Follow-up on Standards for Beginning and Mature Hermits

[[Dear Sister Laurel, I was especially aware that when you write about the standards of your life you are describing what happens in a relationship with God. What you seemed to describe regarding the difference between beginners and the mature hermit was the deepening of a relationship. I could see the variations reflected in the way different people participate in this relationship with God. Too, it seemed to me that the central elements of c 603 had to do with what is essential to live a life in relationship with God. Do you see mature hermits practicing these elements more strictly than beginners? Is there any part of what you live that you practice more strictly now than you did as a beginning hermit?]]

You're welcome, and thank you for making clearer than I may have done myself what is most central in speaking of standards of eremitical life. I agree with you that the essential or constitutive elements of c 603 reflect what is central to a hermit's relationship with God. I do recognize that hermits should be open to living greater reclusion if God calls them to this, and I think hermits from the beginning of their eremitical lives should be open to hearing such a call. I tend not to use the word stricter or more strictly to describe changes in my own life. I prefer the term radical instead of this. That corresponds with increasing depth as well as with an increasingly profound degree of lived personal truth. So I live some things more deeply or more radically, yes, but only occasionally does that translate into being stricter about them.

Yes, prayer becomes deeper and more extensive as well, as the person becomes not just someone who prays, but God's own prayer in the church and in our world. In light of this, one mainly continues to pray in the way one did as a beginner, and at the same time (as your question clearly recognized), the relationship that is the heart and purpose of prayer deepens and becomes not just central to one's life but one's very breath and blood as well. In some ways, it feels like prayer is not only not stricter, but that it becomes less strict. Over time, I have shifted from one form of prayer to another or added prayer periods for certain reasons as needed, but there is no strictness about this. Responsiveness and faithfulness or fidelity, yes, but strictness, no; the word just doesn't feel right to me. I suppose it feels like it fails to reflect the integral nature of a Divine call to assiduous prayer and penance. 

I think the words responsive and faithful fit all of the dimensions of my life where they might not have when I was beginning eremitical life in 1984 or so. All those years ago, I was finding my way into a vocation, wondering what it involved or allowed and did not allow. I was exercised with discovering not only what such a call required but whether or not it could be considered truly vital at all. Yes, of course, it was an ancient vocation, but was it really also a contemporary one, important for the contemporary church and for our larger world as well? Could my sense of this call be justified apart from my own chronic illness and disability, for instance, or was I mistaken? (More about this in another article). 

I began reading and praying and discovered people who helped me see this was very much a healthy, vital, and contemporary vocation. Some of Merton's writings were important (Contemplation in a World of Action and his "Notes on a Philsophy of Solitude" were particularly helpful; so were the essays in Allchin's Solitude and Communion, which, in those days, had to be gotten from the Sisters of the Love of God in the UK, and so, put me in touch with their community. Some Camaldolese writing was critical in my discernment, not to mention the existence of the Camaldolese Benedictines in Big Sur. Now, of course, the vocation and my own identity are more just a single thing; in saying this I mean that they are one insofar as I am responsive to God and live my own identity faithfully. So, in all of this, "radically" is a much better word than strictness or any of its cognates.

 Today, I believe that c 603's constitutive elements are less things we are called to do (though, of course, they are also that) and more about the kind of persons that hermits are supposed to be. I believe if we consider these elements this way, we will put the accent where it must be, namely on our relationship with God and who we are called to be in light of that. Canon 603 doesn't spell out what it means to pray or embrace penance assiduously, nor does it define "the silence of solitude" or "stricter separation from the world," and this means each hermit will define these in the way and to the extent her relationship with God calls for and depends on these things. The same is true of the way we work out limited forms of ministry: What does my own growth in wholeness and holiness in light of this relationship require? The question I must continue to ask is how my life in hermitage spills over into ministry and how that ministry demands responsiveness and fidelity to God's love in hermitage. Questions about strictness, especially increasing strictness, tend to be unhelpful or even off-point for me.

On Differing and Similar Standards for Beginners and Mature Hermits

[[Sister Laurel, Are the standards for a beginning hermit different than they are for a mature hermit? I am asking because when you write about living eremitical life you accent the idea of living a vision with widows or doors to Mystery. You also speak of everything being part of the "privilege of Love" and that makes me think that it takes time to truly come to live the hermit life in profound ways. I also wondered about the relationship between contraints and freedom that you wrote about recently, and this ties in with my question because it seems that constraints come before freedom. All of this makes me wonder if the way a beginner lives eremitical life will be different than the life of a mature hermit. If someone wanted to participate in some form of limited ministry it would take time to develop the habits and depths of a life of assiduous prayer and the silence of solitude before one could really discern this, don't you think?]] 

This is a really great question and I really appreciate your explaining how you came to it! Thank you!! I understand what you are thinking, and I generally agree with your analysis. At the same time I also need to look at the way c 603 handles the matter. That allows me to suggest on one hand that in terms of spiritual depth and the aquisition of needed habits, beginners do indeed live the life somewhat differently than mature hermits. On the other hand, when I look at the standards the Church recognizes, namely, canon 603, the guidelines of Ponam in Deserto Viam, and the descriptive passages from the Catechism, beginners and mature hermits are both called to the same standards. Every day, we each walk through the same doorways to the same Mystery. Every day, each hermit is called to embrace assiduous prayer and penance, the silence of solitude, and stricter separation from the world, for instance, in order to come to union with God and one's own divinization. It is the encounter with that Divine Mystery that changes and calls for a tailoring of our lives in ways that differ one hermit from another.

The Fathers who wrote c 603 were aware of and provided for this. Paradoxically, one of the main unchanging standards of c 603 is the requirement of a (liveable) Rule of Life that the hermit writes for him/herself. Every c 603 hermit must do this, and the Rule must not only be rooted in significant lived experience of eremitism and other things as well, but it must demonstrate the way she understands and will live the other elements of the canon itself. It is here that the individual hermit's more personal or unique standards may reveal themselves as shifting even as the overarching elements defining the eremitical life remain the same. In some ways it is also here that the hermit will accommodate any changes in her vision of the way she is to live this vocation and clarify both the tensions that exist and the resolution of these tensions in her way of living solitary eremitical life.

The Beauty and Flexibility of C 603:

I have written many times her over the past nearly 2 decades that I find c 603 to be truly beautiful in the way it combines the defining elements without which one would be unable to live an eremitical life, and the flexibility of one's own personal vision of the life lived in a particular place and time by a particular person. The Church wrote really well when she opted for this combination of constitutive elements. Sometimes folks who believe hermits are "adding things" unnecessarily to or in betrayal of the vocation by this activity or emphasis,  or they may suggest that bishops are allowing things beyond some narrow, even unhealthy notion of eremitical life and don't really understand eremitical life. What is more often true in these cases is that those making the accusations have forgotten the requirement that the hermit write her own liveable Rule. 

Remember, this is a Rule that reflects not only all of the specific and explicit elements of c 603, but also personal elements that are part and parcel of the way God has brought this person to eremitical life and continues to speak to her in the silence of solitude. All of these elements are discerned by the hermit, her bishop, delegate, and (before perpetual profession and consecration) the diocesan formation team. The Rule spells out one's own understanding and vision of solitary eremitical life and its constitutive elements; it also spells out those things, additional and otherwise,  that are required for the individual hermit's own wellness, human wholeness, and personal holiness. It is here that elements that do not work for another hermit but are essential for one's own call by God will be found. 

This is also why I advise hermits I work with to use their Rule as a workbook along with their journal as something that inspires them every day. I also advise folks to revise their Rule every 8-10 years or so (or whenever major changes in the person's life makes this advisable). But let me be clear. The standards or constitutive elements of c 603 don't change. The guidelines of Ponam in Deserto Viam don't change either. If my hermit life looks different from one of the others in our laura (and it definitely does look different in some ways!), it is because my vision of the life, my personal background, relationship with God, and unique gifts and limitations differ. In other words, we have the same vocation and are called to union with God under the same standards (c. 603's constitutive elements, charism, and the Evangelical Counsels, etc); meanwhile, the ways in which God tailors his call or invites us to tailor and incarnate our responses --- especially I think, regarding the requirement that our lives be lived for the salvation of others --- will always also differ one from another. They are both alike and dissimilar precisely because we are each faithful to c 603 and God's call to this vocation! This is recognizable to each of us even though it may be hard to see from outside the vocation or the sharing we do with one another.

On the Interrelatedness of Constraints and Freedom:

I understand why you posit that constraints come before freedom. I think you are generally right in your observations. I believe even more strongly that the constraints, however, are opportunities that accompany and are fulfilled by freedom. My fallback example of this is playing the violin. One must certainly argue as you do analogously, that without technique, one could never play music at all. Imagine what would happen if one could not master bowing (or even hold the bow properly) or finger the notes with precision and speed. Imagine what would and could never happen if one's right hand was stiff and cramped or one couldn't shift with one's left hand because one was holding the violin at the neck of the violin rather than with one's jaw and shoulder. The latter posture leaves the left hand free and entirely mobile, while the former paralyzes it! And imagine all of the scales, arpeggios, and etudes required in all of the possible bowing variations that are necessary to master if one is to allow the violin to sing over the whole of its range!! 

Thus, it is absolutely true that one needs to learn proper technique before one can play to the limits of the instrument, the composer, and one's own imagination and abilities. At the same time, one plays to the limits of one's technique, and doing so musically will transform and push one's technique further as well. Technique serves musical freedom, yes, but musicality (which is partly, I believe, about the influence or inspiration of the Holy Spirit) fulfills technique and allows it to be much more than mere technicality. It is always the two together that produces music, and music, I sincerely believe, is a form of prayer and perhaps a model for growth in all prayer.

What I am trying to say is that it is not only possible but also necessary for all things to grow together simultaneously once one becomes a c 603 hermit. It is very much a holistic vocation. Yes, profession and consecration under c 603 require preparation. For instance, one should be a contemplative before discerning a call to eremitical solitude, and one should already have completed one's schooling and any certification or licensure work one envisions needing.  Strictly speaking, one should not be a beginner at eremitical life when one is admitted to profession and consecration as a c 603 hermit. For this reason a good deal of the growth you are speaking of happens before one becomes c 603; at the same time, we hermits recognize in one another the same patterns of growth, the same embrace of values and constitutive elements, the same vocations no matter the differences in our Rules and whether we have been a hermit for decades or for a only a handful of years. I'll end this here for now. There is definitely more to explore, though, so thanks again for your questions!!