Following up on the Hiddenness of the Eremitical Life

[[ Dear Sister, what you wrote in your last post about the hiddenness of the hermit vocation was very striking to me. Is this a new position or the intensification of one you had come to before?]]

Thanks for writing. The position is a deepening of something I have known for a while now. It looks like I began writing about hiddenness with a post in 2008 on essential hiddenness and a call to extraordinary ordinariness and followed that up with others. I began to focus on hiddenness again around August of 2014 and wrote on the difference between the value and the utility of eremitical life. I put up several posts in the Summer of 2015 so I am going to repost one of those below. All of this recent work, and some of the earlier stuff, comes from the coincidence of questions regarding anonymity, accountability, and my own continuing inner work --- what my Director might refer to as the deepening of one's participation or sharing in the Mystery of love and life ---that is, the Mystery at the heart of reality we call God.

Witnessing to the God who Saves:

[[Sister Laurel, when you write, "in every person's life God works silently in incredible hiddenness," I wonder. Is this what the followers of Francis de Sales mean by "interiority?" I spoke with [a Sister friend] a few months ago - and she asked me "How is that interiority coming?" I didn't know how to answer her, but I thought it might be something like this.]] (There were other questions included in this email about the distinction between being the gift and using gifts. Some reflected on the idea of merely being present to others and being gift in that way. I focus on those here as well.)

 

While it is true I am saying the hermit is a gift simply in being present to others, I am saying more than that as well because quite often (in fact, most of the time) a hermit is present to no one but God. Before you go out and do, before you are present to or for others in any way at all, and even if you never go out to others, I am saying that God is at work in you healing and sanctifying. That, as I understand it,  is the witness of the hermit life. That is its special gift or charism.  We say this with our lives; whether we ever speak to a living soul, pray for another person or not (though of course we will pray for others), whether we ever write another word, or paint another picture, or use our individual gifts in any way at all, we witness to the Gospel  and to the God who makes us whole and holy simply by being ourselves as redeemed.

Extending this to you and all others it means that should you (or they) never take another person shopping, never make another person smile, never use the gift you are in any way except to allow the God who is faithfulness itself to be faithful to you, THAT is the hiddenness and the gift I am mainly talking about. Yes, it involves the hiddenness of God at work in us but that is the very reason we ourselves are gift. We witness to the presence of God in the silence of solitude, in the darkness, in the depths of aloneness, etc. We do that by becoming whole, by becoming loving (something that requires an Other to love us and call us to love), by not going off the rails in solitude and by not becoming narcissists or unbalanced cynics merely turned in on self and dissipated in distraction. We do it by relating to God, that is, by allowing God to be God.

Cultivating this sense of God at work in us, emptying ourselves (or being stripped by circumstances and learning to see this as an incredible gift) so that we only witness to God, allowing ourselves to let go of anything but God as the source and validation of our lives is, I think at least, the heart of cultivating a sense of interiority. Interiority itself is our life of Communion with the God who is the creator, source, and ground of that same life. Its focus is God and includes his redemption of us, his healing, sanctification, and intimacy. When I wrote here before about developing a spirituality of discernment I was also writing about cultivating interiority. That is why resisting discernment while speaking constantly about “discerning” is actually a resistance to the development of interiority; if one cannot deal with one's feelings and all that is going on within them, then neither can one claim to be a discerning person with a healthy interiority.  If and to the extent one does not see the whole of reality from the perspective of the light and life of God, then to that extent one has not developed a genuine interiority. (I will have to ask my pastor about St Francis de Sales' own take on interiority! I simply don't know Francis well enough.) 

Most of us witness to all of this by using our gifts. Hermits (and especially recluses) do it by flourishing in an environment that really does say God alone is enough. In this environment the gifts we have possessed from birth and for whose development we have often spent time, money and effort in education and training may well be largely irrelevant. When I speak of us being the gift I mean that the hermit's very life and capacity for love says God is real, faithful, and an intimate, integral, and even inalienable part of our deepest reality. My eremitical life is not about me, my intelligence, my persistence (and stubbornness!), my creativity (or lack thereof), my musicality, or any other specific talents that may also be present. It is about God as source and ground, God as faithful lover, friend and sovereign, God as redeemer who will never let go of us but instead transfigures us so we truly image God. That is what makes my life a gift --- even, and maybe especially, when I do not touch anyone directly, even when I reject the role of "prayer warrior" (which seems to me to emphasize a kind of worldly perspective on the primacy of doing over being), even when chronic illness allows for no ministry at all but only my own hungry and even desperate openness to God in weakness and incapacity.

The church that professed and consecrated me under a new and largely unprecedented canon witnesses to this truth. The existence of canon 603 itself witnesses to this eremitical truth and describes the gift it represents under the heading “the silence of solitude”.  My bishop and delegate witness to this by coming to know me and the way God has worked in my life, as well as by professing me and continuing to allow me to live this life in the name of the Church. This witness to the providence of God at work in the silence of solitude is why canonical standing and the relationships established there in law are so vital. The church continues to esteem eremitical life as a pure, even starkly contemplative instance of the abundant sufficiency of God. God is the gift this life witnesses to precisely as it turns its back on --- or is stripped of --- every gift it otherwise ‘possesses’.  And of course, this is also why c 603 must not be misused or abused as a stopgap solution for those with no true eremitical vocation. To do so is, for instance, to risk honoring selfishness and spiritual mediocrity ("lukewarmness") or institutionalizing cowardice and misanthropy. The eremitical life is a generous one of giving oneself to God for the sake of others. But it is also rare to be graced or called to witness in this particular form of stripping and emptying (kenosis).

As I noted here recently, I once thought contemplative life and especially eremitic life was a waste and incredibly selfish. For those authentic hermits the Church professes and consecrates, and for those authentic lay hermits who live in a hiddenness only God can and does make sense of, the very thing that made this life look selfish to me is its gift or charism. It is the solitude of the hermit's life, the absence of others, and even her inability to minister actively to others or use her gifts that God transforms into an ultimate gift. Of course, in coming to understand this, it is terribly important that we see the "I" of the hermit as the "We" symbolized by the term "the silence of solitude". It is equally important that we never profess anyone who does not thrive as a human being in this particular environment. In other words, my life, I think, is meant to witness starkly and exclusively to the God who makes of an entirely impoverished "me" a sacramental "We" when I could do nothing at all but allow this to be done in me.

On Inner Work and becoming Transparent to God (Reprise with Introduction)

I got repeated questions this week on the inner work I speak of so I decided to put the following piece from not quite a year ago up again. Behind it is the approach to growth work known as PRH (Personality and human relationships). What is essential to PRH is the recognition that human beings are wounded in relationship, and heal and grow in the same way. While it may sound strange to hear a hermit participating in such inner or growth work given this focus, much less depending on it as a key to growing in the silence of solitude, eremitical hiddenness, etc., I assure you it is not! For more on this inner or growth work I speak of, please see other posts with the same labels as this post.  Anyway, on to the post:

Sister, when you write about stricter separation from the world does the inner work you have been doing have a place in it? As I read your last post entitled, "Why isn't it enough?" I thought I got, just for a moment, a glimpse of why that would be important not only so you could live as a hermit, but also as an integral part of the eremitical life. This glimpse came and went in a flash so I can't say more about what I mean but maybe you know just what I am trying to say here. I know you have been criticized by readers in the past for needing to do such work and that you wrote it was integral to your vocation. I think re-reading your last post helped me understand this a little better because I saw you, and myself, and everyone else as having been distorted by the world and needing to do the inner work you speak of to become more clearly ourselves. That was the glimpse I got while reading what you were saying. I don't know if this is something you could write about, but my question is do I have this right? Does the inner work you speak of allow you to become "transparent to God" (your phrase) as you become more truly yourself?

Thanks for your questions. Yes, I definitely think you got it!!! The post you referred to re criticism of my own engagement in what I call "inner work" is found here: On Justifying Inner Work and it contains other links to related articles. It was also prompted by my discovery that the inner work I had been doing for a couple of years at that point might have shown me I had made a mistake in my discernment of an eremitical vocation; instead, it affirmed this vocation again and again. And regarding your second question, YES!!! Absolutely, the inner work is part of what allows me to become transparent to God as I become more truly myself. This transparency to God is the very nature of what it means to be truly human, so the more truly human I become, the more transparent to God. 

We speak about this phenomenon of transparency in a number of ways. The main ones affirm us as imago dei, and incarnations of the Word of God -- especially to the extent we live in light of and through Christ!! I believe the story of Jesus' Transfiguration is a story of his (eventually!!) perceived transparency to God by the chosen disciples. Recently Sister Susan gave me a mirror medallion developed by Richard Rohr. I believe that this too reflected (no pun intended) the notion of becoming transparent to God. It also reminds us that others are, to varying degrees, also transparent to God. The side of the mirror medallion facing one's own heart/self has a symbol of the Trinity on it; it represents the gaze of God and the way God sees us at every moment; the side facing outward is a plain mirror reflecting everything as it is without distortion or judgment. Rohr had experienced the Trinity as a dynamic reality moving through him --- in and out. This experience developed into a practice of receiving beauty and breathing it back out to others. I recognize it as a symbol of transparency to God and to being the imago dei to others, one who sees as God sees and also one who is seen as God sees.

Transparency is something that happens, something we become as more and more we become persons who allow the presence of God to be mediated through and in us. Transparency is a means of revelation, but also of standing truly and honestly as our deepest selves. God seeks to reveal Godself at every moment and mood of our lives and in many ways, we occlude or distort that revelation. Part of all of that "occlusion" comes from our own woundedness and the resulting fear of allowing God (and sometimes, anyone at all) to love us and fill us with God's life and light. Sometimes we have lost so much in trying to be open and trust or love that we cling tightly to the superficial image of who we truly are, even when that "self" is but an echo of who we once were and a shadow of who we are truly called to be. Letting go to allow something so marked by newness, dynamism (change!!), and Mystery, is simply terrifying. And so, when people look at us, they mainly see echoes and shadows, scars, woundedness, and diminishment because that is all we feel free enough to allow ourselves to reveal.

Pope Francis Says Vespers with the
Camaldolese Nuns and Monks in Rome

Sometimes our failure to allow the transparency and revelation God yearns for with each of us comes from other forms of rigidity and arrogance. We believe we know who God is because we were taught about who God is in religion or theology classes. We take refuge in formulae and rituals which at least as easily distance us from the real God as they draw us closer. We have learned these things, sometimes with great effort, and we feel safe with them where the "living God" is more Mysterious and awesome (terrifying) even while he is also intriguing to us (mysterium tremendum et fascinans); they are therefore hard to let go of and can occlude the revelation of the living God we are meant to become. It is the "inner work" I have written about several times now that allows the necessary healing and strengthening of ourselves so that we can live from our deepest potential and love as we are meant to love.

Because God is the source of the potential I am speaking of, and we are the persons who are created as we listen to and respond to that source, we are never ourselves alone (except to the extent we are sinners or impaired by the sin that has touched us) because God is a constituent dimension of who we are. The more truly ourselves we become, the more clearly and truly present God becomes within us. We become more and more transparent to the God who is, as Tillich put the matter, the ground and source of our being. God is not alien to us, nor is God some sort of weird or supernatural parasite within us. When we speak of God dwelling within us, we are speaking of something that is most deeply and truly an essential or fundamental part of ourselves. We cannot be "us" (or even alive at all) without this presence and the opposite is also true: the more we become our truest selves, the clearer and stronger this presence within us becomes. We are truly ourselves, truly holy and truly human when people look at us and see God in everything we are and do. This is what revelation is about and it is what transparency is about. 

The inner work I and others do and that I write about here, allows this to be realized in our lives and all we touch!! It allows us to be healed of all of those forms of woundedness that cripple or otherwise limit us and it opens us to the deepest potential that is ours so that we can live from that for the sake of others. Once I thought of this work as something I could do and finish with so that I could live my vocation as I am called to do. Now I understand that this inner work is part of the "asceticism" or even "penance" that necessarily accompanies my prayer and is essential to my vocation. In other words, I will not finish it -- though I will move through different stages of this work at various times throughout my life; instead, I will continue doing it as a foundational practice because in conjunction with prayer, as you say, it is essential to my vocation and does indeed allow me to become transparent to God ---  which is the essence of eremitical hiddenness, and the goal of my call to holiness and creation as imago dei.

What Do You Like Most about Eremitical Life? (Updated)

I was asked the following question again this last week and rather than trying to answer it again and anew, I am reprising the original answer from 8 years ago and adding one more paragraph to update it. 

[[Hi Sister Laurel, I wondered if you could explain what you like best about the eremitical life? Since you don't do a lot of active ministry that would provide variety, I am assuming that is not a favorite part, so what is? Maybe this is not the best way to ask the question. I guess I am really wondering what part of your life is most enriching or what part you look forward to every day especially if every day is the same because of your schedule. I hope you can understand what I am asking here. Thank you.]]

Now that is a challenging question! It is not challenging because I don't know what I look forward to each day or really like, but because there is no one thing I like best. I guess saying that out loud gives me the key to answering your question then.  What I like best about eremitical life is the way I can relate to God and grow in, with, and through him in this vocation. This is also a way of saying I like the way this vocation allows me to serve the Church and world despite or even through the limitations I also experience. Each of the elements of my life helps in this and some days I like one thing more than another but still, that is because each one contributes to my encounter with God --- usually in the depths of my own heart --- in different ways, to different degrees, on different days.

So, on most days I love the silence and solitude and especially I love quiet prayer periods or more spontaneous times of contemplative prayer which intensify these and transform them into the silence of solitude --- where I simply rest in God's presence or, in the image I have used most recently, rest in God's gaze. It is here that I come to know myself as God knows me and thus am allowed to transcend the world's categories, questions, or judgments. Sometimes these periods are like the one prayer experience I have described here in the past. But whether or not this is true, these periods are ordinarily surprising, or at least never the same; they are transformative and re-creative even when it takes reflective time to realize that this has been happening.

Another thing that I do each day which is usually something I really love is Scripture, whether I do that as part of lectio or as a resource for study or writing. Engagement with Scripture is one of the "wildest rides" I can point to in my life. It is demanding, challenging, and often exhilarating. Sometimes it doesn't speak to me in any immediately dramatic way. But it works on my heart like water on something relatively impervious --- gradually, insistently, and inevitably. Other times, for instance when reading Jesus' parables or other's stories about Jesus, or even the theological reflection of John and Paul, I have the sense that I am being touched by a "living word" and brought into a different world or Kingdom in this way. It always draws me in more deeply and even when I have heard a story or passage thousands of times before something speaks to me on some level in a new way, leads to a new way of understanding reality, or shows me something I had never seen before.

A third piece of this life I love and look forward to is the writing I do. Some of this is specifically theological and there is no doubt that my grappling with Scripture is important for driving at least some of my writing. Whether the writing is the journaling I do for personal growth work, the blogging I do which, in its better moments is an exploration of canon 603 and its importance, a reflection on Scriptures I have been spending time with, or the pieces which can be labeled "spirituality," they tend to be articulations of what happens in prayer and in my own engagement with Christ. One topic I spend time on, of course, is reflection on the place of eremitical life under canon 603 in the life of the Church herself. Since I am especially interested in the possibility of treating chronic illness as a vocation to proclaim with one's life the Gospel of Jesus Christ with a special vividness, and since I have come to understand eremitical solitude as a communal or dialogical reality which is especially suited to the transfiguration of the isolation associated with chronic illness, etc, I write a lot about canon 603 and the solitary eremitical vocation.

A second area of theology I return to again and again is the theology of the Cross. I remember that when I first met with Archbishop (then Bishop) Allen Vigneron he asked me a conversation-starter kind of question about my favorite saint. I spoke about Saint Paul (wondering if perhaps I shouldn't have chosen someone who was not also an Apostle --- someone like St Benedict or St Romuald or St John of the Cross) and began to talk about his theology of the cross.  I explained that if I could spend the rest of my life trying to or coming to understand his theology of the cross I would be a happy camper. (I have always wondered what Archbishop Vigneron made of this unexpected answer!)

I saw incredible paradoxes and amazing beauty in the symmetries and strangely compelling asymmetries of the cross and I still discover dimensions I had not seen. Most recently one of these was the honor/shame dialectic and the paradox of the glory of God revealed in the deepest shame imaginable. I have written previously about God being found in the unexpected and even the unacceptable place. This paradox is a deepening of that insight. The Cross is the Event which reveals the source even as it functions as the criterion of all the theology we have that is truly capable of redeeming people's lives. It is the ultimate source of the recent theology I did on humility as being lifted up to be seen as God sees us beyond any notions of worthiness or unworthiness. My life as a hermit allows me to stay focused on the cross in innumerable ways, not only intellectually (reading and thinking about this theology), but personally, spiritually, and emotionally. That is an incredible gift which the Church --- via the person of Archbishop Vigneron and the Diocese of Oakland --- has given me in professing and consecrating me as a diocesan hermit.

There are other things I love about eremitical life (not least the limited but still significant (meaningful) presence and ministry in my parish (or in other dioceses and faith communities); today I continue to teach Scripture and it colors everything else I do, whether in cell or outside it); both teaching and spiritual direction (including work with candidates for c 603 profession) are also related in one way and another to the person I am in light of living contemplatively within the Divine dialogue I know as the silence of solitude. One of the things which is especially important to me is the freedom I have to live my life as I discern God wills (cf added paragraph below).

Whether I am sick or well, able to keep strictly to a schedule or not, I have the sense that I live this life by the grace of God and that God is present with me in all of the day's moments and moods. It doesn't matter so much if writing goes well or ill, if prayer seems profound or not, if the day is tedious or exciting, all of it is inspired, all of it is what I am called to and I am not alone in it. This means that it is meaningful and even that it glorifies God. I try to live it well, of course, and I both fail and succeed in that, but I suppose what I love best is that it is indeed what I am called to live in and through Christ. It is the way of life that allows me to most be myself in spite of the things that militate against that; moreover it is the thing which allows me to speak of my life in terms of a sense of mission.  The difficulty in pointing to any one thing I most like about eremitical life is that, even if in the short term they cause difficulty, struggle, tedium, etc., all of the things that constitute it make me profoundly happy and at peace. I think God is genuinely praised and glorified when this is true.

Sister Marietta Fahey, SHF

I want to add one more paragraph to this piece that was first published in 2015. On June 2nd, I begin the 8th year of a relatively intense kind of personal formation and growth work (PRH) with my Director. Spiritual direction was always important to me, but this particular kind of work was not. I resisted it and though it was written into my Rule because I recognized something of its importance, I struggled to value it appropriately. Today, I need to note that, for the purposes of living this life well and coming to love the work itself, a very big shift has taken place. I now associate the freedom of the eremitical life with the freedom to do and benefit from this kind of work. It is central to my vocation. Every day it is a means by which God works in my life to heal and strengthen, to challenge, console, and just generally to call me to wholeness and holiness in Christ. There is no other part of my life as a hermit that this work does not touch or qualify toward greater depth and maturity. It is part of my prayer, my penance, and is absolutely necessary for achieving the silence of solitude I recognize as the goal and charism of this life; daily it schools me to obedience, to becoming truly attentive and responsive in a contemplative key. It is central to my encounters with God and my own deepest Self every single day. Days on which I meet with my director are especially graced --- even when they are particularly difficult, painful, grief-filled or joy-filled and triumphant (and sometimes they are all of these during the same session)! All of this leads me more and more into the inner reality of the silence of solitude and the communal life of the Trinity that are the goal and gift of eremitical life.

I hope this gives you something of an answer to your question. I have kind of worked my way through to an actual answer --- from the individual pieces of the life that are most life-giving to me to the reasons this life as a whole is something I love. I hope I have managed to convey that even when the schedule is the same day to day, the content is never really the same because at the heart of it is a relationship with the living and inexhaustible God. Your question focuses on the absence of variety and in some ways, the absence of novelty (neos). But really there is always newness rooted in the deeper, qualitative newness (kainotes) of God and of who I am called to be in God.

To catch a glimpse of what I mean by that, imagine plunging into the ocean at different points within a large circle. The surface looks the same from point to point but the world one enters in each dive is vastly different and differently compelling from place to place. So, following the same daily horarium (schedule), I sit in the same chair (or use the same prayer bench/zafu) to pray; I work at the same desk day in and day out. I open the same book of Scriptures and often read the same stories again and again or pray the same psalms, and so forth. I rise at the same hour each day, pray at essentially the same times, eat the same meals at the same hours, wear the same habit and prayer garment, make the same gestures and generally do the same things day after day. There is variation when I am ill or need to leave the hermitage, but in the main, it is a life of routine and sometimes even tedium. What is important to remember is that the eremitical life is really about what happens below the surface as one is empowered to open oneself to God, and allow (him) to become God-With-Us, even as (he) makes of us a new Creation. This really is where the action is, so to speak! It is the reason the classic admonition of the Desert Fathers, "Dwell (remain) in your cell and your cell will teach you everything," can be true and the only reason "custody of the cell" is such a high value in eremitical life or stability of place such a similarly high value in monasticism.

More Questions on Inner Work and Becoming Transparent to God

Sister, when you write about stricter separation from the world does the inner work you have been doing have a place in it? As I read your last post entitled, "Why isn't it enough?" I thought I got, just for a moment, a glimpse of why that would be important not only so you could live as a hermit, but also as an integral part of the eremitical life. This glimpse came and went in a flash so I can't say more about what I mean but maybe you know just what I am trying to say here. I know you have been criticized by readers in the past for needing to do such work and that you wrote it was integral to your vocation. I think re-reading your last post helped me understand this a little better because I saw you, and myself, and everyone else as having been distorted by the world and needing to do the inner work you speak of to become more clearly ourselves. That was the glimpse I got while reading what you were saying. I don't know if this is something you could write about, but my question is do I have this right? Does the inner work you speak of allow you to become "transparent to God" (your phrase) as you become more truly yourself?

Thanks for your questions. Yes, I definitely think you got it!!! The post you referred to re criticism of my own engagement in what I call "inner work" is found here: On Justifying Inner Work and it contains other links to related articles. It was also prompted by my discovery that the inner work I had been doing for a couple of years at that point might have shown me I had made a mistake in my discernment of an eremitical vocation; instead it affirmed this vocation again and again. And regarding your second question, YES!!! Absolutely, the inner work is part of what allows me to become transparent to God as I become more truly myself. This transparency to God is the very nature of what it means to be truly human, so the more truly human I become, the more transparent to God. 

We speak about this phenomenon of transparency in a number of ways. The main ones affirm us as imago dei, and incarnations of the Word of God -- especially to the extent we live in light of and through Christ!! I believe the story of Jesus' Transfiguration is a story of his (eventually!!) perceived transparency to God by the chosen disciples. Recently Sister Susan gave me a mirror medallion developed by Richard Rohr. I believe that this too reflected (no pun intended) the notion of becoming transparent to God. It also reminds us that others are, to varying degrees, also transparent to God. The side of the mirror medallion facing one's own heart/self has a symbol of the Trinity on it; it represents the gaze of God and the way God sees us at every moment; the side facing outward is a plain mirror reflecting everything as it is without distortion or judgment. Rohr had experienced the Trinity as a dynamic reality moving through him --- in and out. This experience developed into a practice of receiving beauty and breathing it back out to others. I recognize it as a symbol of transparency to God and to being the imago dei to others, one who sees as God sees and also one who is seen as God sees.

Transparency is something that happens, something we become as more and more we become persons who allow the presence of God to be mediated through and in us. Transparency is a means of revelation, but also of standing truly and honestly as our deepest selves. God seeks to reveal Godself at every moment and mood of our lives and in many ways, we occlude or distort that revelation. Part of all of that "occlusion" comes from our own woundedness and the resulting fear of allowing God (and sometimes, anyone at all) to love us and fill us with God's life and light. Sometimes we have lost so much in trying to be open and trust or love that we cling tightly to the superficial image of who we truly are, even when that "self" is but an echo of who we once were and a shadow of who we are truly called to be. Letting go to allow something so marked by newness, dynamism (change!!), and Mystery, is simply terrifying. And so, when people look at us, they mainly see echoes and shadows, scars, woundedness, and diminishment because that is all we feel free enough to allow ourselves to reveal.

Pope Francis Says Vespers with the
Camaldolese Nuns and Monks in Rome

Sometimes our failure to allow the transparency and revelation God yearns for with each of us comes from other forms of rigidity and arrogance. We believe we know who God is because we were taught about who God is in religion or theology classes. We take refuge in formulae and rituals which at least as easily distance us from the real God as they draw us closer. We have learned these things, sometimes with great effort, and we feel safe with them where the "living God" is more Mysterious and awesome even while he is also intriguing to us (mysterium tremendum et fascinans); they are therefore hard to let go of and can occlude the revelation of the living God we are meant to become. It is the "inner work" I have written about several times now that allows the necessary healing and strengthening of ourselves so that we can live from our deepest potential and love as we are meant to love.

Because God is the source of the potential I am speaking of, and we are the persons who are created as we listen to and respond to that source. We are never ourselves alone (except to the extent we are sinners or impaired by the sin that has touched us) because God is a constituent dimension of who we are. The more truly ourselves we become, the more clearly and truly present God becomes within us. We become more and more transparent to the God who is, as Tillich put the matter, the ground and source of our being. God is not alien to us, nor is God some sort of weird or supernatural parasite within us. When we speak of God dwelling within us, we are speaking of something that is most deeply and truly an essential or fundamental part of ourselves. We cannot be "us" (or even alive at all) without this presence and the opposite is also true: the more we become our truest selves, the clearer and stronger this presence within us becomes. We are truly ourselves, truly holy and truly human when people look at us and see God in everything we are and do. This is what revelation is about and it is what transparency is about. 

The inner work I and others do and that I write about here, allows this to be realized in our lives and all we touch!! It allows us to be healed of all of those forms of woundedness that cripple or otherwise limit us and it opens us to the deepest potential that is ours so that we can live from that for the sake of others. Once I thought of this work as something I could do and finish with so that I could live my vocation as I am called to do. Now I understand that this inner work is part of the "asceticism" or even "penance" that necessarily accompanies my prayer and is essential to my vocation. In other words, I will not finish it -- though I will move through different stages of this work at various times throughout my life; instead, I will continue doing it as a foundational part of my life because in conjunction with prayer, as you say, it is essential to my vocation and does indeed allow me to become transparent to God ---  which is the very meaning of eremitical hiddenness, and the goal of my call to holiness and creation as imago dei.

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.

On working With God Towards Wholeness and Holiness

[[Dear Sister Laurel, you write a lot about working toward wholeness and holiness. I had always thought that holiness was something God gave us and so something we prayed for, like humility or other virtues. Can a person get to genuine holiness without working towards it themselves? Can't they just pray to God to make them holy, or humble, or courageous, or whatever?. It is not that I have gotten the impression that you are trying to make yourself holy, but I have read blogs by people who have a lack of this or that and pray that God will take care of their deficiency. Could you say a little more about what you mean when you speak of working towards Communion and union with God?]]

Completely great questions! Important questions!! Thank you. First, I am very grateful you added that I have never given you the impression that I am working in a way which means I am trying to make myself holy. That would be completely futile but also it would give a very skewed notion of what spirituality is all about. To think we could  do this is akin to jumping off a cliff and then trying to stop our fall by pulling on the tops of our shoes!! After all, God is the only source of holiness because God is holiness itself, just as God (him)self is love, truth, beauty, and so forth.

At the same time one can approach things like holiness, reconciliation, humility and other human virtues, as though they are ordinarily and simply infused by God without much more than a prayer for this here or there. These are all great graces but ordinarily this is not how such things work, nor is it ordinarily how God works! Growth in holiness is part of our growth in authentic humanity. We cannot simply pray for God to make us authentically human as though it takes no cooperation (and so, no real effort) on our own part. Cooperating with the grace of God is something learned as well as it is enabled by grace itself. It is also something that requires the healing of obstacles --- obstacles to listening deeply and responding equally profoundly, obstacles to loving and allowing oneself to be loved, obstacles to trusting as profoundly as Jesus or Mary and Joseph (and so many others) trusted!

The work I have spoken of here recently and in the past is work which fosters the ability to cooperate with God and to allow God's grace to flourish in my life. It is particularly helpful in learning to be attentive to my own heart, and therefore, to that place within myself where God laughs, sings, and speaks to me in ways which create me at the same time. Beyond this learning to be attentive, the work I do with my Director helps me to be reconciled with my deepest self and potentialities. What I mean here is that it assists in the healing and doing away with obstacles which prevent these deepest and God-given potentialities from being realized in my own self, and thus too, in my ministry, attitudes, relationships with God and others, etc.

We all have wounds leading to defense mechanisms that cripple or skew our ability to respond authentically --- or which cause the numbing of awareness of the God-given potentialities which exist deep within us. We all have things which stand in the way of our becoming the persons God has created us to be. We all have forms of woundedness which make loving and being loved difficult sometimes, or which prevent us from trusting ourselves and others, or from walking courageously in our world, satisfied with and even exulting in who God made us to be. (Sometimes these wounds and obstacles prevent us from even knowing who we really are made to be!) The work I have spoken here of doing, both alone and with my Director (delegate), is a methodical approach to dealing with the things which prevent us from responding whole-heartedly, responding exhaustively with body, mind, heart, and soul, to the love and creative will of God, just as it helps enable us to make and become that whole-hearted exhaustive response to God's Word we are called to be.

It involves prayer, of course, but also it involves writing which nurtures one's capacity for a healthy interiority; it is focused on learning to listen attentively to everything that goes on within oneself (body, mind, and heart). The aim of the work I have been doing is not just wholeness but also transparency --- meaning that when a person sees me they are seeing the real me in a way which allows the Spirit and Life of God to shine through. It is a simple matter of "what one sees is what they get" -- no pretence, no defenses, no crippling insecurities, and no need to bend to peer pressure or the expectations of others. (Meeting appropriate expectations is another matter entirely!) We human beings, I have written often here, are a covenantal reality, a dialogical "event" where God, who is a constitutive part of our very being, speaks or calls and we respond in ways which create us as God's own persons. We become a response to God's call, to his love, beauty, truth, and simplicity. We become an incarnation of the God Christ himself revealed fully and exhaustively; that is what I believe is the vocation of every human being as we share in the life of Christ and witness to his uniqueness. Again. the work I have spoken of helps enable this to become true as a (more and more) fully embodied reality in my own life. It not only helps me to be completely honest with God, myself, and others, but to be an expression or incarnation of Divine and human truth. I believe this transparency in wholeness is what the tradition refers to as holiness. It is an expression  of Union with God.

I suppose that I see all dimensions of this work as prayer or at least prayerful. Of course it is not as peaceful or quietly challenging as quiet prayer, for instance, most usually is. In fact it can be extremely painful and "bloody" (so to speak!). But even so, it is simply part of a life committed to attentiveness and responsiveness to God and God's will for my own life and the life of all creation. There has always been a danger in Christianity that folks would sit back, pray, and wait for God to do it all for us. (Think of Paul speaking to the Thessalonians about those who will not work: "those who will not work will not eat"; he was not speaking to those who were merely lazy, but to those who sat back waiting for the second coming.) Sometimes that route was known as "quietism". While there are such things as infused graces, infused virtues, and infused contemplation, for instance, and while anyone who prays regularly will know these things first hand, these  are not the ordinary way God works in our lives. It is possible to see all of those things I spoke of above as obstacles, as manifestations of sin in need of reconciliation. The work I have written here about doing is simply part of cooperating with God, working with God so that he may live and work within me freely and so the creation he seeks to do within and through me can be fully and exhaustively realized.

I have only just touched on the surface of things here (especially the notion of genuine holiness as transparency in wholeness), and I may decide to write more about it as follow up, but if it raises questions for you or leaves anything especially unclear please get back to me and I will give it another shot. Thanks again for a really great couple of questions!

Questions on "Justifying" Inner Work

[[Dear Sister O'Neal, when you write about the inner work you have undertaken you justify it in the name of your vocation --- as though your vocation itself called for it and made it the right and necessary thing to do. I wonder if that is really true. I don't think I have read about any other hermit undertaking this kind of work after leaving the world or entering the desert! It seems entirely unique to you. Do you really think other hermits might be called to this kind of "work" or could you be justifying it in order to remain a hermit?]]

Thanks for your questions! They do push me further in writing about this work. First, I have no idea how many other hermits are acquainted with PRH; I know that Father Michael Fish, OSB Cam has done PRH and knows my director/accompanist personally for her skills in PRH, but beyond Michael's experience I don't know of other hermits who have engaged in this work. At the same time I think it is important to remember the entire history of eremitical life and the frequent references that occur throughout this history to the struggle or outright battle with demons --- most of which, I am sure, are the demons of our own hearts. As I wrote here a couple of years ago in On Battling Demons and Mediating Peace:

[[. . .believe me, when we deal with the parts of ourselves left unhealed, distorted, or broken in childhood and throughout life, the process of healing can be as fierce, demanding, and messy as stories of Desert ancestors battling all day and night long with demons then coming out of their caves torn and bloodied but exultant in the morning! The same is true of the story of Jacob wrestling with God (God's angel) and, painfully wounded though he was, refusing to let go until God blessed him. We enter the desert both to seek God and to do battle with demons; it is a naïve person indeed who does not anticipate meeting herself face to face there in all of her weakness, brokenness, and [(fortunately), her] giftedness as well! We may well know that God is profoundly involved in what may eventuate into the fight/struggle of and for our lives but it can take time, faith, and perseverance before we walk away both limping and blessed beyond measure.]] (cf Sources and Resources for Inner Work)

I am also reminded of a passage from Thomas Merton's Disputed Questions in the essay "The Renaissance Hermit"; here Merton cites Bl. Paul Giustiniani: [[It is here, in this inexpressible rending of his own poverty, that the hermit enters, like Christ, into an arena where (she) wages the combat that can never be told to anyone. This is the battle that is seen by no one except God, and whose vicissitudes are so terrible that when victory comes at last, the total poverty and emptiness of the victor are so absolute that there is no longer any place in (her) heart for pride.]]

Hermits have known throughout the history of eremitical life, I believe, of the nature and necessity of the struggle Paul Giustiniani noted here and which I have described as "inner work". Alan Jones in Soul Making,  The Desert Way of Spirituality,  refers to the healing of memories as an integral part of the desert tradition and life, and while I don't believe he appends the description, "struggling with demons," I have no doubt he would agree with the linkage made here. In other words, the work which I have described here and there during the past two years and more is work which is entirely consonant with the life of a hermit; more, it is work that the desert context makes absolutely essential. I think I could call it a sine qua non of eremitical life and not be overstating the case. It is in fact, a necessary dimension of the salvific character of the hermit life. As regards your last question, I am clear that my posts on "inner work" capture the paradox of risking a vocation because the very vocation itself makes this necessary. I have, so far as I and others can discern, not fooled myself or them in identifying solitary eremitical life as my own vocation --- an important reason to have embraced an ecclesial vocation under the direction and supervision of others!

On Inner Work and the Importance of Having Healing Well in Hand Prior to Profession

[[Dear Sister Laurel, I wondered about the inner work you refer to having undertaken during the past 2+ years. . . . Does every hermit do this kind of thing? Did you need to do this because of difficulties you were having with your vocation?  .  . . I don't mean to pry but if a person needs to undertake this kind of work should their diocese profess them? . . . Please, I really don't mean to offend but you also write that candidates for profession to your life should have their healing pretty much in hand before profession. Do you still believe that?]]

Thanks for your questions. I understand where you are coming from and take no offense so please don't be concerned. First, I continue to believe that candidates for profession under canon 603 should have their own personal healing well in hand before approaching a diocese to petition for admission to profession and consecration. One must be relatively whole if one is to adequately discern or to commit to such a call --- perhaps even more than one needs to be in other more usual life contexts and commitments. Secondly, the inner work I have referred to over the past couple of years can be beneficial to anyone seeking to grow more fully into the persons they are called to be but who, over the years of their lives have been wounded in ways which may prevent a full, even exhaustive, response to God's call and presence. I don't know anyone who has not experienced some, even some very significant trauma or situations which wound personally and can prevent or at least hamper this kind of openness and response or "obedience." In fact, the inner work I have been referring to is geared to assisting every person to respond to God's presence and achieve an integrity of personhood which otherwise might remain merely potential.

At the same time I undertook this work when it became clear that there was significant essentially unhealed trauma I had grown up with and which needed to be addressed. I did so understanding that there was some risk this work might actually lead to the conclusion I was not really called by God to this vocation, but also, on the other hand, I  appreciated that it was this very eremitical vocation that provided the time, motivation, and resources to do this work; more importantly, I think, it provided the personal, moral, and even the legal (canonical) obligation to do so as one publicly vowed to obedience and desiring to live the depth of the silence of solitude as well as "the privilege of love" identified as the core of Camaldolese life. Paradoxically then, I realized I was willing to risk discovering this was not my vocation precisely because I was in touch with the profound call of this vocation to personal wholeness and integrity. And over the past couple of years through this work I have only been confirmed in my conviction that it is in the silence of solitude that God calls me to an abundance of life I could not have imagined. So, while this work does not radically change my position on hermits having personal healing well in hand before petitioning for admission to profession and consecration it does nuance my position.

One of the truths hermits sometimes recognize in rare cases is that they have been made ready for embracing a vocation to the silence of solitude for a very long time. This is not merely a matter of temperament but of formation by the combination of life circumstances and the grace of God.  I came to see clearly that God accompanied me throughout my life, that (he) helped me understand and, in fact, be very sensitive to the difference between isolation and solitude from the time I was very small, that (he) gifted me in profound ways that actually suited me to a life of eremitical solitude as much as these gifts might have suited me to a life of apostolic activity in the academy or elsewhere. Tom Merton once wrote (perhaps tongue in cheek) that "hermits are made by difficult mothers"; Carl Jung once wrote that sometimes extraordinary and difficult circumstances can lead to a maturity which is surprising in someone who is so young. Analogously, extraordinary circumstances can suit one to eremitical life --- though it has to be emphasized these can also wound the person in ways which make her incapable of responding to such a call or even be unsuited to it. Since the externals of either case (i.e., life in solitude) can look similar or even identical it requires careful discernment --- and the assistance of those with experience in formation, etc., to determine the true character of the vocation with which one is dealing.

The discernment needed in such cases is clearly significant, personally demanding --- and very rewarding. What absolutely must be evident to those involved in this process if they are to determine the hermit really is called by God to this vocation is that the person is genuinely embracing a call to human wholeness, has experienced the redemptive love of God in eremitical solitude in a significant way, and are compelled by personal integrity and faith to follow the work to its conclusion. I have noted this before here, but now I can be clear about the source of my conviction. With eremitical life specifically, coming to human wholeness involves a call to do this in "the silence of solitude". If one cannot do this or if one's growing wholeness and holiness makes one less able to remain peacefully in their hermitage, then one may need to leave eremitical life. If, however, this environment of eremitical solitude is clearly redemptive and the healing or sanctification one experiences as a hermit lead even more profoundly into the life of the hermitage, one's vocation will be confirmed.

But what if one is not (or is no longer) called to eremitical life? I believe that if one is not suited to eremitical solitude, living in this way will not have the same salvific character. Further, one may be unlikely to see the work required for healing to be a matter one must personally embrace because it is morally required by this vocation and one may therefore eschew it.  In such cases, one will also have to submerge or even deny parts of themselves which are absolutely essential for personal wholeness and a life of responsive or obedient love.

More, as one undertakes the work required and experiences the healing it can effect in and of itself (that is, no matter the context), one is increasingly unlikely to be able to return to a physical solitude that may have been more mute isolation or escapism than what canon 603 describes as or allows to be called the silence of solitude. Eremitical life would simply not (or no longer) be healthy for one or what one could tolerate. Growing wholeness and fullness of life developing from the work undertaken will lead one to be increasingly unable to embrace the constraints of eremitical life. A more positive way of saying this is to note it will not represent the realm of freedom one really needs to be fully themselves, fully human. One will certainly not be able to truly know eremitism as a gift of God with which God gifts one either for one's own abundant life or for the sake of the Church and world.

Regarding your first questions, every responsible hermit works regularly with a spiritual director and beyond this, I have to trust that every publicly professed hermit will undertake the work or therapy or whatever it takes to fully respond to the vocation with which they have been entrusted once it becomes clear such work is called for. Certainly canonical hermits, hermits who have thus accepted the obligations and rights associated with eremitical life lived in the name of the Church, will generally be unable to eschew the necessary personal and inner work needed to embrace the life God summons them to within the hermitage or as someone with an ecclesial vocation. As I have noted before, I have been very fortunate in having a director who is specially trained in PRH and who was able to offer me the unique accompaniment needed to work through significant unhealed trauma even as she was able to keep her finger on the pulse of my vocation and assist in my ongoing formation. I do believe, however, that if one knows this kind of work is needed she should undertake it before admission to profession; it is entirely imprudent to forego it because of the effect healing has on the whole person.

While your question about this is a good and logical or understandable one, I was not having difficulties with my vocation. In truth, it was the fact that I was doing well in it which, at least in part, led me to realize the need for this work and gave me the courage to undertake it, risky though it might be to that same vocation. As hermits  find in the silence of solitude, one must face oneself squarely in light of the love of God. A solitary life of prayer will uncover more and more any need for healing or forgiveness.

As my director and I continue the work and deep healing God wills for me, and as I come to know and embrace my whole self even more completely in light of this work, I have experienced an even greater sense of eremitical call specifically as a diocesan hermit embedded in a parish community; with this my excitement regarding canon 603 and its implementation in the Church has grown significantly. I wish I had undertaken this work before profession (or at least known clearly it was still needed) as is prudent and ordinarily necessary, but I am grateful to God my very vocation made it possible as well as necessary that I undertake it now and that it in turn has led to the reaffirmation of an ecclesial call to the silence of solitude.

On What Spirituality Really Means

[[Dear Sister Laurel,
       When you write about the inner work or "growth work" you have been engaged in, how important is it that you work with someone else? Doesn't this mean you are not living solitude? I was bothered by your saying you thought the Church had "implicitly commissioned" you to do this work. Could you say more about this? I am asking because I don't understand how some sort of pseudo-psychological work can be considered part of the hermit's life which is supposed to be a spiritual life and I really doubt the Church would support it much less commission it! Can you explain this?]]

Thanks for your questions. I don't know if you have misunderstood me but you have made it apparent that I have not been clear in recent posts and need to say a bit more to clarify. Thank you for that as well. I have answered similar questions in the posts, Followup Questions and Objections on Inner Work as well as Sources and Resources for Inner Work. I do recommend you look at those; they were written just a year ago and allowed me to outline how it was I saw this work as intrinsic to the life of a hermit. In those posts I discuss asceticism, the desert Fathers and Mothers, the importance and appropriateness of working with another, and several other topics. Without repeating everything there let me touch on a couple of topics raised by my last post and your questions which I may not have dealt with explicitly in those earlier posts.

The first issue I think is that I am called to a spiritual life but that that seems to you to disallow attention to psychological, emotional, and similar health or growth. My own understanding of spirituality does not cut those things out of the picture. Spirituality primarily has to do with the Life of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and where the Spirit is active nothing is (or should be!) untouched. A spiritual life is a life in which the Holy Spirit is allowed to act as she will; it is one where the person embraces this action, prepares for its continuation, and acts from it. It is one where the Holy Spirit is allowed to touch, heal, and empower every dimension of the person so that she grows in wholeness and/or holiness. In other words, spirituality is not merely about matters of my own spirit or soul, it is about what God's Spirit does with my whole Self.

When a client tells me about their spiritual lives they pay attention to where the Holy Spirit has been allowed to act, where she has been resisted or ignored, and just generally where the Holy Spirit seems to be moving in her/his life. When I work with my own director, especially in the PRH work we are doing together, we work through all those forms of woundedness which, over the years, have prevented the Life of God which resides deep within me to truly inform, empower, inspire, transfigure and transform my life. It may be that Spirit has been unable to adequately inform and move my will, or my intellect, or my sensibilities (including emotions. sensations, and feelings).

What I need to become is vulnerable to the Holy Spirit, vulnerable to Love-in-Act, and this vulnerability (from the L. root vulnus for "wound") only comes from working through my own woundedness and the scarring that has "hardened" my own heart! We all know people who can't feel their feelings, or those who are incapable of acting on what they know, or even those who are incapable of showing the curiosity, creativity, or critical power of their intellect. Whenever these things happen, and in whatever degree, it means a truncated, relatively impaired human life which is unable to respond adequately to the movement of the Spirit. Even when significant or deep healing is unnecessary we have to learn to respond fully, exhaustively.

Too often I hear about notions of spirituality which involve a limited dimension of the person (their spirit or soul) and leaves the rest as though it is uninvolved in spirituality. Thus, there are all kinds of dualism involved in these: the temporal vs the eternal, the bodily vs the spiritual, the spiritual vs the ordinary "profane" world, etc etc. But these notions are antithetical to genuine spirituality which begins with the Spirit of GOD -- not the spirit of the person per se -- and then attends to that in ways which allows the Holy Spirit to move where she will! The corollary to this kind of division is that only some parts of us and only some activities are seen as "spiritual" while others are not (e.g., praying is spiritual, playing in an orchestra supposedly is not, etc). 

Excursus:

Laura Risk (friend
 and renowned fiddler)

As part of this, we must remember that human beings are embodied Spirit, that our souls (the very breath of God which literally inspires our bodily existence) "builds our bodies around it". The soul, as Aquinas reminded us so well, is the form of the body and works towards this embodiment always and everywhere. (This, by the way, is one reason "heaven" will ultimately never be about disembodied souls; the soul yearns for embodiment, yearns for resurrection, and that is what we ultimately hope for!)  But the upshot of all this is a spiritual life cannot avoid attending and paying attention to the WHOLE of our lives. (And here I will note that the act of playing a violin can be one of the most prayerful acts in my entire life because it is a fairly sophisticated form of the Holy Spirit's embodiment. There are times, of course, it does not rise to that level, but the yearning to play and the empowered act of pouring myself into the instrument to produce music is the very definition of the Holy Spirit at work in me and in our world.)

Embodiment, quite obviously, involves our whole selves. That means the psychological or emotional as well as the physical. It especially means paying attention to anything that stands in the way of the Holy Spirit's activity in our lives. During Advent we hear the admonition to "make straight the paths of the Lord!" We are to make our lives ready in ways which allow the Spirit of God to fill the valleys and level the mountains. And now during Pentecost we cry out in both supplication and great joy, "Come Holy Spirit! Enkindle the hearts (the deepest core) of the faithful (those who trust you, those you will set afire with your love!)" In all of this the Scriptures affirm that we seek and are sought by the God who wills we allow the Holy Spirit (the Life and Love of God) to inspire every part of our being: body, mind, heart, spirit, sensibilities, emotions, ordinary and extraordinary dimensions of our lives. Everything is meant to be shot through with the power and love of the Spirit of God. When I speak of  everything being potentially sacramental this is part of what I mean. With the Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost God affirms actively and effectively that NOTHING will be left untouched, unembraced, unloved, unreconciled or not wholly taken up into the very life of God himself.

The work I have been doing with my director is meant to allow the Holy Spirit to move freely within and through me --- as She is meant to do. It is meant to allow me to be the person in whom that Sprit lives and moves freely, a person who is whole, coherent, and holy --- a person in other words, who is truly inspired by the Spirit and who "holds together" in Christ and the love he and His Father share -- just as we are each called to do. For that reason we work through everything that stands in the way of that. We work through woundedness, both old and more recent, allowing love to heal these. We work through memories, allow for the experience and expression of emotions, and at every point reappropriate these from the perspective of God's unceasing presence and love --- as these are present not only in my hermitage, but in my deep Self and in my director as well. (It is the role of my director to mediate God's love in all of this and this means this love's critical, attentive, challenging, consoling and empowering character!) There is literally no part of my life that goes untouched in all of this. If spirituality means a praxis which leads to holiness then this is how it must be. After all, God has been at work during the whole of my life and in this work we [[lay it all out and trace the hand of God that somehow ordered all things. . .]]

On Being Commissioned to do this Work:

My consecration and commission by the Church has charged me with living my Rule, canon 603, and solitary eremitical life in the Church's name. She has given me permission to turn from other things including active or apostolic religious life, family life, and any number of other things to live with, from and for God alone in the silence of solitude. She has provided me the freedom to turn from the world's definitions of success, etc, and has allowed me the space and time to attend to God in all the ways God calls me to. This means I do not have to justify my life in the same terms most of those I know have to do.
But, the Church has also prayed that God would bring to completion in me what was begun on that day of consecration. When she granted me the cowl she prayed that I would carry out the ministry of prayer she had entrusted to me. Both of these mean the Church expects and prays that I would fully allow God to be God within and through me in my contemplative solitary eremitical life. I am free to do whatever is necessary to allow this to happen and become the truth of my life. I am free, in other words, to "put on Christ" and to do so as a diocesan hermit --- to allow my mind and heart to be remade in his image by the Spirit. I am obligated in the same way.

This means I am responsible for doing whatever I can to fulfill this obligation. I am responsible for working toward my own conversion in the power of God. My director and I decided together on the kind and degree of work we would undertake because while entirely complementary, it also goes beyond the usual work or commitment of spiritual direction --- though now it is entirely integrated into spiritual direction in our work together. What must be clear is that the aim of our work together is everything I have described throughout this post. It is about allowing the Holy Spirit to work in and through me as exhaustively as possible. Both of us are committed to God and to allowing God full reign in our lives and the lives of those we touch. Both of us are consecrated by God through the mediation of the Church for this purpose. Both of us are committed to holiness --- to the life occasioned and brought to fullness by the Holy Spirit. That is what spiritual life is about and I think when you ask questions about the wisdom or prudence of this work for a hermit it is important that you consider we both act with all of this in mind.

Addendum: sorry, I missed a couple of questions, so briefly: the work I have spoken of requires the assistance of another who is trained to accompany persons in this way. The majority of the work is done on one's own but meetings with the accompanist are absolutely essential and often critical since part of healing often requires speaking one's truth to another who will really hear this. (Being heard in this way is a complex dynamic of love, trust, and acceptance, but it also means trusting, accepting, and expressing one's own truth in a way which might not have been possible before.) To summarize, this kind of work must be done with another person, a person who knows how to listen deeply, to respond compassionately, and to speak the words of truth and love which can cut through our personal "deafness" and incapacity to empower a full and loving response to God and to those whom God holds as precious.  It is especially important to remember that the work we are doing together (and with the grace of God!) increases my already-established capacity for healthy solitude. It does not detract from this.