Private Vows, Not an Act of Profession and Not the Way to Consecration as a Hermit

[[Dear Sister, if someone writes: that their vows were received by a Catholic priest on behalf of the Church and God Himself and that they are a consecrated hermit as a result, can this be the case? Can my spiritual director receive my vows and consecrate me in this way? I would rather do it this way than go to my bishop (just being honest!).]]

LOL!! I appreciate your honesty and understand what you are saying!! The answer to your question regarding intention is no, no priest or priest spiritual director unless specifically designated to do so on behalf of the diocese by the local ordinary, can receive vows or consecrate you in the eremitical life. The Church has only two ways for such a thing to happen: 1) she professes and consecrates you as a member of a semi-eremitical or eremitical congregation, and 2) using c.603, you make your profession in the hands of the diocesan bishop or his explicit designee. 

Both of these options involve public vows and a change in one's state of life. A priest can certainly witness private vows (a private dedication, not consecration) --- for these do not involve a public commitment, new rights and obligations, or a new state in life -- but (without acting on behalf of the bishop with regard to c 603) he cannot do so with the intention to consecrate nor to participate in an act of profession. (Profession, which involves more than the making of public vows, is, by definition, always a public act involving new canonical rights and obligations. If these new public rights and obligations are not involved, then the act is not profession even when vows are involved.) I've written a lot about this so check out labels re private vs public vows, etc., if you need more. 

On Being a Hermit Before One Petitions for C 603 Standing

[[Hi Sister Laurel, in the process you are describing about c 603 discernment it sounds sort of like you are saying a person already needs to have discerned a call to contemplative and then eremitical life before she or he approaches her/his diocese with a petition to be professed under c 603. Is that right?? Is that why c 603 has no provision for periods of formation and all that goes with those? Your use of the term "shoehorning" in your last post was helpful, a pretty vivid way of describing a process which could never really fit into arbitrary time frames and canonical schemata.  Also, it was important that you noted that the majority of the process would never involve the diocese at all. I could see clearly that the really important formation must go on apart from the diocese -- in solitude between the person, God, and perhaps a good spiritual director. Should dioceses be thinking that c 603 is to be used to raise to canonical standing a vocation that has been long in development and is already largely "formed"? Is that what you have been talking about when you say the candidate "must be a hermit in some essential sense" already?]]

Thanks for your questions and comments. I think you've got it, yes!! The history of c 603 grew out of a situation in which a number of solemnly professed monks had discerned vocations to solitude over long years of monastic life, ongoing formation, commitment, and service. To retell the story briefly, in order to follow an eremitical vocation they had to leave their vows and monasteries and be secularized. They then had to find a way to live an eremitical life as best as they could apart from their monasteries in more ordinary surroundings. Roman Catholicism had a history of such persons coming under the protection of the diocesan bishop and eventually this occurred with a dozen or so of these men coming together in a laura under the aegis of Bishop Remi de Roo who, at Vatican Council II, brought up the need to recognize the genuine eremitical vocation as a "call to perfection." Only after another 20 years did the Revised Code of Canon Law include the solitary hermit call in law in canon 603. 

The canon itself presumes and implies a personal history of spiritual and personal formation as a hermit prior to contacting one's diocese re c 603 even though it does not spell this out. For instance, "stricter separation from the world" is not simply about closing the hermitage door on the things outside these premises, but rather about separating oneself more strictly from the things which are contrary to or reject Christ while one cleaves to Christ more strictly and wholeheartedly with all one has and is. Assiduous prayer and penance are not about more prayer and penance than usual in Religious life, or at least it is not only about this; it is primarily about being a truly human person whose heart, mind, body and spirit, are given over to their source, ground, nourishment, and enrichment in God alone in the silence of solitude. 

This takes time; finding the way God calls one to this takes serious weighing, trying, and discerning the various paths to God any life offers as one grows first as a person of prayer, then as a contemplative, and then as a solitary hermit. It is possible to read the central elements of c. 603 in a more superficial way. The silence of solitude, for instance, can be read merely as describing a context for eremitical life, but for the actual hermit, the silence of solitude is also the charism of her vocation, and, in fact, a goal -- the way to describe a fully human life lived alone in communion with God, a life of shalom and wholeness in the silence of solitude.

In other words, c 603 was never meant for beginners in the spiritual life, nor were dioceses meant to form such persons in the eremitical life. (I'll say more about this below.) Canon 603 was meant to be used for hermits (not those who were still hermit wannabe's) who had lived into their vocations over a span of time and brought themselves to their diocese because they recognized that this service (eremitical life lived in and on behalf of the Church) was an essential part of their call to life in solitude. It was meant, this means, to be relatively rarely used when strong candidates with experience as contemplatives and deeper yearnings for solitude presented themselves with a petition to be professed. The canon defines eremitical life as the Catholic Church regards it and adds certain conditions to those who feel called to live this life as an ecclesial vocation in the name of the Church. 

In some ways this is a tension-filled and paradoxical situation. The Church defines the signs and ways to genuine freedom in Christ found in hermit lives throughout her history and otherwise: stricter separation from the world, a life of assiduous prayer and penance, the silence of solitude, ordered according to a Rule the hermit writes herself, framed in terms of the Evangelical Counsels, and then provides a canonical framework to live such freedom in the name and on behalf of the Church. In this way, the Church entrusts an ecclesial vocation to someone committed to the freedom of a prophetic life of grace. Thus, the person should also have the wisdom to deal with a vocation which is at once ecclesial and also deeply prophetic. None of this indicates or implies a vocation which is to be embraced by beginners or those without sufficient experience and (even) expertise (e.g., the ability to write a liveable Rule, for instance, or an articulable sense of the way the silence of solitude functions as more than the context for one's life -- a sense which is rooted in the hermit's lived experience).

Dioceses do not and apparently were never meant to form hermits. This is so not only because hermits are formed in solitude (you restated my position very well), but also because dioceses tend to need time frames into which the formation program can fit without lots of flexibility or freedom --- for the hermit and for the Holy Spirit! And eremitical vocations require time, freedom, and greater flexibility sometimes than canonical norms can ensure. Also, while dioceses have within them people who could effectively accompany a hermit in her formation and discernment, the diocesan offices of Vicar for Religious, etc., ordinarily don't have the time even if they should have the expertise and willingness (and my sense is this is rare). However, after the hermit is formed in an essential way, and know they are called to eremitical life (which may require the assistance of a Delegate for the Diocese and Hermit candidate), dioceses (beyond the Delegate) are precisely the ones to assist in the discernment of a c. 603 vocation. Thus, your final question is exactly right. Dioceses should think that c 603 is to be used to (admit) to canonical standing a vocation that has been long in development and is already largely "formed". After all, there are other ways to live eremitical life. C 603 is only one way and not everyone is meant to live as a solitary hermit in the name of the Church even when their eremitical vocation seems very certain.

Again, because I believe in this approach to c 603 vocations, I have written about a process which can work for dioceses and for hermits and their Directors (diocesan delegates). It is not a program, but a process drawn organically from the requirements of c 603 itself, and for that reason does not impose arbitrary time frames or stages which are more appropriate for coenobitical religious life. I believe the canon was artfully (wonderfully!) wrought; it stresses the freedom of the hermit within a given set of essential (not optional!) characteristics. The addition of additional and strict time frames, etc., which are not drawn from the canon itself will actually "offend" against the sufficiency and beauty of the canon and the life it defines. Ironically, only a process drawn directly from the canon itself can do justice to the canon and the vocation it governs. 

The single point in the canon which allows this, the single requirement marking the combination of lived experience, one's personal and mature embrace of the essential canonical elements, institutional supervision and accompaniment, and one's growth in and commitment to an authentic (responsible and ecclesial) eremitical freedom is the requirement that the hermit write her own (liveable) Rule of Life. The process, therefore, grows directly and organically out of the hermit's varying and various attempts to fulfill this requirement. 

Addendum: A postscript on the absence of time frames from c 603:

One final word re your question on why c 603 does not provide time frames as a kind of P.S. Given the care with which the canon has been crafted, my sense is the authors wanted dioceses to use the contents of the canon itself to gauge the quality and readiness for consecration of the vocation in front of them. I believe they knew that once time frames were set up in one diocese others would follow and the time frames themselves would become the markers used for gauging readiness, etc. In the various offerings of canonists writing on c 603, what stands out is the use of time frames without any real discussion of the depths of the vocation itself or the essential characteristics of the c 603 vocation. Thus, as dioceses pick up these books, they fasten on the time frames (for these are more easily understandable and accessible) and not on true discernment of an eremitical vocation. The approach of hermits to the matter is quite different --- give the individual time to grow into a contemplative and then, if they feel called to this, into a hermit, and perhaps too, to one with a c 603 vocation (again, there are other avenues for living eremitical life, after all). In such a process, the hermit will need to find someone who can accompany her through all of this, and she will turn to the diocese with whom she will discern the vocation mutually when she reaches this point of readiness.

Feast of the Baptism of Jesus (Reprise)

 Of all the feasts we celebrate, this Sunday's feast of the baptism of Jesus is one of the most difficult for us to understand. We are used to thinking of baptism as a solution to original sin instead of the means of our initiation into the death and resurrection of Jesus, or our adoption as daughters and sons of God and heirs to his Kingdom, or again, as a consecration to God's very life and service. When viewed this way, and especially when we recall that John's baptism was one of repentance for sin, how do we make sense of a sinless Jesus submitting to it?

I think two points need to be made here. First, Jesus grew into his vocation. His Sonship was real and completely unique but not completely developed or historically embodied from the moment of his conception; rather it was something he embraced more and more fully over his lifetime. Secondly, his Sonship was the expression of solidarity with us and his fulfillment of the will of his Father to be God-with-us. Jesus will incarnate the Logos of God definitively in space and time, but this event we call the incarnation encompasses and is only realized fully in his life, death, and resurrection -- not in his nativity. Only in allowing himself to be completely transparent to this Word, only in "dying to self," and definitively setting aside all other possible destinies does Jesus come to fully embody and express the Logos of God in a way which expresses his solidarity with us as well.

It is probably the image of Baptism-as-consecration and commissioning then which is most helpful to us in understanding Jesus' submission to John's baptism. Here the man Jesus is set apart as the one in whom God will truly "hallow his name." (That is, in Jesus' weakness and self-emptying God's powerful presence (Name) will make all things Holy and a sacrament of God's presence.) Here, in an act of manifest commitment, Jesus' humanity is placed completely at the service of the living God and of those to whom God is committed. Here his experience as one set apart or consecrated by and for God establishes God as completely united with us and our human condition. This solidarity is reflected in his statement to John that together they must fulfill the will of God. And here too Jesus anticipates the death and resurrection he will suffer for the sake of both human and Divine destinies which, in him, will be reconciled and inextricably wed to one another. His baptism establishes the pattern not only of HIS humanity, but that of all authentic humanity. So too does it reveal the nature of true Divinity, for our's is a God who becomes completely subject to our sinful reality in order to free us for his own entirely holy one.

I suspect that even at the end of the Christmas season we are still scandalized by the incarnation. (Recent conversations on CV's and secularity make me even surer of this!) We still stumble over the intelligibility of this baptism, and the propriety of it especially. Our inability to fathom Jesus' own baptism, and our tendency to be shocked by it because of Jesus' identity, just as JohnBp was probably shocked, says we are not comfortable, even now, with a God who enters exhaustively into our reality. We remain uncomfortable with a Jesus who is tempted like us in ALL THINGS, and matures into his identity as God's only begotten Son.

We are puzzled by one who is holy as God is holy and, as the creed affirms, "true God from true God" and who, even so, is consecrated to and by the one he calls Abba --- and commissioned to the service of this Abba's Kingdom and people. A God who wholly identifies with us, takes on our sinfulness, and comes to us in smallness, weakness, submission and self-emptying is really not a God we are comfortable with --- despite three weeks of Christmas celebrations and reflections, and a prior four weeks of preparation -- is it? In fact, none of this was comfortable for Jews or early Christians either. The Jewish leadership was upset by JnBp's baptisms generally because they took place outside the Temple precincts and structures (that is, in the realm we literally call profane). Early Christians (Jewish and otherwise) were embarrassed by Jesus' baptism by John --- as Matt's added explanation of the reasons for it in vv 14-15 indicate. They were concerned that perhaps it indicated Jesus' inferiority to John the Baptist, and they wondered if maybe it meant that Jesus had sinned prior to his baptism. And perhaps this embarrassment is as it should be. Perhaps the scandal attached to this baptism signals to us we are beginning to get things right theologically.

After all, today's feast tells us that Jesus' public ministry begins with a ritual washing, consecration, and commissioning by God which is similar to our own baptismal consecration. The difference is that Jesus' freely accepts life under the sway of sin in his baptism just as he wholeheartedly embraces a public (and one could cogently argue, a thoroughly secular) vocation to proclaim God's sovereignty. The story of the desert temptation or testing that follows this underscores this acceptance. His public life begins with an event that prefigures his end as well. There is a real dying to self involved here, not because Jesus has a false self which must die -- as each of us has --- but because in these events his life is placed completely at the disposal of his God, his Abba, in solidarity with us. Loving another, affirming the being of another in a way which subordinates one's own being to theirs but gains authentic selfhood in the process --- putting one's own life at their disposal and surrendering all other life-possibilities always entails a death of sorts -- and a kind of rising to new life as well. The dynamics present on the cross are present here too; here we see only somewhat less clearly a complete and obedient (that is open and responsive) submission to the will of God, and an unfathomable subjection to that which human sinfulness makes necessary precisely in order that God's love may be exhaustively present and conquer here as well.

Feast of the Epiphany

There is something stunning about the story of the Epiphany and we often don't see or hear it, I think, because the story is so familiar to us. It is the challenge which faces us precisely because our God is one who comes to us in littleness, weakness, and obscurity, and meets us in the unexpected and even unacceptable place. It is truly stunning, I think, to find three magi (whoever these were and whatever they represented in terms of human power, wealth, and wisdom) recognizing in a newborn baby, not only the presence of a life with cosmic significance but, in fact, the incarnation of God and savior of the world. I have rarely been particularly struck by this image of the Magi meeting the child Jesus and presenting him with gifts, but this year I see it clearly as a snapshot of the entire Gospel story with all its hope, wonder, poignancy, challenge, and demand.

If the identities of the Magi are unclear, the dynamics of the picture are not. Here we have learned men who represent all of the known world and the power, wealth, and knowledge therein, men who spend their lives in search of (or at least watching for the coming of) something which transcends their own realms and its wisdom and knowledge, coming to kneel and lay symbols of their wealth and wisdom before a helpless, Jewish baby of common and even questionable birth. They ostensibly identify this child, lying in a feeding trough, as the King of the Jews. Yes, they followed a star to find him, but even so, their recognition of the nature and identity of this baby is surprising. Especially so is the fact that they come to worship him. The stunning nature of this epiphany is underscored by the story of the massacre of the male babies in Bethlehem by the Jewish ruler, Herod. Despite his being heralded as the messiah, and so too, the Jewish King, there is nothing apparently remarkable about the baby from  Herod's perspective, nothing, that is, which allows him to be distinguished from any other male baby of similar age --- unless of course, one can see him with eyes of humility and faith --- and so, the story goes, Herod has all such babies indiscriminately killed.

One child, two antithetical attitudes and responses: the first, an openness which leads to recognition and the humbling subordination of worship; the second, an attitude of a closed mind, of defensiveness, ambition, and self-protection, an attitude of fear which leads not only to a failure of recognition but to arrogant and murderous oppression. And in between these two attitudes and responses, we must also see the far more common ones marking lives which miss this event altogether. In every case, the Christ Event marks the coming of the sovereign, creator, God among us, but in the littleness, weakness, and obscurity of ordinary human being. In this way God meets us each in the unexpected and even unacceptable place (the manger, the cross, human being, self-emptying, weakness, companionship with serious sinners, sinful death, etc) --- if we only have the eyes of faith which allow us to recognize and worship him!

More on the Process of Discernment and Formation of c 603 Hermits

 [[Hi Sister Laurel, I have read some of the things you have written about the discernment and formation of eremitical vocations. You seem to disagree with dioceses that establish time schemata associated with the canonical stages of religious life. Is that accurate and if it is, why do you disagree with it? You stress an approach which depends upon a candidate or hermit writing several different versions of their Rule of Life over time. How does this differ from a set period of candidacy, novitiate, and juniorate? What happens if someone using your approach decides they want to keep on writing new Rules and never come to the place where they need to leave the idea of eremitical life behind?]]

Happy New Year to you, and thanks for your questions. To clarify one point for accuracy, what I disagree with is not dioceses but canonists who write about approaches to implementing c 603 which are strong on canonical time frames, and formal stages, even as they are woefully short on an understanding of eremitical life or the central elements of canon 603 and the ways a person grows in these. As a corollary, I also disagree with the application of time frames which work well in a communal context but are insensitive to how fluid time can and often needs to be in a solitary eremitical context. Finally, I am amazed at canonists who write in ways meant to codify time frames for growth in solitude but show no sense at all that there are different kinds of solitude --- some transitional, some geared toward growth, others fostering a kind of personal decompensation, some escapist, others individualistic, some assisting life in community, and so forth. 

Eremitical solitude is not transitional, nor is it escapist or individualistic. One may need a period of transitional solitude when one leaves a given context or situation (like active ministry or religious life) just as one will need some times of transitional solitude during bereavement, for instance, but whether these will ever grow into eremitical solitude is unlikely or at least uncertain given the rarity of eremitical life itself. One needs to take care with the type of solitude one is dealing with in a candidate and since types or forms can and do overlap and confuse, it can take time to determine what one is dealing with --- more than it takes in community, for example. 

A Process NOT a Program:

What I have written about on this blog is not a program of discernment and formation (which, I think, is what time frames are meant to define) but a process. In the process I have tried to describe, the diocese provides sufficient support for the person discerning a c 603 vocation --- a small discernment and formation team, for instance, composed of the Vicar for Religious, and someone with expertise in formation in contemplative and/or eremitical life along with input from the person's spiritual director, and/or delegate. The process is driven by the "candidate's" own growth and needs. 

These will be reflected by the Rule she writes for herself at any given stage of discernment and formation, and the Rule will serve as a guide for discussions re the presence of an eremitical vocation, readiness for profession, resources required (extended time in monastic silence, lessons in praying the Divine Office or other forms of prayer, assistance with establishing cottage industries, classes in theology, Scripture, instruction in the vows,  etc). There should be a clear difference in the first Rule a would-be-hermit writes and the second, or third, or seventh, or tenth!! The formation team should be able to see progress in the person's lived experience and understanding of canon 603 and its constitutive elements. More, they should see signs that the person is growing in personal wholeness and holiness, that she is thriving in (and toward!) the silence of solitude even in the midst of the struggles it will also bring or involve.

In such a process the canonical stages appropriate to cenobitic life (life in community) simply have less meaning and are less quantifiable or even distinguishable. In any case such "stages" would need to be applied not according to a specific timetable, but according to one's readiness for the responsibilities associated with each stage of the life per se --- and these are not the same as those in coenobitical life. (A hermit is not being prepared to take on varying degrees of canonical responsibility within a congregation, but instead is being prepared to take a representative place in a living eremitical tradition.) It seems to me that the marker of such readiness is the capacity to write a liveable Rule of life after having written several experimental and less adequate Rules reflecting the would-be-hermit's growth in the life. 

On mistaking the inability to write a liveable Rule as a sign of no vocation: 

I have known people desiring to be c 603 hermits who spent several years trying and failing to put together a Rule. This did NOT necessarily mean they were not called to the life, but rather that they had a good deal to learn and especially, a lot to become consciously aware of before they could articulate it in the way a liveable Rule requires. For instance, to write a liveable Rule which concretely reflects a commitment to be open and responsive to God at work in one's life, one needs to cultivate all of those skills which are part and parcel of truly listening to/for God. One needs to know something of Who God is and who they themselves are, how God has been at work in their lives and the ways they have responded most fruitfully or refused to do so and why. Until one reaches some real degree of this level of awareness, they may be a lone individual, but they have not entered into eremitical solitude --- even as a novice hermit --- and they are certainly not ready to write a liveable Rule of Life.

This means the first several years of beginning to live as a hermit may be full of learning entirely new things, developing new skills, becoming aware in ways one was not aware before, and essentially undergoing a unique kind of conversion of mind and heart which is necessary to being a hermit in some "essential way". The process cannot be rushed, nor should it be shoehorned into the canonical time frame that works for religious living in community. And yet, this shoehorn approach is the one most canonists take, and so too, most dioceses that decide to implement c 603. If a person has not written a liveable Rule in the first couple of years after approaching a diocese with a petition for profession under c 603, dioceses are apt to dismiss them as unsuitable candidates for such a profession. 

Partly, I believe this occurs because the diocesan personnel don't have the first clue about how to accompany a budding solitary hermit on their own journey of discernment and formation, and partly it is due to the more fundamental failure to understand the distinction between lone individual and hermit in the first place. Equally foundationally problematical is the fact that diocesan staff, never having tried to do this themselves, often seem to believe writing a liveable Rule is a simple task that anyone should be able to do without assistance or significant preparation. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sometimes candidates are dismissed as unsuitable because the diocese doesn't actually believe in the hermit vocation at all --- though this lack of belief is rarely explicitly admitted; in such instances dioceses will not be able to accompany a candidate in the way needed. After all, if one does not esteem the vocation, one will hardly take the time needed to appropriately regard the process it requires for a candidate to embrace and be able to represent such a vocation! The process I have outlined on this blog serves to assist both the candidate and the diocese in taking solitary eremitical vocations seriously in a way which is organic to the vocation, to canon 603 itself, and therefore, is not unnecessarily onerous to either the candidate or the diocese.

Necessary Time Limits:

Your question about what is equivalent to the "perpetual doctoral student" problem where someone keeps writing and writing on their dissertation but never concludes it is well taken. There must be some time limits --- or at least there must be signs the hermit candidate is moving towards perpetual profession and the wholeness/holiness of an authentic vocation --- if the formation team is to continue working with them effectively. Otherwise, the process breaks down and everyone's time and energy are wasted. On the other end of the scale, there must be minimum time limits as well. A diocese must be clear that formation in religious life, while helpful, is not identical to that of the solitary hermit, nor in the Roman Catholic Church is canon 603 meant to define a "solitary religious" as the Episcopal Church allows in their canon law, but rather a true and solitary hermit (who is also, therefore, a religious). 

For someone leaving religious life in community (especially in active ministry), time for transition from life in community and active ministry, to adult life in a parish environment  (presuming they entered relatively soon after college), to contemplative life (if one really feels called to this), then to contemplative life in solitude (again, if one continues to feel called to this), and then to eremitical life per se must be given and required. This is so because each of these steps (especially in the beginning) can take various vocational forms, and these too must be discerned and established. Again, asking the candidate to write a Rule of Life which reflects her growing (or shifting) sense of these realities in her life can serve as a focus for ongoing discussion, direction, formation, and discernment of readiness to move in a somewhat more formal way from step to step toward profession as a canon 603 hermit. Time frames can serve as guidelines in all of this and for a lot of it, one needs only a good spiritual director. 

It is only once one is transitioning from contemplative life to even greater solitude that one begins discerning eremitical life per se and may reasonably consider and discern consecrated eremitical life under c 603. At this point approaching a diocese is meaningful, but not truly before this. When one approaches a diocese prematurely (especially before one is a hermit in the essential sense I mentioned above) one may merely ensure that one's true vocation is not realized, much less recognized.

On the Problem of Shoehorning "Vocations" into more usual Canonical Timeframes:

While there are a number of benefits to the process I have outlined, one of its real strengths is the fact that it does not ask a person to approach a diocese prematurely but allows a person to work carefully with her director until it is relatively clear that she really has an eremitical calling. At that point the person has already undertaken a significant personal discernment process which she can then share with the diocese and should be relatively ready to discern with her diocese whether or not she is ultimately called to a canon 603 (a solitary diocesan hermit) vocation. If a person approaches the diocese before this (before, that is, the various transitional forms of solitude, etc., have been worked through, for instance), everyone involved may mistake being a lone pious individual, for being a person with a vocation to eremitical solitude. Professing a lone individual who then calls herself a hermit is destructive to the vocation per se and will make canon 603 itself apparently incredible. On the other hand, if one approaches a diocese prematurely, a diocese can err in the opposite direction, and may decide the process is taking too long and simply dismiss the person as unsuitable for c 603 profession. 

The tendency to shoehorn c 603 vocations into the canonical time frames associated with canonical religious life in community makes either of these mistakes likely. In the first instance, the eremitical vocation is demeaned or trivialized, and the diocese may decide not to risk professing anyone under c 603 in the future. In the latter instance, a specific public (canonical) eremitical vocation which is a unique gift of the Holy Spirit, may be lost to the Church even though the individual can continue to live fruitfully as a privately dedicated (non-canonical) hermit. Remember that canon 603 was originally written because a number of vocations to eremitism with long preparation in monastic life had no way to be recognized canonically or lived according to the monastic house's proper law. 

As a result, years lived in solemn vows had to be relinquished, the monastics secularized, and ways to live as hermits explored apart from publicly vowed religious life. The long preparation for such a call was not accidental to discovering a vocation to eremitical solitude, but essential to it. For this reason, canon 603 also requires long preparation even though the diocese is not directly involved in most of it. This cannot and must not be forgotten; it is part of the canon's own history and nature.

Happy New Year!!!

I spent some of today and will continue tomorrow reading through my journals from this year --- so much change, growth, and healing that it is hard to believe.  But then, the grace of God is always hard to believe --- even as (whenever it is experienced) it is impossible to doubt. I love paradoxes like this!! God is just SO good!!! The fruitfulness of grace is especially realized in many small steps of faithfulness. So, I look back at a year of hard and fruitful work even as I look forward to another one of the same. The needs of our parishes, communities, neighborhoods, and country cry out for the grace of God. Each of us is meant to be a temple of that grace, that active presence, and our hearts are meant to bring the newness of eternity into the fragility and temporality of our world. This is the vocation of every person, no matter their state of life, nor their age or station. 

We Christians believe that because (he) is eternal and living our God is the ground and source of genuine newness (kainetes). We believe that he is a God who transfigures all of reality into something hope-filled and meaningful with (his) presence. We believe that in Christ we can and are called to cooperate with God in his creative and redemptive activity as he brings about a world where heaven and earth profoundly interpenetrate one another, and where one day God will be all in all. On this holiday, as so many make lists of goals and resolutions for the New Year, may each of us look to the God who is source of all blessings, and recommit ourselves to a time in which God's own projects in us and in all we know, and love may be brought to fulfillment. May God respond to our deepest needs with a presence that transforms all need into blessing! 

That is my prayer for each and all of us. All good wishes for a wonderful year!

Reflecting on the Feasts Within the Octave of Christmas

When I was an undergraduate at St Mary's College, CA, I worked with friends in campus ministry. One year, we planned the College Christmas Liturgy and, as theological students who were a little full of themselves we pressed the college chaplain to let us choose music that had nothing to do with little babies in mangers, etc. We wanted something less "sentimental", less marked by unhistorical Xmas Stars, angels, adorable lambs, charming shepherds, and so forth. Our instincts might have been good theologically, but to some extent we lacked a strong sense of the liturgies involved in the Church's celebration during the Octave of Christmas and the need to celebrate God now-present in the littlest and least! One of the events we look at during this time is the Feast of the Massacre or Martyrdom of the Holy Innocents --- Matthew's unique narrative which helps contextualize the Feast of the Nativity. Just as Mark's version of the Gospel led him to write "a passion narrative with a long introduction," Matthew's Gospel eased any tendency to sentimentality in the Christmas narrative by reminding us that the Christmas star is accompanied by significant shadow!

But is the story of the massacre about something that really happened? There are good reasons for believing Matt's account is historical and not "just" the Evangelizer's "theologoumenon" (a narrative construct created to convey theological truth). Herod, after all, was known as a cruel, paranoid man driven by a need for power and a strong obsession with conspiracy theories. He had been made "King of the Jews" by the Roman Senate in 40 BC, took over Jerusalem with a Roman army, and then maintained his hold on power by killing anyone who might have seemed the least threat. These people included not only a Hasmonean Prince, but 1 of 10 wives, his Mother-in-Law (also Hasmonean), 3 sons, a brother, 45 Jewish leaders and a handful of Pharisees, 300 military leaders, and any number of other folks Herod felt endangered his position or conspired against him. In general he was hated and after the death of his Sons Caesar Augustus noted, "I would rather be a pig than one of Herod's Sons!" When commentators describe Herod's typical pattern of behavior they would note he became fearful, killed whomever he feared, fell into a depression, and then as a response to this, shifted into a more active mode of "BUILD, BUILD, BUILD!!" All of this makes Herod's response to the birth of Christ and account from the Magi as believable; it does not strain credulity --- though it would also have made a powerful theologoumenon!

There is another reason we can believe in this event, however. Often students are told that because there is not multiple attestation in the other Gospels (this is Matthew's story alone!) and because we find no mention of it in Josephus (an ancient historian) or other extra-canonical sources we can't accept the story is historical; similarly they are taught that the huge numbers of children involved (variously, 3000, 16,000, or 64,000 in different Christian liturgical sources) without recognition by Josephus et. al., argues that such an event never happened. But archeologists now know that Bethlehem and immediate environs probably had a population of only 300 people; by extrapolation this means that the number of boys who were 2 years old or younger at this time was only @ 6-7. In a world where infanticide was accepted (or at least not remarked on!), the death of a handful of children by an established murderer and tyrant might well not occasion comment, much less be seen as historically significant. And finally, we ourselves have come to know how quickly people can become inured to stories of harm coming to the least and littlest in our society. Consider the atrocities in Syria and Yemen, or the cruelty now documented which happens to those seeking asylum from oppression daily on our Southern border by US government officials acting in our name  --- and as the Holy Family celebrated in today's Feast once needed to do as they fled to Egypt from Herod's machinations!

No, the massacre of the Holy Innocents and trek of the Holy Family into Egypt are credible as historical events and we trivialize and sentimentalize them at our peril --- and at the peril of our theology of the Nativity and Incarnation when we fail to appreciate the portrait of our world painted by various feasts of the Octave of Christmas. Today it is not uncommon to hear that our world is not as it should be because it is evolving toward the fulfillment God has willed for it; sin is sometimes left out of the equation altogether. But real as evolution is and hopeful as is the image of a world slowly evolving toward fulfillment as well, there are powers and principalities at work in our world which are evidence of sin --- that is, of the universal ratification of anti-Divine powers and principalities and the need for the intervention of God in our historical reality. I sincerely believe that the Christ Event would have occurred, sin or no, as a definitive step in the evolution of our world, but I also know that sin is real and the cosmic light of the Christmas star is bright in part because it stands against the backdrop of sin's darkness.

Christmas is a season of Joy not because there is no darkness, no sin, no oppression and death, but because it reminds us that God has made of our humanity a sacrament of (his) own life and light. History has become the sanctuary of the Transcendent and eternal God. Our God is now Emmanuel (God-with-us) and we, the littlest and the least have been ennobled beyond anything we might otherwise have imagined; in and through Christ we too are called to be Emmanuel for our world, in and through the Christ Event we are each made to be temples of the Holy Spirit. As Advent reminded us, we live in "in-between" times, a time of already but not-yet. There is work to be done, and suffering still to experience. But the light and joy of Christmas is real and something which will inspire and empower all that still needs to be done: caring for, loving (!) the least and littlest so they truly know they are the dwelling places of God; opposing the Herods of this world in whatever effective way we can so the Kingdom of God may be more fully realized by divine grace through time; allowing the joy and potential of the Christ's nativity in our world and ourselves to grow to fullness of grace and stature as we embrace authentic humanity and holiness.

My very best wishes to all on this Feast of the Holy Family and my special thanks to the Sisters of the Holy Family (Fremont, CA) for the charism embodied by the members of their congregation. As they mark the renewal of their vows on this feast we celebrate that they have been and remain a light to the littlest and the least amongst us, to the lost, abandoned, and rejected, the homeless or those who are otherwise without families, and to all those who have found in them a compassionate Presence capable in Christ of healing the wounds occasioned by sin and death. I personally locate them at the crossroads of Mercy and Grace and I am sure I am not alone in this. 

Advent Decisions: In Which Story Will We Stand?

(Revised as Reflection for Parish Masses, IV Advent) 

Awhile back I lost a friend I first came to know back in the early 1980’s. We met at a small local retreat house and came together regularly for workshops, retreat, spiritual direction, and occasional dinners as well as outings together to SF, etc. Years later, when she developed Alzheimer’s, Margaret continued to remember those times at the center as a watershed period of her life. It was a complete joy for both of us to step back into that time and share our memories. It was the retelling of these stories especially that allowed her to remain hopeful and faithful in the face of continuing loss and increasing limitation. She rested in these stories and retained a sense of the meaning of her life in this way. Stories can do this. During Advent, as we begin retelling our faith’s foundational cycle of stories once again, is a good time to reflect on the importance and power of story in our lives.

It wouldn’t be too strong an assertion to say that we are made for story. Weaving stories and allowing others to weave us into their stories is not just a significant need, but a profound drive within us affecting everything we are and do. Everything that is meaningful in our lives is mediated by story – so much so that scientists have concluded we are hard-wired for story. Neuroscientists have even located a part of the brain which is dedicated to spinning stories. It is linked to our ability to imagine ourselves in relation to the world around us, but it also functions to “console” us, to make sense of reality and to compensate us for the loss of personal story in some brain disorders, for instance. Sometimes I heard this at work in my friend as she filled in holes in her own memory so her own story could move forward.

Evidence that we are made for story is everywhere. Whenever we run into something we don’t understand or cannot control, something we need to hold together in a way which makes sense, we invariably weave a story around it. Whenever we yearn to move into a larger world, whenever we imagine and anticipate such a move, again we weave a story around it. Children do it with their dolls, stuffed animals, crayons, and toys of all sorts. Imagine a child explaining what has happened and whispering reassurance to her doll or stuffed animal after a natural disaster puts the whole family in an arena shelter. Watch too as she listens as that special friend cuddles her back and rehearses bits of the story the child needs to hear as it reminds her, “you are not alone, and you will not be alone”. Such stories help this child to negotiate the challenges and uncertainties of the present and move into a more viable future.

Fiction authors weave stories that change our lives in a similar way. We love to dwell in the worlds they create, especially when our everyday lives are stressful, but in entering these stories psychologists note that we also grow in real world abilities: empathy, the skills we need to tolerate being alone, and we become better at relationships and dealing with uncertainty as well. Such stories help widen our own sense of self and let us confront the “real world” with a sense of confidence and  even adventure. Physicians weave stories more subtly, maybe, when they use a patient’s symptoms to determine diagnoses, treatment plans, and prognoses. Historians use story to explain the significance of events and allow us to engage with the past, present and future when they do this well. Scientists and theologians do something similar when they spin very different but complementary and deeply true stories to explain the nature of reality.

At their very best, hearing and telling stories helps create a sacred space and healing dynamic where we can truly be ourselves and stand authentically with others in the present. When someone we love dies it is natural that we come together to tell stories, including those of Christ and the way he lived, died, and was raised. Doing so helps to knit the broken threads of our stories into something new and promising --- a new and hopeful narrative which eases grief and leads to a future marked by promise and hard-won wisdom. Couples deciding to have a new baby, families who choose to adopt are making the tremendous choice to allow the breaking open and reshaping of their stories as they give these children a name and place to stand in their lives and even in the greater world. Therapists, priests, and spiritual directors help us to hear, claim, and tell our truest stories, especially when they are difficult or overwhelming, unworthy of us, or (at least so far) unable to have been fully processed. Especially healing is the way these “pastoral ministers of personal story” allow us to be deeply heard and to find rest in acceptance, forgiveness, and new beginnings.

So profoundly human and humanizing is our capacity and need for story that the Church’s greatest acts of worship take the form of story. Our liturgy of the Word is, of course, made up of stories that challenge, console, and inspire us as only the Word of God can do. And listen today as we recite the Creed together. It is not composed of a series of disparate beliefs or dogmas but is a coherent story in which we find meaning, hope, and peace together as a single People of God. Even the act of Consecration is accomplished by the recounting of a story we embrace and let embrace us in our great Amen of faith: “On the night before he died, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it saying, ‘This is my body. . .’ Then he took the cup, blessed it saying, this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. . .’” We are asked then to reenact or retell this story with our lives, and to do so in memory of Him. In these mysterious and sacred acts of storytelling and our reception of them, the most profound potential of story is made real among us: viz., our deepest hungers and needs are met and we are made truly human as we accept a central place in God’s own life and allow God a place in ours. In so many ways our capacity for story is a blessing.

But not always! Sometimes we do get caught up in or substitute stories that are unworthy of us and therefore of God as well. When we do, we are deeply diminished. For instance, when young people opt to join a gang, they are telling themselves and their world a story of status, power, community and belonging rather than the story of relative powerlessness and emptiness they feel caught in. Or consider the kinds of stories adults who choose to have affairs tell themselves --- stories our world colludes in in every way possible, stories about a selfish notion of “Freedom” and love, eternal youth, the importance of physical attractiveness and immediate gratification.

At the same time, think about the realities these folks must deny or suppress --- things like genuine faithfulness, sacrifice, and humility, the importance of patience, generosity, and service --- and all of the other dimensions that are part of the abundant life God wills for and offers us in Christ. Substituting (or as happens in instances of abuse and neglect, being caught up and enmeshed in) partial and inadequate or distorted stories can skew our own lives and prevent us from becoming the persons God calls us to be.

And of course, today we find ourselves dealing with more than one pandemic. The first one is about COVID-19; the second one is about story-telling-gone-awry. In some ways, this is even more deadly than the first pandemic. There are all sorts of stories being told, and I am sure you have heard them ---from the notion that President Biden is a malfunctioning robot disguised to appear human, to the notion that Lizard People control our politics and feed off our emotions to the idea that our planet is controlled by an evil cult that engages in child trafficking and on and on. A tendency to conspiracy theories, false narratives, a need to blame others, and an allergy to objective truth in a world under threat seem to have nudged that part of the brain I mentioned earlier into outright lunacy in these cases. We want to shake our heads and laugh at these stories, but they are dangerous. Yet, because we are made for story, when our lives seem empty, powerless, and without hope, we will latch onto stories which feed even the worst tendencies within us at the expense of others which are more worthy of us.

It shouldn’t surprise us then that the Genesis account of humanity’s “fall from Grace” centers around the fact that, at evil’s urging, Adam and Eve swap the story they experience as they walk intimately with God --- the story about themselves, their world, and God’s place in it with them -- for another view of reality they prefer to believe. In THIS story eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil (rather than knowing just the truly Good) will supposedly not bring death. In THIS story God is portrayed as petty and a liar. In this story human maturity and responsibility is exchanged for self-consciousness, fear, and a blame game that we recognize replaying in one form and another every evening on some versions of the “news.” To choose a false narrative or to be caught up by such a story in this way is the very essence of sin. It separates us from the very source of life and light, it cripples our relationships, and it weakens and even destroys our capacity for truth. Sometimes the stories we embrace and hand on as truth are a curse.

If the fact that we are hard-wired for story is both blessing and curse, then it is also the way home. You see, it is not just that we are hard-wired for story; it is that we are made, hard-wired even, for God's own story. The cycle of stories we began just 4 weeks ago says that in our lostness, God comes to us in Christ and in Christ, God works to free us from sin – the state where we miss the mark of our true humanity --- and gives us a new home – a new narrative in which we can be our real selves. Jesus frees us from the distorted, inadequate, and unworthy scripts and stories we live by. One of the ways he does this is with the powerful and uniquely engaging stories we call parables. In telling us these stories he offers us a place to stand in God’s own story, God’s own reign, as he makes our own stories his.

The word parable is made up of two Greek words, "para" (alongside of, as in parallel lines, parallel parking, paralegals, and paramedics --- lines running equidistant alongside one another and legal and medical professionals who work alongside attorneys and physicians). The second word is "balein" (to throw down).

What Jesus typically does in his parables is to throw down one set of values, a single perspective, one story or situation his hearers know well and identify with personally. They will begin spinning the story as soon as Jesus, speaking with a wholly unique authority, says The Kingdom of God is like, and follows it with something even as brief as “A man had two sons” or “Ten lepers were coming along the road”. In this way the story (and its storyteller!) draws us in and engages our hearts and minds (and so, probably some prejudices as well!). And then, just as his hearers have settled down comfortably in this well-known story Jesus throws down a second perspective or set of values (viz., those of the Kingdom of God) which clearly clashes with the first. Because we are firmly planted in the first set of values, the first script or story, the resulting clash disorients us and throws us off balance. Being off-footed in this way means Jesus’ parables help free us from our embeddedness or enmeshment in other narratives; it creates a moment of “KRISIS” (crisis) or decision; it summons us to choose in which reality we will stand firmly, which story we will make our own. This is what Advent asks us to consider, the question that stands behind Isaiah’s invitation that we Prepare the way of the Lord

In today’s Gospel, two women, one only 12 yo and on the cusp of marriage and motherhood -- and the other beyond childbearing age and barren, have allowed their own stories to be broken open by the unfathomable mercy of God. In a culture where especially the most “pious” or religious will ostracize, ridicule, and disbelieve them, they were thrown off balance by their unexpected experience of a God who ALWAYS surprises and have regained a new balance by saying yes to allowing (him) to do something qualitatively new in and for our world. Their courage – and God-given fruitfulness makes our world resonate with a new hope and promise. Like Mary and Elizabeth, and like my friend Margaret (even in her limitations and loss) -- none of us is too young nor do we ever need to be too old to similarly accept a new and deeper place in God’s story. After all, it is the story we are made and most hunger for, the story which makes us true and whole, the Divine and ultimately, the truest Human Story we are hard-wired for --- the story in which nothing is ever lost or forgotten. This is the great conversion Advent prepares the way for – if only we can bring ourselves to say a whole-hearted "yes!" to making God’s story our own. What greater gift can we imagine or be given?

"What did you come to see?" Letting the deep Questions Surface Within Us

As I look forward to the service for Friday (we will have a  Liturgy of the Word with Communion service) I am reflecting on the readings of the day and the last  blog piece I reposted here on "play", for one of the things I think we need consider during Advent as we prepare our minds and hearts for the new thing God will do among us. Last week the Gospel reading on Friday asked two blind men if they believed that Jesus could heal their blindness. This week the question being asked is implicit but it begins Matthew 11 and continues into the pericope we read on Friday, namely, [[What did you come to see?]]

Both JBap and Jesus have been rejected by the Jewish leadership; they clearly believe these two are unsuitable to be considered the chosen Ones of God, either as prophet or as Messiah. The question posed to them at the beginning of the chapter, [[What did you come to see?]] was also answered in two ways, focusing on two possibilities, "A reed shaking in the wind?]] --- were you looking for the expected thing when traveling out in the desert wadis, or [[A man dressed in fine clothes?]] (were you looking for the unexpected thing when you went traveling in or to desert wadi's --- and even then, were you truly open to the unexpected)? The chapter begins with the situation that neither the expected nor the unexpected the pilgrims imagined resolved their deepest hungers or needs. They were not really open to the Prophet of Prophets whom we know as John the Baptizer. And Jesus? He definitely didn't fit their expectations. Apparently they were not ready to repent or seriously coming to see God sending anyone at all.

When Jesus speaks to them in Friday's readings then, he compares them to children playing in the market square with their playmates; they refuse to enter into the games. Some children play the flute for their playmates but they refuse to dance and, when the first set of children wail (taking on the adult role of professional mourner), they refuse to grieve.  Ostensibly, nothing will satisfy them. Nothing, from joy to grief seems to touch them deeply. They are closed, disobedient, or hardened of heart, and refuse to give God the attentive response God calls for.  Further down the chapter this refusal is underscored as Jesus compares the Jewish leadership of Corazon and Bethsaida to Sodom and finds them in even worse shape. So what can we take from these readings?

Advent is a time of preparation, a time when we ready ourselves to see God acting in our world in a new, special, and surprising way --- a way that comes to us from beyond anything we have ever imagined. Friday's Gospel reading encourages us to pay attention and do so in a way which allows a response which is truly worthy of us and the God who comes to us in smallness, powerlessness, and homelessness. What I have said about this before is: . . . it occurs to me that the people of  "this" generation to whom Jesus spoke were seen as incapable of or entirely resistant to being themselves in response to whatever "tune" God plays or sings. It is an almost inconceivably tragic portrait of who we have become when the best analogy to that is of children who themselves resist or have actually become incapable of play! In light of this, I want to make two suggestions folks might practice in this preparation time for the celebration of Jesus' nativity. 

Approaching the Rest of Advent:

First, take time to play --- take time for serious play in something both easy and absorbing. Jesus' example of children who are incapable of playing in ways that prepare them for adult roles in the Kingdom is a devastating one. Again, there is nothing more tragic than children who cannot play, who cannot enter into the games their playmates begin and encourage them in. The Jewish theologian Martin Buber once called play "the exaltation of the possible." Adults often have had the capacity for play bred right out of themselves and this has serious consequences for their capacity to be surprised by a God who is the ground and source of the (unimaginably) possible. We have been so conditioned to work incessantly (even at recreation) and to have the answer to everything (or to Google it immediately!), that we are often incapable of the play which allows the deep questions of our lives to surface. Therefore, the first thing we need to allow ourselves the freedom to do is play in a way, perhaps, we have not done in a while. Perhaps you paint or color, or love jigsaw puzzles; maybe you used to do photography. If so, time to take these up again --- gently, not obsessively, but with a quiet focus that increases attentiveness and openness to the new and unexpected. Play!! It's important and serious work!

Secondly, while at play (and anytime the question surfaces naturally) ask yourself the question associated with this Friday's Gospel and one of those associated with Advent in general, namely, [[What am I looking for?]] (This would be a wonderful question to raise while peering at the world through the lens of a camera, for instance. We are so apt to become aware of the unexpected and hitherto unseen at these times.) God is coming to dwell amongst us, even within us, so what are we looking for? What are we yearning for, dreaming of? What do we need this Christmas to be in light of Christ's birth amongst us?? We have taken the time to travel into the "desert" of play (and yes, it is a desert where we ourselves, God, and demons may be met!), we have relinquished control and allowed our the eyes of our hearts to open gently and wide in this way. It is a perfect time to consciously "live the question" as Rainer Marie Rilke once reminded a young poet. We must allow ourselves to stop and explore the question, [[what did you come to see?]] Was it merely the expected or was it the unexpected? And how will we respond if and when the God of surprises comes? Allowing the serious yet joyful living of such questions seems to me to be part of the very essence of play.

May we each open ourselves this Advent to become people who exalt in the possible, people who play and dream, and in this way are readied to partner with God in God's unimaginable enterprise of love!

Looking to Friday's Service: On the Importance of Play in Contemplative Life (Reprise)

[[Dear Sister O'Neal, I wrote you recently about justifying the inner work you have undertaken in the last couple of years. I thought it pretty atypical of hermits and wondered if you weren't fooling yourself, though I did not put it that bluntly. Now I see you posting about coloring pictures in "adult" coloring books. Are you serious? This is kid's stuff!! Play time!! When I think of eremitical life I think of it as the pinnacle of monastic life and perhaps the most sober expression of religious or consecrated life we know. The Church charges hermits with the ministry of prayer and expects hermits to be a sign of the call to "pray always". The Church charged YOU with this ministry and responsibility! How can your director allow this kind of frivolous time wasting? I am not really surprised but I am concerned that what you do passes for either prayer or contemplative life. Surely it is far from the life of real hermits! Does your bishop know about the way you spend your time?]]

Thanks for your observations.  I had hoped the comments I made on the drawings/colorings I shared contextualized why I do what I do --- at least partly. Your comments remind me that I forgot to specifically mention the importance of play in the contemplative life, indeed, in any truly Christian life --- so let me start there! In the post you reference, I spoke of becoming absorbed in various activities as an aid to growing in contemplative prayer; I also spoke of attentiveness and listening, but I did not speak about a very special form of simply being ourselves without pretense or posturing; I did not speak about play. Play, however, is one of the primary places we assume such a position vis-a-vis reality. We play without self-consciousness; in play we quite literally lay aside many of the attitudes we ordinarily let define us --- even as we also learn to embrace those attitudes which are necessary for living full and loving adult lives. What happens in play is something like what happens when we get drawn into Jesus' parables and unburden ourselves of much of the baggage defining our usual existence in order to be drawn actively into the Kingdom story.

In "play" we are simply our truest selves and grow into ourselves in an unplanned, spontaneous way rooted in true obedience (hearkening) to our hearts --- and thus, to the God who dwells there and grounds our Being. When I was a child two forms of play in particular allowed this kind of absorption and "self-emptying": violin (from age 9) --- mainly in the form of improvisation --- and coloring or painting (well before age 9). These also opened me to the experience of transcendence and community (orchestra especially did this latter).

For reasons that are not important here, I left coloring/painting behind while still fairly young and certainly before I was ready. In doing so, I lost not only a personal gift, but a privileged way of playing, creating, and even praying --- and thus of being myself (and vice versa). It was natural in undertaking the inner work I have done over the past couple of years to pick up coloring again as an effective form of play which was aesthetically, intellectually, and emotionally challenging, expressive, and supportive. I had prayed this way as a child (because prayer and play can be interchangeable -- especially for children!), and, some of the time, when things became  particularly difficult with the work I had undertaken, I prayed in this way in the present as well. By the grace of God, this play was a way to personal healing, reconciliation, and communion with God. Not to be too obvious or heavy-handed about this reference, but you will recall that Jesus said, "Unless you become as little children, you shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven." I think play, the most characteristic form of the utter seriousness (and joy!) of the child, is a symbol of heaven --- of participation in God's own life.

My director knows all this, I think. About 27 years ago she referred to the importance of play; a good friend of hers was reflecting on the reality of play at the time and Sister Marietta mentioned this. We didn't pursue the topic but what she did say struck me and I remembered it. It was only a couple of months ago when, because of the limitations imposed by my broken wrist, I was reflecting with Marietta on my current inability to improvise music on the violin, I came to understand the place improvisation had in being myself in the midst of trauma that militated against this. In the conversation we had that day I described  what "playing violin" meant to me and then, with my own growing awareness of what I was actually saying, I emphasized I also meant "playing" in the more general sense children mean the term when they become absorbed in their blocks, crayons, dolls, action figures, or make-believe worlds.  By extension, and rooted in my own experience, I thus only very recently came to understand conceptually and theologically the potential and meaning of play itself. (In some ways I might not have seen it as clearly as I do now had it not been for your objections about the utter childishness of play and its supposed antipathy to eremitical life!)

But please understand, play is deadly serious stuff! Again, it is the most characteristic form of the utter seriousness (and joy!) of children. Yesterday we heard the Gospel reading where Jesus says, [[“To what shall I compare the people of this generation? What are they like? They are like children who sit in the marketplace and call to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, but you did not dance. We sang a dirge, but you did not weep.’]] When I reflect on that in light of what I have come to know and said here, it occurs to me that the people of  "this" generation to whom Jesus spoke were seen as incapable of or entirely resistant to being themselves in response to whatever "tune" God plays or sings. It is an almost inconceivably tragic portrait of who we have become when the best analogy to that is of children who themselves resist or have actually become incapable of play!

Martin Buber once called play "the exaltation of the possible." The people Jesus was speaking to were incapable of "play," of freedom and spontaneity, of genuine obedience, selflessness, and the kenosis typical of children at play. They could neither dance with the abandon nor give themselves over to grief in the whole-hearted,  unself-conscious way children at play are capable of. Because of their own religious and other baggage they could not put aside their partisanship or their concern for what others thought in order to embrace the new, the possible, the future God desired to create; they could not (let themselves) be the compassionate persons God called them to be in responding to Jesus (or John the Baptist) and the Kingdom messages (kerygma) they proclaimed.

One more story, a story I have told before and recently I think, might also be helpful here. Around 1993 I was working with a young violinist on the Bach Double Violin Concerto. (She had helped me with Scottish Fiddle and was now working with me on Classical violin!) During this time we had a conversation regarding improvisation because both she and I loved to do that (no, not on the Bach Double). In explaining her own experience Laura described seeing "a river of music moving throughout the universe." When she improvised, she said,  she experienced/thought of it as "tapping into that river of music." I told her I knew the same experience except that I called that river "God"! It was while I was sharing this story with my director that I came to understand how "playing" (improvising on) violin, was a way of truly being myself, a way of being open to God, a way of praying. I came to see it had always been a contemplative way of being. In fact, it was the most natural way I knew of doing that --- and I was only seeing this clearly as I dealt with the prospect and pain of perhaps having lost it due to injury. Coloring is a little like that --- as is the absorption of "hobbies" I described in my last post more generally. No pretense, no posturing, just worship -- liturgy -- because yes, I think play is a form of liturgy --- the work/worship/liturgy of Children of God.

You may not agree with all (or any of) this, of course, but I know its truth as do those who share some responsibility for my vocation. My life as a hermit not only makes play possible; it makes it necessary. As Dom Robert Hale, OSB Cam told me a dozen years ago when he looked at the Rule I was submitting before perpetual profession, "Please make sure to build in enough time for recreation (play) and rest!" He was so right!!