude in which a woman's life could develop and expand"! Ruth Burrows, OCD, writes:

[[To be alone with Him Alone is, at bottom, to be detached from self, with mind and heart directed to pleasing God only --- something that is impossible without generous effort, searching purification, and --- let us not overlook it --- personal maturity. It is possible for someone to live in physical solitude, to follow a strict Rule of life, pray, experience great devotion or desolation, yet remain basically egotistical, undeveloped, and emotionally stunted: alone, not with God, but with the self and its projections of God. John of the Cross insists that we simply cannot, of ourselves, divest ourselves of our egotism. God has to act both directly and indirectly. Other people are his chosen instruments, and we have an absolute need of them in order to mature emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually and to learn how to love --- our life's greatest task.]] Later Burrows writes:

[[All human maturation and growth towards union with God demands a creative tension between solitude and community. Understood in a truly spiritual/Christian sense, we cannot have the one without the other, and each thrives in mutual proportion. Each of us must stand absolutely alone before God, assuming full responsibility for our attitudes and choices. At the same time, none of us can come to self-knowledge and maturity without others. The more truly solitary and personal the individual member, the more authentic the community --- a genuine communion of mind and heart. . .. Understanding the meaning of solitude and being faithful to it, and at the same time forgetting self in the service of community, enables divine Love to bring to being our true personhood. When that is so then, most truly, we are alone with God alone.]]

Regarding your question on percentages, I never measure anything regarding solitude and community in that way. It is not helpful at this point. Instead, I recognize I am called to live with and for God alone and I do what is necessary to ensure that. That will mean meeting with my Director regularly, joining with my faith community at the parish when I can, doing the personal work I have committed to as part of my ongoing personal formation, and being accessible if someone needs to meet with me, including spiritual direction clients. But it will also mean living most, if not all of every day, with God for the sake of God and others --- alone in my hermitage. So long as prayer continues to support these activities and these activities continue to call me back to prayer in solitude, and so long as I continue to experience God calling me to all of this and find myself growing as a person in Christ, I think I am living exactly the kind of solitude God calls me to. And, though I am not a cenobite, I think it is the same kind of solitude St. Teresa wanted for her Sisters, specifically, "a solitude in which a woman's life could develop and expand," and do so in and with God. 

Personal growth in God (that is, in Love) will always be the key, I think. Because of the way I understand the two things, I live community with an accent on solitude and solitude with an accent on its communal nature. I hope this makes sense to you because it requires giving up the kind of calculus you (and most others, by the way), understandably propose and ask about. Meanwhile, all good wishes and prayers for my Carmelite brothers and Sisters. I am thinking especially of Ruth Burrow's Carmel and also the Carmel in Reno where friends are celebrating with the community today! May this Feast be a gift in every way it possibly could!!

All quotations taken from Essence of Prayer, "Alone with Him Alone: St Teresa's creative understanding of eremiticism", by Ruth Burrows, OCD, Hidden Spring Press, 2006.

In the Heart of the Desert: O God, Make us Truly Alive!

[[Dear Sister, if I wanted to read about the Desert Fathers and Mothers what would you suggest I read? Thanks. Also, I wondered if the Desert Fathers and Mothers are helpful in charting your own course as a canonical hermit? By the way, are you doing the service on Friday? It's your Feast day isn't it?]]

Thanks for the questions!  Good timing given the feasts this week of  Paul of Thebes, and St Anthony of Egypt. Yes, the Desert Fathers and Mothers are a great source for  my understanding of eremitical life and I read them and books about them whenever I become aware of something new out there. The best book I can recommend apart from a collection of the sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (I would always start here) is by John Chryssavagis. It is entitled, In the Heart of the Desert, The Spirituality of the Desert. Rev Dc Chryssavagis is an Orthodox Christian and an expert on the Desert Fathers and Mothers. What he does in this book is to explore the true heart of desert Spirituality as lived by the 4-5C hermits by using not only their sayings but by drawing pictures of the way these men and women lived. Especially, Rev Chryssavagis constructs a portrait of a profoundly healthy spirituality which most will recognize as helpful in the 21C.

For instance, in writing about spiritual direction in the desert, Chryssavagis cites the following conversation(s) between a younger hermit and Abba Poemen: [[ A brother questioned Abba Poemen saying, "I am losing my soul living with my abba. Should I go on living with him?" The old man knew that he was finding it harmful living with the abba. So he said to him, "Stay, if you want." The brother left him and stayed on there [with the abba]. He came back again and said, "I am losing my soul." But again the old man did not tell him to leave. He came a third time and said: "I really cannot stay there any longer. I am leaving." Then Abba Poemen said to him, "Now you have truly been healed. Go, and do not stay with him any longer."]]

Chryssavagis recognizes that this is the way authentic spiritual direction takes place; this is the way it looks. He says, [[ Abba Poemen struggled to exclude his own will while expanding --- but not exploiting --- the will of the brother.]] In my own life my Director works in the same way. She helps me to get in touch with and articulate the movements of my own heart and she hears my thoughts, but she does not ordinarily tell me what to do. She certainly celebrates with me when I come to clarity on something and move as I sense God is calling me to do. As Chryssavagis makes clear, the refusal to interfere in the journey of another while providing ways and tools allowing them to come to clarity on their own needs and the way God is calling them is an act of love and respect. It is also an act of trust which underscores one's belief that God speaks to them just as God speaks to the director.

I draw other implications from this saying and from others. Especially I can see the way obedience worked in what was a vast community of hermits. Each lived either alone or with others and each went to an elder to manifest his own thoughts, his own heart to another. Chryssavagis calls obedience "the great leveller" because everyone could speak a word to another and everyone went to his brothers or sisters for such a word. Everyone listened and was obedient in this profound sense just as everyone, once they were established in the desert life, could be asked to serve in this way. But at the same time this saying and many others lays bare the fact that solitude was not about isolation and while some hermits went onto the deep desert where they were more generally alone, most did not. Chryssavagis notes that obedience did not create a hierarchical structure; instead it was the thing which united a community.

Canon 603 seeks to set up very few regulations for the hermit and requires the hermit to write her own Rule of life while securing a structure of accountability and obedience which, in some ways, mirrors that of the desert Abbas and Ammas. My own Rule seeks to articulate a vision of eremitical life; it does not generally set up lots of "thou shalt nots" or "thou may onlys". The life of the Desert Abbas and Ammas was similar while still being one of community in solitude. In another Abba Poemen story we hear: [[A brother asked Abba Poemen, "Some brothers live with me; should I be in charge of them?" The old man said to him, "No, just work first and foremost. And if they want to live like you then they will see to it themselves." The brother said to him, "But it is they themselves, Father, who want me to be in charge of them. "No, be their example, not their legislator." This is another reason, I think that discernment is long for the c 603 hermit. A diocese must be sure the person is not seeking someone to tell them what to do and has the capacity to write a liveable Rule rooted in lived experience.

But once again, check out the place of community in the lives of  the Desert Fathers and Mothers. There are many sayings which illustrate the community that has a place at the heart of desert solitude; solitude calls for community and community allows for a solitude which is healthy and fruitful. In many ways this is what Camaldolese spirituality calls "living together alone" and I know the desert Abbas and Ammas influenced Camaldolese spirituality. Meanwhile, thanks for asking, but no, I am not doing the service Friday (St Anthony of Egypt); I have had a bug and still do; and no, it is not my feast day either. That is The Conversion of Paul,  25.January; but it is the feast day of the Camaldolese nuns in Rome (Monastery of St Antony of Egypt) so yes, I am remembering them in my prayers. My prayer for them and for all who live desert lives is the Eucharistic prayer of Abba Serapion of Thmuis, [[O God, we entreat you, make us truly alive!]]

Developing the Heart of a Hermit (Reprise)

As it turns out, this question or others like it have been posed or repeated several times, most recently with regard to some things I said about the hermit heart and the need for friendships. I have reprised it before. Thus, I am going to repost something I first wrote about three years ago or so because I still don't think I can improve on it at this point.

[[Hi Sister, when you write about having the heart of a hermit and moving from isolation to solitude do you mean that someone comes to this through some form of trauma or serious personal wounding and alienation? Is this necessary? Can a person who has never been hurt or broken develop the "heart of a hermit"?]]

Hi and thanks for your questions. When I think of someone with the heart of a hermit I am thinking of someone who has entered a desert, been stripped and emptied in all the ways a desert does, and learned to depend upon God for her very life as well as for the meaning of that life. When I speak of God I mean what the Christian creeds mean, what the NT means and who Jesus reveals, but I also mean being dependent on the One Tillich called the "Ground of Being and Meaning", namely a transcendent ground which both surpasses and comprehends our own emptiness and incapacities and is the source and guarantor of life and meaning.

When I speak of a desert I mean the literal wilder-nesses we know as deserts (the Thebaid, Scetes, Mojave, Sonoran, Sahara, etc), but I also mean any extended situation which demands  or forces a person to plumb the depths of their own personal resources --- courage, intelligence, creativity, sense of security, personal  gifts and talents, sense of self, faith, hope, love, etc --- all the things we need to negotiate the world fruitfully and independently. In such a situation, which may certainly include childhood traumatic situations (Merton once said "Hermits are made by difficult mothers"), a person brings all they have and know to the situation and over time are emptied or reach the limit of these resources. At the same time one can, and hopefully will, experience a sense of empowerment one knows comes not only from within but from beyond themselves as well. When this happens, when the desert becomes a place of meeting with God as well as of stripping and emptying, such a person continues to live with a fresh courage and sense of meaning and hope. They embrace their own weakness honestly as they humbly and gratefully accept the life which is received as complete gift in such situations.

All kinds of situations result in "desert experiences." Chronic illness, bereavement, negligent and abusive family life, bullying, losses of employment and residence, abandonment, divorce, war, imprisonment, insecure identity (orphans, etc), serious poverty, and many others may be classified this way. Typically such experiences distance, separate, and even alienate us from others (e.g., ties with civil society, our normal circle of friends and the rhythms of life we are so used to are disrupted and sometimes lost entirely); too they throw us back upon other resources, and eventually require experiences of transcendence --- the discovery of or tapping into new and greater resources which bring us beyond the place of radical emptiness and  helplessness to one of consolation and communion. The ultimate (and only ultimately sufficient) source of transcendence is God and it is the experience of this originating and sustaining One who is Love in Act that transforms our isolation into the communion we know as solitude.

Thus, my tendency is to answer your question about the possibility of developing the heart of a hermit without experiences of loss, trauma, or brokenness in the negative. These experiences open us to the Transcendent and, in some unique ways, are necessary for this. Remember that sinfulness itself is an experience of estrangement and brokenness so this too would qualify if one underwent a period of formation where one met one's own sinfulness in a sufficiently radical way. Remember too that the hermit vocation is generally seen as a "second half of life" vocation; the need that one experiences this crucial combination of radical brokenness and similar transcendence and healing is very likely part of the reason behind this bit of common wisdom.

In any case, the heart of a hermit is created when a person living a desert experience also learns to open themselves to God and to live in dependence on God in a more or less solitary context. One need not become a hermit to have the heart of a hermit and not all those with such hearts become hermits in a formal, much less a canonical way. In the book Journeys into Emptiness (cf.,illustration above), the Zen Buddhist Master Dogen, Roman Catholic Monk Thomas Merton, and Depth Psychologist Carl Jung all developed such hearts. Only one lived as a hermit --- though both Dogen and Merton were monks.

As I understand and use the term these are the hearts of persons irrevocably marked by the experience and threat of emptiness as well as by the healing (or relative wholeness) achieved in solitary experiences of transcendence and who are now not only loving individuals but are persons who are comfortable and  (often immensely) creative in solitude. They are persons who have experienced in a radical way and even can be said to have "become" the question of meaning and found in the Transcendent the only Answer which truly completes and transforms them. In a Farewell to Arms, Hemingway said it this way, [[The World breaks everyone and then some become strong in the broken places.]] The Apostle Paul said it this way (when applied to human beings generally), "My grace is sufficient for you, my power is perfected in weakness."

Hermit hearts are created when, in a radical experience of weakness, need, yearning, and even profound doubt that will mark her for the rest of her life,  she is transformed and transfigured by an experience of God's abiding presence. A recognition of the nature of the hermit's heart is what drives my insistence that the Silence of Solitude is the goal and gift (charism) of eremitical life; it is also the basis for the claim that there must be an experience of redemption at the heart of the discernment, profession, and consecration of any canonical hermit. While she in no way denies the importance of others who can and do mediate this very presence in our world, the hermit gives herself to the One who alone can make her whole and holy. She seeks and seeks to witness to the One who has already "found" her in the wilderness and found her in a way that reveals the truth that "God alone is enough" for us.

Developing the Heart of a Hermit (Reprise)

I was asked about the creation of the hermit heart recently and someone else asked what it means to have the heart of a hermit. Thus, I am going to repost something I wrote about 14-15 months ago because I don't think I can improve on it at this point.

[[Hi Sister, when you write about having the heart of a hermit and moving from isolation to solitude do you mean that someone comes to this through some form of trauma or serious personal wounding and alienation? Is this necessary? Can a person who has never been hurt or broken develop the "heart of a hermit"?]]

Hi and thanks for your questions. When I think of someone with the heart of a hermit I am thinking of someone who has entered a desert, been stripped and emptied in all the ways a desert does, and learned to depend upon God for her very life as well as for the meaning of that life. When I speak of God I mean what the Christian creeds mean, what the NT means and who Jesus reveals, but I also mean being dependent on the One Tillich called the "Ground of Being and Meaning", namely a transcendent ground which both surpasses and comprehends our own emptiness and incapacities and is the source and guarantor of life and meaning.

When I speak of a desert I mean the literal wilder-nesses we know as deserts (the Thebaid, Scetes, Mojave, Sonoran, Sahara, etc), but I also mean any extended situation which demands  or forces a person to plumb the depths of their own personal resources --- courage, intelligence, creativity, sense of security, personal  gifts and talents, sense of self, faith, hope, love, etc --- all the things we need to negotiate the world fruitfully and independently. In such a situation, which may certainly include childhood traumatic situations, a person brings all they have and know to the situation and over time are emptied or reach the limit of these resources. At the same time one can, and hopefully will, experience a sense of empowerment one knows comes not only from within but from beyond themselves as well. When this happens, when the desert becomes a place of meeting with God as well as of stripping and emptying, such a person continues to live with a fresh courage and sense of meaning and hope. They embrace their own weakness honestly as they humbly and gratefully accept the life which is received as complete gift in such situations.

 

All kinds of situations result in "desert experiences." Chronic illness, bereavement, negligent and abusive family life, bullying, losses of employment and residence, abandonment, divorce, war, imprisonment, insecure identity (orphans, etc), serious poverty, and many others may be classified this way. Typically such experiences distance, separate, and even alienate us from others (e.g., ties with civil society, our normal circle of friends and the rhythms of life we are so used to are disrupted and sometimes lost entirely); too they throw us back upon other resources, and eventually require experiences of transcendence --- the discovery of or tapping into new and greater resources which bring us beyond the place of radical emptiness and  helplessness to one of consolation and communion. The ultimate (and only ultimately sufficient) source of transcendence is God and it is the experience of this originating and sustaining One who is Love in Act that transforms our isolation into the communion we know as solitude.

Thus, my tendency is to answer your question about the possibility of developing the heart of a hermit without experiences of loss, trauma, or brokenness in the negative. These experiences open us to the Transcendent and, in some unique ways, are necessary for this. Remember that sinfulness itself is an experience of estrangement and brokenness so this too would qualify if one underwent a period of formation where one met one's own sinfulness in a sufficiently radical way. Remember too that the hermit vocation is generally seen as a "second half of life" vocation; the need that one experiences this crucial combination of radical brokenness and similar transcendence and healing is very likely part of the reason behind this bit of common wisdom.

In any case, the heart of a hermit is created when a person living a desert experience also learns to open themselves to God and to live in dependence on God in a more or less solitary context. One need not become a hermit to have the heart of a hermit and not all those with such hearts become hermits in a formal, much less a canonical way. In the book Journeys into Emptiness (cf.,illustration above), the Zen Buddhist Master Dogen, Roman Catholic Monk Thomas Merton, and Depth Psychologist Carl Jung all developed such hearts. Only one lived as a hermit --- though both Dogen and Merton were monks.

As I understand and use the term these are the hearts of persons irrevocably marked by the experience and threat of emptiness as well as by the healing (or relative wholeness) achieved in solitary experiences of transcendence and who are now not only loving individuals but are persons who are comfortable and  (often immensely) creative in solitude. They are persons who have experienced in a radical way and even can be said to have "become" the question of meaning and found in the Transcendent the only Answer which truly completes and transforms them. In a Farewell to Arms, Hemingway said it this way, [[The World breaks everyone and then some become strong in the broken places.]] The Apostle Paul said it this way (when applied to human beings generally), "My grace is sufficient for you, my power is perfected in weakness."

Hermit hearts are created when, in a radical experience of weakness, need, yearning, and even profound doubt that will mark her for the rest of her life,  she is transformed and transfigured by an experience of God's abiding presence. A recognition of the nature of the hermit's heart is what drives my insistence that the Silence of Solitude is the goal and gift (charism) of eremitical life; it is also the basis for the claim that there must be an experience of redemption at the heart of the discernment, profession, and consecration of any canonical hermit. While she in no way denies the importance of others who can and do mediate this very presence in our world, the hermit gives herself to the One who alone can make her whole and holy. She seeks and seeks to witness to the One who has already "found" her in the wilderness and found her in a way that reveals the truth that "God alone is enough" for us.

Cowl as Symbol: Once Again on Becoming the Hermit I Am

About three or four years ago I wrote a piece about God as the Master Weaver/ Master Storyteller God as Master Storyteller . It represented a way of coming to terms with the notion that "There is a reason for everything," without also buying into the naïve notion that God wills everything that occurs or happens to us. It was also a piece of integrating the fact and relatively new theological consideration that we belong to an unfinished and evolving universe; this involves the idea that God creates by summoning or drawing us into the future, into fullness of being and that God represents what theologian Ted Peters calls Absolute Future. Finally it was a way of affirming that in our lives everything can be transfigured by the love of God; no threads will be dropped, none lost or forgotten because, as we celebrate especially with the Feasts of Resurrection and Ascension, we rest securely in the hands and heart of God.

Yesterday I was reading Paulsell's Letters From a Hermit, the story of how Cistercian monk Matthew Kelty became a hermit and I came across the quote found below. It reminded me not only of that article, but also the way God has worked in my own life to create the heart of a hermit and especially during this last year of intense inner work: [[He chose to be alone, "not to nurse his wounds, not to count his victories, but rather quietly to take all the mysterious fabric of [his] life and there [in the hermitage] lay it all out and trace the hand of love that somehow ordered all things, the good and the bad, the crooked and the straight, the bitter and the sweet, the whole of it. . . and then to take the whole thing and throw it over [himself] as a garment woven in love."]] Letters From a Hermit, William Paulsell.

Eremitical life is not the only context in which we can learn to look at our lives in a truly reverent way,  with a truly human and thus, graced perspective. Any person who has worked regularly with a really competent director will be reminded of and confronted with the truth that deeper than any discrete pain or joy, any specific moments of suffering or solace, any individual moments of darkness or light, meaning or senselessness, we are participants in a Mystery which "contextualizes" and makes an ultimate sense of all of these more particular historical realities. A lot of the time what a spiritual director does for us, for instance, especially when we are in the midst of darkness and suffering is to maintain the perspective we lose or cannot adequately maintain at these times. Those of us who have someone who can and does remain in a relatively unobscured contact with the Mystery that grounds us both as we work together through more immediate difficulties, limitations, and yearnings of our life is blessed indeed. In any case, contemplatives of all stripes, hermits, religious women and men (cloistered and apostolic), laity, priests, all know this.

My own sense, however, is that eremitical life especially is ordered to give the hermit the opportunity to do as Matthew Kelty described so well; namely, it provides the very dedicated time and space to remember (and here I mean a deep and active remembering where we actually relive and reappropriate) events from a new perspective --- the perspective of one who knows the eternal and unconditional love of God which is constantly at work to bring good out of evil, life out of death, and meaning out of absurdity. This is the Love-in-Act who undergirds and accompanies us and has always done so, the God who has worked to redeem every moment and mood of our lives and bring us to fullness of existence in and through Christ. The hermit is one who has given everything in order to allow this God to be fully revealed in her life in and through the silence of solitude; she has given everything so that she might "clothe herself" in the Risen Christ without whom her life would be an absurdity and waste, but with and in whom her life is an infinitely valuable reflection of the Gospel. This is the work and witness of eremitical life, the gift the hermit gives to the Church and world in the name of Christ.

As readers here know, a year ago (June 1st) my director and I began an intense form of inner work which allowed a methodical approach to doing precisely this kind of remembering, healing, and growth work. I was clear that in professing and thus commissioning me to live eremitical life in her name, the Church had also implicitly commissioned --- as well as given me the privileged time and space in the silence of solitude --- to undertake this very work. At every point it was my director's "job" to remind me of and help me get or remain in touch with the fact that in spite of every particular period or instance of suffering, pain, darkness, and apparent senselessness we worked through (as well as those of light, profound meaning, and joy) we each stand up out of and embody a deeper source of life, truth, and love that constitutes a foundational or constitutive part of our deepest selves and is our ultimate destiny and absolute future as well.

My director's "job" has been and remains not only to help me heal in the ways I have needed, but above all, to accompany me in this process of journeying deep into memory, deep into self, and help me learn and continue to trace the hand of love that somehow ordered all things; her "job" was to assist me to "trust the process" (give myself over to a process where the hand of love, though often obscured, is and will become, evident) and to grow in my capacity to do that with every part of my Self --- whether in the midst of deep suffering and pain or profound consolation and joy. What I learned anew time and again in this work, what I came to know (in the intimate biblical sense!) and therefore, to trust more and more deeply, was the truth of the Ascension: we rest securely in the hands and heart of God. In Christ we always have been given and always have a place in the very life of God. If we can allow that truth to be the fabric of our lives --- not just their ground and source, but the thread which weaves throughout to structure, and inspire, the cloak with which we are embraced and clothed --- those lives will be utterly transformed and transfigured.

Sometimes putting on my cowl is especially challenging. That is not only because I stand alone in a parish setting where it is probably not well-understood by most people, or because few other Religious I know wear anything remotely similar. More truly, it is because it represents so much eremitical and monastic tradition and history, so much ecclesial trust and responsibility. It is never a garment I take for granted! And now I associate it freshly and more deeply with all of this work. It has become a symbol of it all, and of God's long process in creating the heart of a hermit. During this process my director and I have discerned and been moved in a variety of ways by the Mystery present in, embracing, and also transcending every particularity of my life. Together throughout this privileged time we have traced the hand of Love that orders all things.

My cowl is a smooth, white, wool blend --- and so it will remain. But it is also freshly woven and shot through with all kinds of new colors and textures --- some I never thought could belong to such a garment. Not a thread has been lost, forgotten, or rejected. All of them have been closely and tenderly handled and transfigured by the Mystery I (and my director) know as God. All of them have been worked into what is a sacred garment marking a life which is equally sacred. Through the whole of my life God has been working to create the heart of a hermit and this is a hermit's garment. Each time I pull it on now I will remember Matthew Kelty's challenging: [[. . . and then. . .take the whole thing and throw it over [yourself] as a garment woven in love.]] Each time I pull it on I will be reminded that every moment of my life has been grounded in and embraced by Mystery. Meanwhile this work of healing and "reeducation" --- this process of metanoia! --- continues in response to the call to put on Christ and the Scriptural imperative to [[Remember how for forty [I read sixty-eight!] years now the LORD, your God, has directed all your journeying in the desert. . .]] ***

While in gratitude to God I may see my own situation as privileged, isn't all of this merely one way of undertaking the task we are each given at baptism when we are clothed with a white garment and each day after this challenged to "put on Christ"? Aren't we each grounded in and called to know intimately the Mystery which is the foundation of the universe? Of course. And thanks be to God!!

*** This reading is from the opening to Lection #1 from the Solemnity of Corpus Christi; on Corpus Christi at San Damiano Retreat Center I will don my cowl for Mass where I have the great joy of reading this Lection for the celebration of Franciscan Sister Susan Blomstad's 50th Jubilee. Susan was Vicar for Religious and/or Director of Vocations for the Diocese of Oakland in the first years of the mutual discernment process related to my becoming a c 603 hermit (@1985-1990); later (@ 2006) -- though living and working in another diocese --- she added her recommendation those of Oakland's Vicars re: my admission to perpetual profession and consecration as a Diocesan Hermit of the Diocese of Oakland (Sept 2007).

Today we are friends and share a number of other significant dates, interests, and pieces of background (including Saint Francis and Franciscanism). Not surprisingly we both know the challenges and consolations of the desert and the ways God lovingly weaves and reweaves the threads of our lives into something at once mysterious and miraculous. I hope you will all keep Sister Susan (and the other Jubilarians) in your prayers and thank God for their lives and commitment!

Driven into the Desert by the Spirit of Sonship (Reprise)

I really love today's Gospel, especially at the beginning of Lent. The thing that strikes me most about it is that Jesus' 40 days in the desert are days spent coming to terms with and consolidating the identity which has just been announced and brought to be in him. (When God speaks, the things he says become events, momentous things that really happen in space and time, and so too with the announcement that Jesus is his beloved Son in whom he is well-pleased.) Subsequently, Jesus is driven into the desert by the Spirit of love, the Spirit of Sonship, to explore that identity, to allow it to define him in space and time more and more exhaustively, to allow it to become the whole of who he is. One of the purposes of Lent is to provide the "space" and time  needed to  allow us to do the same.

A Sister friend I go to coffee with on Sundays remarked on the way from Mass that she had had a conversation with her spiritual director this last week where he noted that perhaps Jesus' post-baptismal time in the desert was a time for him to savor the experience he had had at his baptism. It was a wonderful comment that took my own sense of this passage in a new and deeper direction. Because of the struggle involved in the passage I had never thought to use the word savor in the same context, but as my friend rightly pointed out, the two often go together in our spiritual lives. They certainly do so in hermitages! My own director had asked me to do something similar when we met this last week by suggesting I consider going back to all those pivotal moments of my life which have brought me to the silence of solitude as the vocation and gift of my life. Essentially she was asking me not only to consider these intellectually (though she was doing that too) but to savor them anew and in this savoring to come to an even greater consolidation of my identity in God and as diocesan hermit.

Hermitages are places which reprise the same experience of consolidation and integration of our identity in God. They are deserts in which we come not only to learn who we are in terms of God alone, but to allow that to define our entire existence really and concretely -- in what we value, how we behave, in the choices we make, and those with whom we identify, etc. In the "In Good Faith" podcast I did a few years ago for A Nun's Life, I noted that for me the choice which is fundamental to all of Lent and all of the spiritual life, "Choose Life, not death" is the choice between accepting and living my life according to the way God defines me or according to the way the "world" defines me. It means that no matter how poor, inadequate, ill, and so forth I also am, I choose to make God's announcement that in Christ  I am his beloved daughter in whom he is well-pleased the central truth of my life which colors and grounds everything else. Learning to live from that definition (and so, from the one who announces it) is the task of the hermit; the hermitage is the place to which the Spirit of love and Sonship*** drive us so that we can savor the truth of this incomprehensible mystery even as we struggle to allow it to become the whole of who we are.

But hermitages are, of course, not the only places which reprise these dynamics. Each of us has been baptized, and in each of our baptisms what was announced to us was the fact that we were now God's adopted beloved daughters and sons. Lent gives us the space and time where we can focus on the truth of this, claim that truth more whole-heartedly, and, as Thomas Merton once said, "get rid of any impersonation that has followed us" to the [desert]. We need to take time to identify and struggle with the falsenesses within us, but also to accept and appreciate the more profound truth of who we are and who we are called to become in savoring our experiences of God's love. As we fast in various ways, we must be sure to also taste and smell as completely as we can the nourishing Word of God's love for us. After all, the act of savoring is the truest counterpart of fasting for the Christian. The Word we are called to savor is the Word which defines us as valued and valuable in ways the world cannot imagine and nourishes us where the things of the world cannot. It is this Word we are called both to struggle with and to savor during these 40 days, just as Jesus himself did.

Thus, as I fast this Lent (in whatever ways that means), I am going to remember to allow myself not only to get in touch with my own deepest hungers and the hungers I share with all others (another very good reason to fast), but also to get in touch anew with the ways I have been fed and nourished throughout my life --- the experiences I need to savor as well. Perhaps then when Lent comes to an end I will be better able to claim and celebrate the one I am in God. My prayer is that each of us is able to do something similar with our own time in the desert.

_______________________________
Merton quotation taken from Contemplation in a World of Action, "Christian Solitude," p 244.

*** A reminder that whether we are daughters or sons of God, our adoption by God gives us a share in Jesus' Sonship. Our own daughterhood or sonship is derivative in nature; that is, it derives from  Jesus' Sonship. Thus I speak of the Spirit of Sonship, not because I am insensitive to the issues of patriarchy or inclusive language, but because my usage here is essentially and primarily Christological.

Creation of Adam, Chartres: Image of the Desert Vocation to New Creation (Reprise)

 A friend returned from a trip to France (etc.) with about 32 other Dominicans from various congregations and brought me a picture of this statuary from Chartres Cathedral. It is a favorite of hers and is called God Creates Adam; it is a small piece, only about a foot and a half or two feet high and is located on a Northern portal to the cathedral.

While I had never seen it before, I loved it instantly. It recalls for me so many prayer times when I had the sense of having God's entire attention or of being held securely and loved into wholeness. It speaks to me of the place of God in each of our lives --- even when we fail to realize how inextricably wed our lives are with one another. There is an amazing combination of strength and gentleness, quiet joy and determination, as well as dependence and independence here. God looks completely sure of himself and quietly pleased. Adam --- who looks neither male nor female to me --- looks content and at peace.

I hear an invitation here: "Give yourself over to me; let me make you my very own creation, my very own image and counterpart! Let me truly make you what you are!" --- as God reminds me of the dignity and nature of my original creation and all the potential it holds. There have been times I have not known or remembered that God's creative presence was at work in me calling into existence, healing, molding, shaping, and summoning me into the absolute future of God's own life; there were times when I thought all potential had been spent or was lost forever. Yet I know very well now that this is an image of every day of my life as well as a picture of  the covenant reality I am most truly meant to let myself become. For me it is a wonderful image!!