Married Diocesan Hermits?

[[ Dear Sister, Recently I read a book on "contemporary eremitical life" and it mentioned the existence of married hermits several times. I also heard of a married couple who are seeking to become canonical or diocesan hermits according to Canon 603. Is this possible? Hermits can live in communities, so presumably they could be married.]]

There is a recent new book out on contemporary hermit life which does this, yes. I read it in July. The problem however is that the book, which is quite good in some ways and problematical in others -- especially the following -- relies mainly on anecdotal descriptions taken from a survey of many who are self-described lay hermits. It therefore does not address or really attend to the theology of either marriage or eremitical life and how these apply to the notion of married hermits per se. The book is descriptive of any number of people who consider themselves hermits, but it is not always adequately prescriptive (normative) of eremitical life or indicative of what it entails or disallows. In my estimation, it especially fails in regard to the notion of "married hermits". Thus, while some married couples may consider themselves hermits I think that serious questions about eremitical solitude in particular, not to mention those around eremitical poverty, and chastity (celibacy or continence), have to be raised and adequately answered before lay persons in such circumstances can be called lay hermits. The situation is even more dificult with the second situation you describe because here there is a couple, both of whom are seeking to become consecrated or diocesan hermits.

It is my own opinion that married couples cannot live the same kind of solitude hermits are called to live. They are one flesh and they come to God together through their marriage, not in the way a hermit actually does. This means that even if they build in a good deal of physical solitude, they remain sacramentally ONE with each other, and because of this, they simply cannot live the kind of inner solitude, much less the silence of solitude a hermit must come to live, cultivate and witness to. It is hard for me to describe this, but an example from this Summer's retreat might help you to see what I am trying to convey.

A Desert Day and a Gesture of Affection from One's Spouse

During the latter part of the week we had a desert day, just as would happen in a monastic setting. Everyone went off for more solitude during the majority of the day and returned to celebrate Vespers and dinner together in silence. As we gathered there were a number of nods and smiles to one another, but one couple took each other's hand as they approached the refectory and the wife rested her head on her husband's shoulder very briefly. No one broke the silence, but it was very clear to me that despite the fact the these two (a truly lovely couple!) had spent their day physically apart from one another and in prayer, etc, their solitude was of a different quality than mine or others there who were unmarried -- much less than that of professed hermits, monks, or nuns. No one broke silence, but the silence of solitude (more about this below) was another matter.

Now let me be clear. This is AS IT SHOULD BE, and the brief physical gesture was apropriate and lovely to see. It was touching and inspiring. I doubt anyone who attends this retreat regularly does not feel blessed by this couple's love for one another. But, were they to start calling themselves hermits because of a certain degree of physical solitude built into their lives together, I think they would be deluding themselves and forgetting the experience of solitude which is characteristic of genuine hermits and how it differs from their own, even if those hermits exist in community. Consider, for instance, the import of the brief physical gesture I mentioned. Wasn't it the reestablishment or confirmation of a profound and sacramental link that exists all the time? Isn't it likely to have mirrored the gestures offered one another as they went their separate ways on this desert day? Both persons have profound prayer lives, I have absolutely no doubt of that, but despite its depth and the existential aloneness with God they may each find in that prayer, they do not go to prayer --- or anywhere else --- truly alone really unless the marriage fails in some critical way. With whom does a solitary or religious hermit share such a bond? God alone.

Solitude is a state of Communion and for the hermit it is a state of communion with God alone. This does not mean that the hermit does not carry others (often MANY others) in her heart within her solitude, but it does mean that she approaches this relationship without the bond (or the comfort of that bond) which married persons have. If prayer is, at times, marked not only by peace but by darkness or loneliness (something which can happen despite a continuing knowledge that God is there) or longing for a physical touch or an audible word, there is simply no way such a hermit can mitigate or soften this by remembering or looking forward to her later time with her husband --- at a mutual meal or when both come together and greet and share with each other after their own prayer periods, for instance. No, this Communion is sometimes marked by such darkness, etc and it calls for even greater faith and trust, and -- paradoxically -- greater physical solitude. Further, for the hermit there is no sharing of this prayer as there might be for married persons who come together after such a period. One moves from the prayer period to (perhaps) a silent meal fixed for oneself alone and shares even the darkness and loneliness (and all else that is in one's heart) with the One whose silent presence both comforts and sometimes exacerbates that darkness and loneliness. This is part of the meaning of Canon 603's phrase, "the silence of solitude" which is foundational to the eremitical life. It is far more profound and disturbing at times than simply refraining from turning on some music or filling the silence with some other distracting noise.

Eremitical Loneliness is the Loneliness of  Communion

It is also really important to realize that I am not describing some terrible or malignant loneliness here. Instead I am describing an aspect of communion and eremitical solitude itself, a dimension of the relationship with a transcendent God for one who still lives apart from him in many ways and gradually grows closer and closer even in and through such periods. Eremitical solitude includes darkness and loneliness not only because of yearnings for touch or audible communication, but because there is a longing for greater communion with God as well. Since God is the one the hermit is vowed to love as she would someone in marriage, and because she does indeed love others only THROUGH this love, even moments of darkness and loneliness are expressions of a call to ever greater Communion with God and ever greater solitude (and the silence of same) --- sometimes to the point of actual reclusion. Though their love and commitment are wonderful things which open a world of life and family to one another, a married couple are constrained by their commitment to one another and the demands of sexual/marital love from responding to or realizing this natural and inner dynamism of the solitary eremitical life.

Mission Impossible: A Couple Seeking Profession Under Canon 603

Regarding your second question, and the couple who were each seeking to become diocesan hermits, one must take all that I have just said and add to that the obstacles existing because Canon 603 eremitical life is an ecclesial vocation which must be carefully discerned by both individual and church over a relatively long period of time. Significantly it also involves public profession of the evangelical counsels (poverty, chastity or consecrated celibacy, obedience) BECAUSE it is one way of achieving admission to the consecrated state.

Let's start with this last element: admission to the consecrated state. The consecrated state is, by definition, characterized by consecrated celibacy. It celebrates a life of celibate love, NOT a life of sexual love and, as just mentioned, married love is ALWAYS a celebration of sexual love, even if the couple no longer has sexual intercourse; married love recalls this ultimate expression of total self-gift, is always an extension of it, always tends towards and anticipates it. While in the not-so recent past some persons were allowed to live as sister and brother (or to leave a marriage for religious life of some sort), this generally occurred during a period when the nature of married love was simply not so highly esteemed as it is today. Married life is a consecration of a life of this kind of love. In terms of church teaching and theology, it is mutually exclusive with admission to the consecrated state marked by celibate love. Today the Church does not encourage married couples to forego the highest gift and expression of the married state to live together as sister and brother; similarly, she does not admit married persons to profession and consecration under canon 603. Instead marriage --- even one marked by divorce but not annulled --- is ordinarily considered an impediment to such consecration just as it would ordinarily be an impediment to another marriage.

But this aside for the moment (and the vows of poverty and obedience as well!), consider the difficulties of a married couple trying to both become diocesan hermits. The discernment process is individual AND ECCLESIAL meaning the individual him/herself alone does not discern such a vocation. There is simply no way the Church can automatically admit both (or either) to profession and consecration on the basis of them announcing what is in their hearts. It is not, after all, a package deal. How would the church even begin to openly discern one spouse's vocation while the other spouse goes through a separate and equally honest (and often lengthy) discernment process --- either of which may end in the individual's determination as unsuited to or simply not called to this vocation? Does one spouse (or both) say to their diocese -- even implicitly -- "Don't consider professing me unless you agree to profess my spouse"? And yet, in coming to a diocese as they have, this is actually one message they probably DO give. Or, could a diocese admit one to temporary or even perpetual vows while making the other wait another several years or even eventually finding the other unsuited to such vows? No, it is a completely unworkable situation and I admit I don't see how any diocese would even begin to consider it precisely because neither person is truly solitary or free to discern the matter alone (individually) with the Church. Once we add back in the definition of the consecrated state or the content of the vows themselves and consider the church's responsibility with regard to sacramental marriages the whole notion becomes completely impossible.

I personally wonder what motivates the couple you mention or why they would seek such profession and consecration. They have their marriage vows and consecration. They are already called to this by God and it is a critically important and worthy vocation. Married people need to realize this and also realize that they are called to come to God together in the married state, through married love. If this means building in more physical solitude at some point, then they should do this, but not because they are called to be hermits. While every couple is called to prayer and penance, they are NOT called to the silence of solitude in an eremitical sense, or to celibacy, etc. And yet, these things DEFINE the hermit, whether lay or consecrated and whether the hermit is a solitary one or lives in community.

Questions On Stricter Separation from the World

I received the following questions by email and have decided to answer the followup ones here. The initial exchange is also included to provide context.

[[I have read a little on your website and I am curious about your interpretation of "stricter separation" in Canon 603. There is a lot of discussion among eremites as well as non eremites. Do you feel that the concept of what one might call "traditional eremitic life" is not possible to live in this century in terms of stricter separation? Just questions that have cropped up over time.]]

I am afraid, you will need to define your terms better for me to answer you. . . . What is "traditional stricter separation" to your mind? I find the term actually has had many legitimate variations and degrees over the centuries, so if you have a particular idea you need to spell that out. I believe that eremitical life is completely possible in most of its traditional forms (Stylites is one form that is probably less possible or even desirable today though certain ecoactivists still embrace it in order to save stands of trees), however, the way one defines "world" in the phrase "stricter separation from the world" is, as it was in the day and counsel of St Isaac of Nineveh, something that requires definition, otherwise, we will actually misunderstand the nature of eremitical life, including completely reclusive eremitical life --- and note that while the Canon can include reclusion, it does not need to mean this. What it DOES mean has to be determined by the individual hermit, her Bishop, director, delegate, and the Holy Spirit. This is where it becomes important to know the legitimate variations in the way eremitical silence and solitude has been lived out through the last 19 centuries in particular.

[[ What I am asking is how does one understand the mind of the church when it comes to the term "stricter separation as used in Canon 603. Can one live that "stricter separation" as understood by the church in the 21st Century. Somehow one's own interpretation of this canon law can reflect a great deal of confusion as to what eremitic life is about as understood through the centuries. Do Bishops and those whose counsel they would seek (to determine a candidate for this life) truly understand the vocation as understood in the mind of the church? For instance, if a bishop were to seek the counsel of a religious of the diocese regarding the rule and plan of life. Let us say one who does not understand what the mind of the church is in this regard - then the rule and plan of life might be accepted based on the necessary canonical wording, but not necessarily the charism of the life. We have in our diocese a sister hermit who basically promised to live the life and was received by the Bishop with no rule or plan of life, which is the second part of the canon. Eremitic life as experienced through the centuries and I speak of solitaries, not
lauras, seems to be more specific in terms of its tradition than what I see in this day and time. Hence the question.]]

First, remember that Canon 603 is only 25 years old. It was included in the Revised Code of Canon Law in October 1983 and had never been part of any previous code. (In fact, the eremitical life per se was never included in the Code as far as I know. Eremitical life, if it was provided for at all, was provided for in proper law, that is, in the Rule and Constitutions of individual orders and Congregations). The point here is that we are not speaking about a canon which may have become anachronistic over time therefore, but something meant to accommodate the experience of the church precisely as she neared the 21st century and sought to provide for hermits in contemporary terms. As far as the mind of the Church goes, it is up to the Bishops, canonists, hermits themselves and their directors all listening to the Holy Spirit to determine together what stricter separation from the world will and will not mean in each case. There is no single established meaning although there are certainly recognized parameters which excludes part-time or casual eremitism. Bishops are primarily responsible for discerning the presence of such vocations in their dioceses. Had the Church as a whole meant absolute reclusion, she would have said so in the canon. However, she did not.

Instead she used a relative term, "stricter separation" rather than "strict separation" or "absolute separation" and again, she is guided by the entire history of eremitical and monastic life in her understanding of this. Had she envisioned such a vocation for those who were not required to work at all to sustain themselves, she would have said so, and made provisions for the church supporting her hermits. And of course, she has done neither. In any case, in this matter, one understands the mind of the church precisely by listening to her Bishops. After all, it is significant that the responsibility for discernment of new forms of consecrated life (C 605) is placed directly in the hands of Bishops and immediately following both Canons 603 and 604, which were included in Canon law only for the first time in 1983. THIS is the mind of the Church on this matter and I suspect most Bishops meet their responsibility well.

As for canonical wording, there is, so far as I know, no fixed canonical wording required for a hermit's Rule. (There are fixed elements for the vow formulae but even then the candidate writes her own vows and this is a different matter.) Yes, canonists pass on the document to be sure it meets certain standards, but a number of others (Vicars, vocation directors, spiritual directors, priors and prioresses, etc) do the same and it is a completely individual document. No one gives the candidate a list of formulae to include or even a list of elements which should be addressed. Because of this, and especially because the Rule is so completely individual, the rule can be used to primarily guide discernment of the vocation. The Bishop's approval is the final and incredibly important step in a rather long process of discernment and evaluation, and the least part of that is vetting the Rule for canonical muster. Far more important is the Rule's capacity to reflect and nurture the nature and quality of the person's eremitical life. Thus, it is possbile for a Rule to be judged acceptable for purposes of the Canon at the same time a candidate is not admitted to profession. The contrary is also true. While Vicars, et al, meet and generally speak regularly with the candidate after she has become a serious candidate, it is the Rule itself which ordinarily serves as a definitive element in discernment.

Again, the charism of eremitical life can be reflected and lived out in a variety of ways. This has been true throughout the history of the Church and it remains so now. As I noted in my earlier response, the eremitical tradition is quite varied and that includes, but is not limited to solitary hermits. St Romuald would be a good example of this. The same is true of St Francis, as well as of hermits who became Popes, etc. etc. The hermit vocation has never been a one size fits all kind of thing eventhough the broad strokes are the same. There are standards for physical solitude without which a person will not even be considered a serious candidate, but what true eremitical solitude consists in, again, Bishops themselves determine by speaking to other Bishops re their own experience in the matter, to established (canonical) Congregations like the Camaldolese, diocesan hermits and their delegates, as well as by steeping themselves in the history of eremitical life in the past and present. Solitude is also a matter of the heart, and how a hermit defines "stricter separation" will be apt to change and develop over time based on what is required for the individual to maintain THIS solitude. Remember that eremitical life is a living reality, hence Bishops will be careful but also open to forms which differ in small ways from others but which share the same broad strokes. Again though, it is up to Bishops to determine what is the mind of the Church in these matters. More strongly put, it is up to Bishops to establish the mind of the Church over time and with experience, for they are the ones seeing, discerning, and guiding these vocations. Rome's understanding of these matters will depend on her Bishops' experience and wisdom.

By the way, please be aware that asking a diocesan hermit about the possibility of living "traditional" stricter separation from the world according to the mind of the church is a lot like asking a consecrated virgin today if it is possible to live such a life of chaste espousal to Christ in the 21st century according to the mind of the church. I would bind myself to neither (consecrated celibacy nor stricter separation from the world) if I thought that either was impossible, or that I was not living according to the mind of the church, nor would any of the hermits I personally know. The obvious answer is "Of course it is possible! Hermits, including myself, are doing it as we speak." Again, this is why I asked you what you meant by "traditional stricter separation" from the world.

Finally, regarding the Sister in your Diocese, I personally have never heard of a Bishop simply disregarding the requirements of the Canon in the way you describe. It would astonish me if it were truly the case. The Canon binds BOTH hermit and her Bishop in a mutual relationship; it would be more than a bit empty if there were no Rule guiding BOTH of them in this enterprise. Now, if the Sister is living as a hermit but NOT under Canon 603 it would be another form of eremitical story. (The Church recognizes both non-canonical and canonical hermits as valid forms of the life; only the latter requires a Rule which is approved by the person's Bishop. That said, to my mind, only an idiot would try to live such a life WITHOUT any Rule at all. That is begging for trouble.) With regard to the general situation you describe, there are other possibilities as well. For instance, this Sister could have been professed in community and be living as a hermit now while remaining part of her community or even transitioning to profession as a SOLITARY hermit under canon 603. Further, if she has been accepted as a candidate for eventual profession under Canon 603 but not yet written a Rule it would be a different and more understandable matter. There are a number of possibilities here which completely respect the provisions and requirements of the canon. Without more information it would be imprudent at best to criticize your Bishop in this regard.

Are you allowed to. . .?

More questions arrived in my email box, and I am glad people are making use of that, especially since I do not have comments in this blog. The question is pretty typical and I hear it from others occasionally so it is a good one, especially because it also gives me a chance to think a little more about the unique charism of the diocesan hermit. I have spoken of this before in terms of expectations (that is, people necessarily have a right to certain expectations of a canonical hermit), but I might well have reflected more directly on the idea of unique charism in terms of relationships. The following question allowed me to do a little of that:

[[Do you attend daily Mass? Weekly Mass? If so, do you communicate with people while you are there? Are you allowed to speak to others? Is the hiddenness of your life disrupted by these encounters with people?]]

Yes, I generally attend daily Mass (though I also have Eucharist reserved in the hermitage for a Communion service when that is not possible, along with doing daily adoration, etc), and usually I attend the Sunday vigil Mass and one Mass on Sunday mornings as well. Recently the Bishop came to our parish to confirm 50 young adults and I attended that too; I was present early enough to casually assist the emcee and others in small ways (the same emcee who helped orchestrate my perpetual profession in September) and served as EEM as well.(It was good to have a chance to meet Deacon Bothe again since I was hardly aware of all he did during the profession rite; we shared a big hug and some laughs, so that was all very nice and vastly different from the formality of the profession rite.) The point is, of course, I choose which events I will participate in in the parish, but yes, I am active there and communicate variously on a number of different levels!

I have to laugh about the questions regarding being allowed to speak to people, etc. The question that raises for me is, "How in the world could I be said to be loving or engaging in genuine liturgy if I refused to do so?" Yes, I am a hermit, but when I am in a communal setting I act as part of the community --- that is also part of who I am, and part of the witness to the fruit of solitude. (Can you imagine a grumpy or distant hermit who comes to Mass but refuses to speak to anyone because s/he is too taken up "in Christ"? Chances are more likely s/he is missing the Christ who stands in front of him/her needing to talk or calling for a normal greeting!) But no, I do not have a vow of silence. I am vowed to celibate love, and for me at least, love in this situation means (or, rather, includes!) active, attentive, and compassionate participation in the community.

Now, I do a few things to be sure that time is bracketed by silence and solitude. Office (Vigils and Lauds) and silent prayer precede Mass, and at daily Mass I generally serve as sacristan and I find that puttering around getting everything ready before anyone arrives is a wonderful way to prepare myself AND the chapel while maintaining silence and solitude. Also, I tend to be early enough many mornings to be able to sing Lauds there rather than at home. And, if I am praying quietly and am wishing for a few more minutes of solitude, I will have my hood up and people know not to interrupt me at those times --- though they can certainly visit with one another still! (As soon as the hood is down things change completely and it is time for catching up on the news, finding out who needs prayers, sharing my own needs, etc).

I also serve as EEM sometimes, and have even served Mass --- though I am just learning how to do this. After Sunday Mass the parish has either doughnuts and coffee or (once a month) a pancake breakfast and I participate in these events and times. Having breakfast or coffee with people I would not otherwise see, catching up on their news, family, concerns (to a limited extent at these times), activities, etc is important to me and to who I am as a diocesan hermit. What I mean by that is that my profession as a diocesan hermit sets up particular relationships which partly define who I am to be. During profession I was called forth in the name of the local church of the Diocese of Oakland AND the faith community of St Perpetua. My vocation is a call by God, yes, but it is mediated to me by these communities, and my response, though a response to God, is also a response to and for these communities --- these people. So, while my response is most often the prayer and love that happens in silence and solitude, it is nourished and renewed as I come to know and love the people who make up this community, just as through my presence it nourishes and renews them too.

So, far from disrupting my solitude then, these contacts GENERALLY serve to enrich and invigorate it. Silence and solitude is lived for them to some extent and these are always conditioned by them. That is, they are always present in my heart and held before God even when prayer seems to be a matter of "just me and God." But your question is a very good one and I absolutely have to take care with the things I do outside the hermitage --- and I do. My point is first, that these things may enrich as easily as distract, and secondly, that these things may be demanded by the vocation itself --- so in all things one must pay attention to not only to one's Rule of Life, or to the eremitic tradition as lived throughout the centuries, but to the state of one's heart and mind where God's will is also heard --- and of course, act accordingly!

I hope this answers your questions. Thanks for sending them! Please feel free to get back to me if something is unclear or needs elaboration.

True and False Solitude/Solitaries

Recently a neighbor asked me some questions about the significance of my perpetual profession. She wondered what it meant, what would be different, what does it do? I started with the most basic ideas. Did she know what a hermit was? She responded, "Yes, it is someone who hides. . ." and then her statement sort of broke off, as if she realized how unflattering to me that definition must be!

And yet isn't my neighbor's idea pretty common? Isn't it true that even among hermits or those wanting to become religious hermits, there are strange ideas of what constitutes genuine solitude? Isn't there a sense sometimes that hermits embrace silence and solitude because they cannot and do not relate well to others? Isn't there a strong popular sense that hermits do not have close friends? That affirming that God alone is sufficient for us means we can dispense with the demands of social interaction, and beyond that, of deep friendship? Now let me be clear, reclusion is a unique vocation, and I am not referring to it here (though ordinarily authentic reclusion involves profound relationships and deep friendships too). I am talking about the genuine solitude of most hermits, a solitude whose heart is communion with God, and therefore, a solitude which spills over and finds another whole dimension of itself in relationships with others, and beyond that with the whole of God's creation.

Thomas Merton wrote about true versus false solitude and solitaries. For instance, he noted: [[“[the false solitary’s] solitude is imaginary … the false solitary is one who is able to imagine himself without companions while in reality he remains just as dependent on society as before – if not more dependent. He needs society as a ventriloquist needs a dummy. He projects his own voice and it comes back to him admiring, approving, opposing or at least adverting to his own separateness.”. . . “The true solitary does not renounce anything that is basic and human about his relationship to other men. He is deeply united to them – all the more deeply because he is no longer entranced by marginal concerns.”

One of the things that has become clearer and clearer to me as I live in solitude is just how much LIKE others I really am, and above all, how deeply related to them. This is true whether I am speaking about members of my parish, members of the orchestra I play violin in, clients, family, friends, etc. My vocation is unique but I am not. My circumstances are pretty common: a life marked and marred by illness, ordinary successes, some spectacular failures (some I am still coming to terms with and still feel embarrassment over), dreams yearning for fulfillment, a strong need to share what I have been given, etc. I spend a lot of time in silence and solitude, in contemplative prayer and study, and there is no doubt that I enjoy it and am sometimes tempted to use it as a way to withdraw defensively. But most of the time, so long as my life is profoundly prayerful, I do it because it allows me to be truly related in healthy ways with others, not to hide from those relationships. The hermit dwells in the heart of God, and the heart of God is a pretty populated place!!

[[The true solitary is not called to an illusion, to the contemplation of himself as a solitary. He is called to the nakedness and hunger of a more primitive and honest condition.”]]

Many things drive us to solitude and the notion of "hermitage", not all of them, or even most of them, necessarily positive. The immediate tendency when in physical solitude is to focus on self. One may be enamored of the IDEA of being a hermit, or even of the ROLE one is trying to assume instead of the person one actually is (not to mention the God who resides in one's heart). If one writes about eremitic life (or tries to do so!) this writing may simply be a not-so-veiled exercise in navel gazing and either self pity or self-aggrandizement. One could, conceiveably, justify many failures on many levels by considering oneself a hermit: social failures, emotional immaturity and the failure to achieve individuation, etc. Such a person might say to themselves, "Hermits don't have deep friendships!" "Hermits don't have to interact with the business/academic/ecclesial or other worlds; a hermit afterall, is 'dead to the world'", or again, "It is fine to rest in my suffering or to refuse to care appropriately for one's physical state, etc, because this is a form of 'mortification' in which I as victim participate in the redeeming suffering of Christ!", "God wills such suffering in my life," etc. Nevermind that such spiritualities are inherently dangerous and often the refuge of the deluded, or that their underlying theology is often bankrupt and a serious distortion of Christian theology.

But in an authentically DIVINE vocation to eremitic life, one will not indulge such pretense. If one has been brought to the desert by circumstances which are traumatic or negative and result in defense mechanisms which are destructive, in a genuine vocation, these will gradually be transfigured and transmuted into something far more positive and healthy. Religious language can be used to cover a plethora of sins: the inability to relate to others or reality can become a prohibition on particular friendships and allusions to dying to the world; a sense of victimization which casts the rest of the world in the role of perpetrators, can be recast and apparently (but not really) legitimized through the pious language of "victim souls" and "reparative suffering", one's own inner demons and need for either good spiritual direction or psychological assistance and personal work can be avoided, externalized, and superficially legitimated by calling our emotional states and defenses "attacks by the devil which God wills"

The hermitage is part sanctuary, part crucible, part battle ground, and part therapy space. No one comes to the desert for completely pure motives. We are all ambivalent. We are all complex and ambiguous mixtures of worthy and unworthy motives because at bottom we remain imago dei who are also sinners. At some point, in the authentic eremitic vocation though, the unworthy motives are worked through and discarded, while the worthy ones are purified and enhanced. If, once upon a time, our solitude, to whatever extent, was an escape and prison, it will become the doorway to engagement or communion and real freedom. If the subject of our meditations was ourselves AS SOLITARIES, our meditations will change and become those of a profoundly related solitary interested in and compassionate for others, and committed to God and God's OWN world of people --- with their problems AND possibilities.

Merton once pointed out that the person who went off into solitude also held a mirror up to themselves, and they would come away from that encounter either completely self-centered and insane, or other-centered and whole/holy (I admit this is a bad paraphrase, but it has been a number of years since I read this, and I would need to look up the exact statement to reprise it better; apologies to Merton). Either the things that pursued us into the desert will, with the grace of God, be met and transformed and transcended, or they will continue to define us, no matter what religious jargon we use to try to hide or "describe" the fact. Discernment of an eremitic vocation is not always easy, and when there are elements of a true vocation mixed with so much that is false, the job is always to move from inauthentic to authentic vocation, from false solitude to true solitude, from isolation and self-centeredness to a profound and compassionate relatedness established in the heart of God and spilling over into the rest of one's more tangible world.