Do Hermits Have Hobbies?

 

 [[Dear Sister,
     Do you have hobbies? Do hermits have hobbies? Are they allowed to do this or is your life all about work and prayer? Thanks.]]

What a good question! I don't think anyone has ever asked this before and I know they have never asked it in this way --- with the reference to the work and prayer that structures Benedictine life. I don't know if any hermits refer to some of the things they do as "hobbies" (they certainly might and could) but I would say that every hermit I know engages in activities they consider literally recreational. Some may call such activities "hobbies" but I prefer to identify them in terms of their capacity to help "recreate" me by opening me to the Spirit. What I mean is that the activities I undertake here have some power to assist my prayer, to keep me open and responsive to the Spirit of God. I enjoy them, have fun with them, relax with these activities, explore new and different parts of myself, have the freedom to fail, to try again, and to grow with these activities.

So, what things do I do that fall into these categories? The first (but not the most important) activity is violin; I play violin both in the Oakland Civic Orchestra and with chamber groups composed of friends from the orchestra. I also sometimes play Celtic fiddle --- though less frequently than I once did. Violin used to be my primary recreational activity. These days it is secondary or even tertiary. I don't play every set with OCO or even every year these days --- though I have written violin into my Rule to be sure the time and things music empowers are protected. Secondly, I spend significant time each week writing. That may be blogging, writing poetry, journaling, or working on more substantial projects (articles, etc on prayer, eremitical life, or theology more generally). Sometimes it involves music composition. Some of this falls under the rubrics of work and even penance but the line between recreational writing and these others blurs considerably. That is especially true when writing becomes a form of ministry or part of the writing I consider "work." A third form of recreation is reading. This can sometimes mean fiction (Science fiction, fantasy, poetry, mysteries) but it also means theology; unfortunately, I don't always have time for the really "hard-core" theology I would like to be doing --- the kind that excites, energizes, challenges and renews me.

A fourth form of recreation I am coming to use more and more (because I am learning as I go) is drawing. Ordinarily what I draw illustrates liturgical seasons, Scriptural themes, important dimensions of spiritual direction, etc, but even then I am able to play a lot -- with different mediums, colors, and so forth --- and at the same time spend time reflecting and praying in ways I would be less able to do otherwise. Drawing has helped me a lot in journaling and in some of the inner work I am doing with my director. There are times when what we deal with is difficult to articulate; at such times drawing a picture may assist me more than pages and pages of writing. It may also invite my director or delegate into the reality I am seeking to share more profoundly than words are able. Moreover, drawing taps into parts of myself writing alone does not do (the same is true of music!) so it is important to pay attention to those parts of myself and find ways to allow them to speak. All of this is part of being a contemplative and hermit. Finally, recreation includes physical exercise --- mainly walking and some exercise on gym equipment (total gym, time works, treadmill).

You asked if all I do is work and pray. The answer to that is sometimes not so straightforward. Clearly there is room for recreation; in fact, recreation is necessary --- not only for my own physical and intellectual well-being but also spiritually so that I can actually live a life of ora et labora (prayer and work). At bottom everything is meant to serve prayer and thus empower the dignity and integrity of my Self in God. Lines blur because my life is not compartmentalized in the way some people's lives are. Spirituality is not a separate activity I undertake. Neither, in some ways, is prayer. Moreover they each have different dimensions and forms. Work is part of my spirituality; recreation is part of my spirituality; rest and prayer are dimensions of my spirituality. Work (especially reading and writing serious Theology) is profoundly recreational. Work, recreation, and rest all contribute to and segue into prayer. Prayer is both my work and a profound form of rest and recreation (though not in the common sense of that word). Recreation (more usually music, drawing, reading and writing) involves both work (intellectual, spiritual) and prayer. And so it goes!! As you can see, things don't "divvy up" or fall very easily into neat categories! They tend instead to flow into or contribute to one another.

By the way, what I am "allowed" to do is what serves prayer and my capacity for wholeness and love as a solitary hermit. I discern what I need to be doing and include those things in my Rule. The Rule is approved by my bishop. It is first read by my director and delegate --- and sometimes by other religious or monastics who can assist in this way; discernment of what is included is undertaken with the assistance of these folks. I cannot simply do whatever I like, but at the same time my own discernment (provided I have really undertaken this!) is something which tends to be trusted by all involved. The larger questions are not so much what I choose to do but rather, (1) how does this genuinely contribute to my life as a contemplative and solitary canonical hermit along with (2) how is this joined in a balanced or healthy way to the rest of my life?

I hope this answer has been helpful to you! Thanks again for your own question.

On Journals and Journaling: New Year's Wishes and Prayers

 

 Yesterday I finished filling a journal and prepared to begin a new one. It was strange finishing one book at the end of the year just a day away from the beginning of a new year. These two things don't usually coincide so neatly. Meanwhile, I don't know how others feel about this kind of thing but for me opening a fresh journal is always a bit difficult as I prepare to write the first entry on the first page of a virgin notebook. Moreover, leaving the older journal behind usually feels like leaving a trusted companion behind; my journals are the place where I write, reflect, do the growth work and spiritual direction work needed for appointments with my director and delegate, make notes on significant prayer experiences, keep copies of drawings and cards from friends which mark my journey, etc. Figuratively speaking they can be kind of blood-stained: my latest one sports repairs to the spine, is cobbled together with laminating plastic, clamshell clips, and silicon bands ---and is three times as thick as it was before I started writing in it. To close a journal for the last time (except for those times needed to review bits of it) and pick up a new book is always poignant and just a tiny bit resistance-producing for me. And it is exciting as well.

 

Every day really is a new beginning and some events as well as some holidays help us realize this. At every moment God calls us by name to begin a life of newness (kainete) with "him". At every moment God offers us a fresh chance to grow and heal and fulfill the potentialities we carry deep within us. As Catholic Christians we celebrate the truth of this reality by spending Advent and Christmas times in a more especially focused way. According to our civic calendars we celebrate this with attention to the New Year and to resolutions and intentions for more focused and responsible living. The pattern each of these sets for us is the pattern of openness to the new, responsiveness to the creative Spirit of God --- obedience, once again, to our deepest selves, our deepest truth and potentials, a pattern of listening and responding deeply to the presence of God within us.

 

 

In this way we work with God to compose yet another "journal" record, another chapter in a long journey spent seeking God and the fulfillment of God's will in the realization of our identities as Daughters and Sons of God in Christ. So too do we thus close the cover on an older chapter of our lives and at the same time bring all that we have become into the present moment. In this way we become people who rest in the dynamism of a future which belongs entirely to God --- we come, that is, to rest in the future which IS God.

 

My prayer on this first day of 2017 is that we each have the courage and feel the excitement of moving into the future even though it may mean letting go of some well-loved "companions" on our journey. May we not hesitate to commit ourselves to filling page after fresh page of our journey with God --- for how ever long we are privileged to do so. And may we each come to see and celebrate the awesome beauty of a "life-journal" whose ink-stained pages are marked, occasionally marred, but, incredibly, are "cobbled together" and most profoundly inspired by the grace of God in ways which are entirely unique and unrepeatable.

 

My very best wishes to you each and all for a wonderfully grace-filled and fruitful New Year.
 

Sincerely,

Sister Laurel M O'Neal, Er Dio

Stillsong Hermitage

Diocese of Oakland
(St. Perpetua's Catholic Community)

A Contemplative Moment: Here it Begins

  

 

Here it begins in the dark before dawning.

Here, in a barn full of animal smells

The warm breath of cattle, the sounds of the morning.

Here without tinsel or tolling bells.

This is the Word Who was there at the making?

This is the pure and unbearable light?

Tiny and wrinkle-faced, squalling and shaking

Small fists at the vast implacable night?

Who can believe this impossible fable?

But He whose Love proves stronger than all our sins.

A light in the darkness, a child in the stable

Stronger than death itself, here it begins.

 

 

 For all those who read here -- whether regularly or occasionally, for those who have written with questions or comments, for all of those who help me to reflect here at Stillsong on the eremitical vocation and the Good News of a God whose eternal love makes its home in the everyday moments and moods of our lives, my sincerest thanks and best wishes for a wonderful Christmas! May you and your families have a joyful day and season!

 

love,

Sister Laurel, Er Dio

Stillsong Hermitage

Diocese of Oakland

The Word Made Flesh, Chanticleer and Biebl's Ave Maria

This Saturday evening a friend and I attended a Chanticleer Christmas concert in San Francisco at St Ignatius Church. The program included Biebl's Ave Maria --- something which has become expected, and would be seriously missed were Chanticleer to omit it from the program. The first year I heard this I was surprised by it and even a little disappointed; I was expecting Schubert or Bach-Gounod. We are resistant to the new sometimes. But now, I, like my friend, am ordinarily brought to tears by Chanticleer's rendition of this version of the Angelus/Ave Maria.

Some will remember my having quoted Dom Robert Hale, OSB Cam, when I wrote about God shaping and sustaining us "like a singer sustains a note." I have spoken of our vocations to become true counterparts of God, language events which are expressions of the eternal and loving Word and breath of God, responses to God which bring creation to articulateness, and in the past I have spoken of human being summoned out of muteness to become canticles of joy and hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. In all of these ways and others I have tried to provide Scriptural and theological images of the ways we become our truest selves in the power and powerful presence of God, images part of what is celebrated at Christmas and especially in the stories we hear throughout this last week of Advent.

In today's Gospel we hear the story of  the angel greeting Mary and describing her as "full of grace;" it is also an account of Jesus' conception by the power of that same Spirit. In other words Mary is a woman of prayer in whom the breath of God moves freely and who, because of that, will speak her "fiat" to become pregnant with the One who will become God's counterpart in an exhaustive and definitive sense. Mary is indeed the canticle created when God is allowed to shape and sustain her as a singer does a note --- an image of Mary we celebrate especially in tomorrow's Gospel. The dialogue between Mary and God as well as our own subsequent reflection on and praise of this great mystery is captured in Biebl's marvelous rendition of the Angelus. I hope you enjoy it.

On Prayer and Glorifying God

[[Dear Sister I was taught that prayer involves a number of forms including adoration, contemplation, thanksgiving and supplication. My pastor taught me the acronym ACTS to help me remember this. But I read a Catholic hermit saying the following [[ . . . Praising God is different from praying, as praising asks for nothing from God but rather gives God sole glory.]] I have no way of asking her about this statement since she has no contact information on her blog but I wondered if Catholic hermits have a different way of understanding prayer than my pastor so I am asking you.]]

Thanks for your question. Wow. To be frank, I would be surprised to hear any Catholic say such a thing, no matter their state of life or vocation. That's because the acronym you cited is often taught to elementary school kids as a way of remembering the main forms of prayer and to help them understand the way they are to give their whole selves to God in prayer. We all have heard homilies using this acronym from time to time when the readings reference the nature or the importance of prayer. I think I may have been taught this in the late sixties when I was taking instruction to become a Catholic. (By the way, I have heard it presented with "c= confession" rather than contemplation and I will speak of it that way here. I think contemplation would then fit under "Adoration".)

In either case it is important to remember that all prayer or worship is always the work of God within us. The corollary is that we are made and yearn for this to be more and more real in our lives so that we may become our truest selves! Our hearts are theological realities first of all; "heart" is defined in the TDNT,** for instance, as the place within us where God bears witness to Godself. Once we are aware that as we come to God and allow God to work in us in our minds and hearts and as we allow God to transform us in times of need,  joy,  reflectiveness, and love, we also come to be our truest selves, we begin to understand the deepest truth of prayer, namely that prayer is less something we do than it is something we are called to become by allowing God to witness to Godself in the whole of our lives.

The term we use for allowing God to dwell in us and witness to Godself is "glorifying" God. We glorify God when we reveal him to the world. And here it is critical to remember that reveal means not only to make known, but also to make real in space and time. We glorify God when we allow God to become incarnate in us, when we let him transform us into the imago Christi (image of Christ) we are made to become, when, in other words we pray and allow ourselves to become prayer. We are grateful in this way and it is an act of adoration and confession as well. To put this in theological terms we could say that when we allow God to be God in this way we become speech ACTS, language events whose essential nature is divinely motivated and shaped.

Hermits are contemplatives not only because it is a primary form of prayer for us, but because it reflects the way of life we have embraced and cultivated.  In truth hermits have embraced a way of life which involves a number of types of prayer every day precisely because it is contemplative; thus, it is a life of gratitude and praise, a life where we try to be essentially attentive and open ourselves so that the God who dwells deep within, may "come to us", "dwell within us" more fully (more extensively and effectively) to complete us as the covenant persons we are meant to be. As this happens we become instances of praise --- instances of profound prayer. In my eremitical life I don't ask God for much in the sense of plying him with lists of things I need or desire. That is not to say I do not have such things, I definitely do. But in the main my single prayer is ordinarily a prayer that is an opening of self to the One who would be with and dwell more fully within me to empower, encourage, and celebrate with me. When I am feeling particularly needy the form that prayer takes is, "O God come to my assistance, O Lord make haste to help me." But at other times the form that prayer takes is simply, "Thanks be to God." In my best moments then, prayer is a single act of praise which involves all of the things referred to in the acronym A.C.T.S. but above all it is an act of praise, an act in which God is most truly glorified.

Should I not call this prayer --- as the source you cited seems to imply? Of course I should. Again, at bottom prayer is the work of God attended to and embraced in the various modes and moods of human existence: adoration (the times we simply love God and all that is precious to God); confession (the times and ways we, empowered by the God of truth, say who we really are and what values we embody whether this is verbal or non-verbal and whether it represents us in our strength and integrity or our weakness, brokenness, and falseness); thanksgiving (all the times and ways we act by the grace of God with wonder, attentiveness and gratitude for the gifts of life and the Source and Ground of Life); and supplication (all of those times we especially turn to God in need, in our poverty, in our incompleteness and our desire for union). In each of these we turn to the God who is already present and active within us seeking him to become even more present and active and we do so only by the grace (or powerful presence) of God. In each of these ways and moments we PRAY and become prayer. In each of these ways and moments we glorify God.

** TDNT = Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, The TDNT is a ten volume work including the significant words of the New Testament; it provides detailed presentations of the different linguistic, theological, and cultural contexts of each word by looking at OT, intertestamental, and extratestmental literature as well as at the Greek and other important literature bearing on the meaning of these words. The definition of heart provided above is from the article on καρδια (kardia).

Wait For the Lord

Advent Reflection: Trusting the Process

Over the past six months a phrase which was invitation, challenge, conundrum (unfortunately, it was all-too-frequently that), solace, and promise was something I heard often, namely, "Trust the Process".  Over time I wrote a lot (of course), began to draw some (an old joy I had long ago left behind), and watched as numerous meetings with my director (who lives her integrity in Christ by "trusting the process") produced piece after piece of a tapestry of healing and growth whose overall  design I could never have imagined. In the picture above I see a child completely committed to and absorbed in her work. Like any born-contemplative she focuses on a small area of a very much larger picture, colors it in a way which allows what she is working on to blend with the next section over. She invests each moment with as much attention, love, and creativity as she can. She makes each piece of each drawing an instance of intense care and beauty. Bit by bit she discovers that she is creating an entire universe in this way, a universe marked by a massive rainbow of refracted light --- symbol of her covenant existence with a God she knows intimately but whose face she has not seen and whose name she has not yet learned.

At some point perhaps, after she has drawn and drawn, colored and colored some more, imagined, thought about, and poured herself into these pictures moment by moment day in and day out, she may assemble the pieces and be awed by what she and God together have brought to be. This is the nature of "trusting the process". It is also the nature of contemplative living and contemplative prayer. It is a matter of saying yes to the moment and the piece of work or life which stands right in front of us, even when we do not see a larger picture emerging or even imagine its possibility. It is a matter of saying yes to the one accompanying each and both of us and the God who dwells within us both -- seeking fullness of life for us and to be fully revealed (him)self. It reminds me of the sacred space and time Advent provides for allowing the work of bringing God-in-us to birth; so too, it gives me a glimpse of what Advent both gives to and asks of us.

Without any clear sense of what would come Mary said yes to being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit. I have no doubt she was awed, hopeful, and excited but also, that she was terrified by the potential consequences of that yes and troubled by an inability to see what it would entail. When she pondered things in her heart I can see her considering the emerging picture piece by tiny piece, focusing her heart there and adding whatever yesses needed to be for the larger reality to gradually emerge and be realized in space and time. It is not hard for me to imagine Mary in the place of the child in the drawing above, drawing and drawing, coloring and coloring some more, pondering and pouring herself into these pictures, these moments of life and prayer, "trusting the process" until one day the pieces are stitched together and she is able to behold the child, and perhaps in time, will begin to glimpse the entirely new universe she will help God bring to birth in and through this child.

So I trust the process. One day Christ will be brought to full stature --- as Ephesians puts the matter -- as I too am being brought to full stature. One day God will not only be more truly incarnate in me but ultimately will be all in all. I have no idea what that new heaven and new earth will look like; nor do I need to. For now there remain all the smaller and larger yesses that still need to be said, the small and large investments of self that can only be made moment by moment, day by day, year by year, the focused commitment to draw and pour out my life in covenant with God, stroke by graced stroke until the living light standing at the heart of my being shines forth, fully illuminated, visibly ablaze with all the colors of love -- and in my own small but hardly insignificant way, I contribute to Christ's coming to full stature. This is Advent's contemplative challenge and call.

Trusting the Process Now

Chosen to Clap and Cheer: Embracing the Future With Advent Gratitude (Reprise)

Last week in Advent: Shaping our Lives in Light of the Future I wrote that Advent is about embracing and preparing to embrace the future, and especially the future revelation of God rather than hanging onto the past as an adequate model of what will one day be. I reminded readers that our cosmos is an unfinished reality and that we are on the way to the day when Christ will "come to full stature" and God will be all in all. I also noted that theologians and exegetes today read the Genesis creation and fall narratives very differently than they once did --- not as pointing to a completed and perfected universe which then, through human disobedience or sin, fell from perfection, but instead to a perfected universe still coming to be.

Such a new reading does not leave human sinfulness out of the picture nor does it even change our definition of it much. It is still very much about an ungratefulness we link with disobedience and "falling short" of the reality God calls us to be and embrace in our loving, our stewardship of life in all of its forms and stages, and our worship of the One Creator God. Sin is still about substituting our own versions of God for the real One based on partial and fragmentary revelations and being "satisfied" with a religion whose focus is too much on the now-dead past while we resist (fail to entrust everything in faith to) the ever-surprising God who wills to make everything definitively new. Sin is about enmeshment in this passing world and its fragmentary vision; it shows itself in resistance to the coming Kingdom (the sovereignty and realm) of God which is already in our midst in a proleptic way and seeks to pervade and transfigure all we are and know. Sin is about a resistance or lack of openness to the qualitatively new and surprising (kainotes), the reality we know as eternal or absolute future; when we embrace or otherwise become enmeshed in that lack of openness we are left only with the world of transience and death. After all, sin and death, in all of their forms and degrees are precisely about a lack of future.

Today's readings from Isaiah and Matthew fit very well in underscoring these dynamics, both those of Advent and the futurity it inaugurates and celebrates, as well as of sin and its resistance to newness and future. Isaiah's language is classic for us. He reminds us that so long as we are disobedient to the Commandments of God we have no future; we will not prosper. I think today we need to hear the term "Commandments" as referring to those imperatives of gratefully loving, stewarding life, and worshiping God which are the keys to any futurity. Obedience is a matter of hearkening to these, that is, being open and attentive to them in all of the ways and places they come to us as we embrace whatever they call us to. Obedience is the responsive behavior of those who are grateful.

The Gospel lection tells a wonderful story of prophetic and messianic gifts of God (symbolized most fully by John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth) given freely to God's People --- only to be met with narrow minded criticism and hardhearted ingratitude. God is trying to do something new, trying to bring creation to fulfillment in a "New Creation" of freedom, holiness, and eternal life and human beings representing God's chosen people are resistant. Now John the Baptist himself had come to wonder if Jesus was really the Messiah John had prepared people for; things were looking bad for both John and Jesus and Jesus did seem to be pretty different than the One John had been proclaiming.

Jesus responded to John's questions by pointing to the things God was doing through him to give the blind and crippled a new and full future --- just as Isaiah had promised. Then Jesus uses the image of children engaged in petty bickering as they play games mimicking weddings and funerals. It is important to note that these are ordinarily the most joyful and poignant celebrations of life, love and the hope of a future grounded in God we know. Similarly funerals are those moments marking the terrible sadness and grief of sin and death in separation from God --- though they too may be transformed into celebrations of an eternal hope and future. Jesus reminds the adults listening to him that --- in something that was deadly serious --- God played them a dirge (called them to serious repentance and conversion) culminating in the prophet John and a wedding hymn in Jesus his Anointed One, but they resisted and rejected both. Instead, they criticized John as a crazy person, and called Jesus a drunkard and glutton. Theological arrogance, religious complacency (lukewarmness) or superiority, outright cynicism or hardheartedness --- whatever the roots of this ingratitude it gave no room at all to a faith (trust) that allowed God to do something new in and with our world.

Because Christmas and the exhaustive incarnation of God is, in some ways, not yet complete; because we look forward to the day when Christ will finally come to full stature (Paul to the Ephesians), both Isaiah and Matthew are urging us to adopt an attitude of gratitude and joyful openness to the God of Newness and the future we know as life in God. It is an attitude that contrasts radically with that of the children playing their games in today's gospel or of those rejecting Jesus and John and the Kingdom they inaugurate. Harold Buetow tells the following story which captures the childlike humility, excitement, gratitude, and openness we are to have in relation to the awesome Christmas drama of New Creation God is authoring right now in our lives and world.

[[Little Jimmie was trying out for a part in the school [Christmas] play. He'd set his heart on being in it though his mother feared he wouldn't be chosen. On the day when the parts were awarded, with some trepidation his mother went to collect him after school. Jimmie rushed up to her, eyes shining with pride and excitement: "Guess what, Mom," he shouted, and said, "I've been chosen to clap and cheer!"]]

I am especially struck by how really involved and aware, how truly attentive to and appreciative of the work occurring right in front of one one must be to "clap and cheer" (or to be raptly silent!) in ways which support and move the drama of God's will forward. Isn't this the attitude of praise and gratitude evident in God's followers all throughout the centuries? Isn't this the attitude merited by an unfinished universe moving mysteriously but inexorably toward the day when its Creator God will be all in all?  And isn't this the attitude of obedient anticipation Advent asks each of us to cultivate?

Story of Jimmie's call is from Harold Buetow's, Walk in the Light of the Lord, A Thought a Day for Advent and Christmastide, Alba House, 2004. (Friday, 2nd Week of Advent, p 40.)

On the Hiddenness of Eremitical Life

 [[Hi Sister, I wondered if you find the idea of the hiddenness of your vocation difficult. I was especially wondering if there is some part of "remaining hidden" that is particularly challenging to you? Have you chosen to blog in response to this or maybe in spite of this?]]

Really terrific questions! Yes, there is a dimension of eremitical hiddenness that has been difficult for me, namely, it has been challenging to come to a really adequate or more complete understanding of what I am being asked to witness to or how my life proclaims the Gospel if it is hidden in the sense most folks understand the term. When I considered eremitical life originally I thought it was supremely selfish and in one way and another I have been dealing with residual bits of that conviction throughout my own struggle with the vocation's hiddenness. After all, we have texts like Jesus' clear teaching that one ought not put one's light under a bushel basket but instead place it on a lampstand so that all may see (by) it, and of course there is the clear commandment that we love one another as God loves us. Eremitical solitude and hiddenness seem to fly in the face of these and similar central bits of the Gospel Tradition.

Trusting the Light Mediated by Hiddenness:

If you notice the way I amended the text above regarding putting one's light on a lampstand you will see one of the ways I have come to deal with the apparent conflict between the importance of eremitical hiddenness and also the imperative to share with others. You see, I came to see more clearly the basic truth that it is not so much that we see light itself but rather that we see by virtue of the light. In thinking about eremitical hiddenness I came to see there is a difference between putting one's light on a lampstand so that others might see it and putting the light there so that others may see by virtue of it. The second "translation" allowed me to see that a hermit's hiddenness might prevent folks from looking directly at "the light" (to whatever degree this particular life really is a source of light) but that the light of the hermit's life could still (and in fact MUST still) illuminate the world around her and be a source of light to those within in. In many ways eremitical life is the most radical expression of the truth that we must grow less so that God's glory lives more fully in and shines more fully through us or that it must be Christ in us that is the most critical reality we witness to.

What I must trust is that, in ways I am mainly unaware of, the light of Christ DOES shine through me --- especially through the fact that life in eremitical solitude is something which completes and makes me genuinely happy --- and that it is the real purpose or calling of my life, in the main it is the way I truly DO love others. When I write about the redemptive reality which MUST exist in the life of any hermit and the fact that this must come to the hermit in the silence of solitude I am writing about the same thing Merton wrote about when he said that "the first duty of the hermit is to be happy without affectation in (her) solitude".  The whole quote says, [[The . . .hermit has as his first duty, to live happily without affectation in his solitude. He owes this not only to himself but to his community [by extension diocesan hermits would say parish, diocese, or Church] that has gone so far as to give him a chance to live it out. . . . this is the chief obligation of the . . .hermit because, as I said above, it can restore to others their faith in certain latent possibilities of nature and of grace.]] (Emphasis added,  Contemplation in a World of Action, p. 242)

In a world where there is such an emphasis on active ministry (and rightly so) and such a need for concrete acts of love it is simply hard to see that it is the very hiddenness of the hermit that is actually a very significant act of love which witnesses to the grace of God that has redeemed the hermit's life. So often activism is not a reflection of a contemplative or prayerful core; so often it is an expression of insecurity, the need to achieve for one's own sake more than for the sake of the other. So often active ministry is undertaken in an approach that is more symptomatic than systemic --- it deals with symptoms more than the underlying disease (though the best priests, religious, and laity I know manage an active ministry aimed at the core problem as well and even primarily.) The hermit serves to remind us all that before we reach out to others we must be able to point to God's love and redemption with the wholeness and capacity to remain in solitude, secure even in our hiddenness.

Inner Work and the Witness of the Hermit:

Recently I wrote about inner work I was undertaking with my director. At one point we had a discussion of why this work was personally imperative for me and how it was that it was consonant with my vocation --- especially because the work meant a frequent and regular contact with my director and some significant temporary changes in my Rule. I explained that my own sense was that since the Church had consecrated and commissioned me to live this vocation in her name she had also commissioned me to undertake anything essential to living an abundant life in union with God more and more fully. That meant, I explained, that not only had the Church given me permission to do this work but that insofar as it was essential to my own healing and growth it was something that was an essential part of this vocation the Church had publicly called me to.

Also, despite the intense interaction with my director --- an interaction in which the Grace of God was consistently mediated --- it was done mainly in solitude and would enhance my solitude --- especially since solitude differs so radically from isolation and the brokenness associated with isolation. All of this was done so that I could truly be a hermit living out the primary obligation of the eremitical life as Merton had defined it and as I had come to know it to be. All of it witnessed to what the hermit knows most acutely in solitude, namely that there are incredible, awesome latent possibilities or potentialities marking the place within us where nature and grace meet --- where, in fact, God bears and is allowed to bear witness within us. It can be essential for the health of every minister to be reminded of these deep potentialities and the terrible hunger every person may know to have them realized in relation to God. Thus, hermits serve the Church --- sometimes by remaining completely hidden and sometimes by maintaining an essential hiddenness despite a very limited active ministry --- as I do in my parish and with this blog.

On Blogging:

Thus, the answer to your second question is that blogging is not something I have chosen to do in spite of a call to eremitical hiddenness but rather, something I have chosen to do because of it. I am convinced there needs to be a way of sharing the incredibly positive reasons hermits choose the silence of solitude, why their hiddenness is an antidote to the epidemic need for notoriety so prevalent today, and why solitude is not necessarily a selfish choice but can be one which is made for the sake of others. My own choice to blog also has to do with the need for reflection on hermits' lived experience of canon 603 and the way it is implemented and needs to be implemented for the good of the Church and solitary hermits. Eremitical life per se is so little understood in chanceries throughout the world and so often understood in terms of "being a lone person" or isolation rather than eremitical solitude by so many others. We have to allow the love which drives this vocation to illumine the world --- both in its hiddenness and in the limited access we give others to that hiddenness.

What I have come to understand over the  past decade especially is that the vocation is not selfish and that, paradoxically, hiddenness in the eremitical life is a dimension of one's love for God, for oneself, and for others because it reveals the God who loves us simply for ourselves; similarly it reminds us that allowing this to really be the foundation of our lives is the one thing necessary and the deepest potential of our humanity.