My protestant cousin remains a main contact, but thankfully I have now had contact with a diocese hermit. My cousin has tried to listen. I realize this is tantamount to someone without an addiction trying to comprehend the addicted person's plight. Today I said little other than the relief of knowing one can be a hermit in the Church without being consecrated, although the consecration is best.
For a personality such as mine, with my many weaknesses and other aspects of circumstances, being accountable to someone (a Diocese and the Church--and of course, God) helps with the commitment.
My cousin said, "Well, you can be a hermit and know it inside, just between you and God, and that is enough."
Well, no it is not. This is the attitude of the person who says, "I am a minister and can start my own church, and I know this inside, and it is between God and me, and that is all I need to do this." Or, the man and woman (or homosexual couple) saying, "We are married, and we know this inside, and it is between God and us, anyway, and that is all we need." How would it do for a person to go into a classroom and say, "I am a teacher. I know this inside and it is between God and me and that is enough."
So, the issue is vocation. And while vocation is something imbued deep inside and is between the soul and God, there are certain conditions and responsibilities with vocation. One must consider and enact a real (and discern a perceived) call and have training, experience, accountability, and avow in commitment. In the Church this is witnessed as sanctified.
That is why consecration is so vital in the life of a hermit, as it is in any vocation. While secular "vocations" [perhaps "career" is more contextual, but some if not all careers should be a calling by God] may not fall in the realm of the spiritual as much as religious vocations, again they could and perhaps should. The work world would be a different place.
The act of consecrating, of being consecrated, is a wholly giving of self to the holy will of God. The historical roots of consecrate are connected with force, intensity, sacred. It would be ordained, or as this word's root meaning suggests: put in order.
God knows, and I know, also, that I need to be put in order.
Today I shivered again over the whole ball of wax (as my dad might have said). I realized the chills come from the reality that if I proceed beyond non-canonical hermit status to the eventual state of consecrated eremitic, I could end up losing all my freedom and liberty. This would be it for good, yes for GOOD. (And it would be very, very good indeed.) I recalled how I used to pray fervently St. Ignatius of Loyola's prayer, asking God to take all freedom and liberty. Yes, take my very life. So it is, should be and will be.
If I do not proceed, or if I opt for noncanonical status as a hermit, I will feel incomplete in the vocation, for I know myself, and I know that I will be holding back the option to not be as accountable, to not hand over all of my options, to God. When a window in my imagination opens (and I know from personal experience that I am prone to escape routes) I would buzz out like a fly, dim-witted from hitting myself against the screen. Then, sooner than later, I would be inside again until the next spasm of desperate escapism struck.
Part of my syndrome is the chronic pain. I feel a touch better with some energy, and I think I can go back out into the world of activity. I am squished every time. This has gone on for 23 years, ever since the drunk teen hit our car and life as I knew it up-ended. But part of the problem, and the most significant, is that I fear this vocation. Not a bad fear to admit.
I fear giving up my freedom and liberty, and I mean my most innermost freedom and liberty. I mean the dreams of doing other than what God has chosen for me. And this comes down to the fact that while I love God, or think I do, I do not truly love His command. So each day I pray to love His command, and that I value and honor the hermit life which He has chosen for me. It is a process. It is the process of dying to oneself and agreeing to one's vocation.
I suppose priests go through this, and religious sisters and brothers, and married couples (if they are honest about it). In the hermit's vocation, one dies to one's own desires and earthly dreams and through conscration is put in order to be accountable to God and His Church.
The ideal, I do love; it is the actual living it out that must be loved--loved in the silence, solitude, slowness, suffering, selflessness, stability, simplicity, stillness and serenity of hermit life. There are many unknowns in those nine s' and they hiss at me sometimes like a snake: sssssssss. And this can be s-s-s-scary!
But what are the options when one is called by God and one has discerned that call--and in my case and perhaps others', when one has flown out the window many times over only to be squished and crawls back? To not answer and heed the call has not worked. To not value and honor what God values very much, is abominable. It leads to certain death of the soul itself. Why keep second-guessing? Why hold back? It is fear, and perhaps it feels a bit like agreeing to be buried alive.
Yes, one must love the command, or one does not truly or deeply love, trust, honor the Commander. So I am learning to love God more by learning to love His command. It is easier if one just gives in, stops pulling on the tug-o-war rope, stops imagining all that cannot and will not be possible, stops buzzing about, slamming full force into glass, then flying off with mangled body.
Lord, take all my life, my freedom, my liberty, my all. I give it to You freely, as best I can muster, so I'd better ask you to take my imagination, too, and my stubborn will, my fears, and my desires for anything other than the hermit life. Help me to honor and value it as you do! I want to do Your will, not mine, and I am sorry that mine gets in the way. I want to love the hermit life You have chosen for me, and for the most part I am comfortable in it; but take the remaining obstacles that I myself place, and have them depart. My God, please.
For a personality such as mine, with my many weaknesses and other aspects of circumstances, being accountable to someone (a Diocese and the Church--and of course, God) helps with the commitment.
My cousin said, "Well, you can be a hermit and know it inside, just between you and God, and that is enough."
Well, no it is not. This is the attitude of the person who says, "I am a minister and can start my own church, and I know this inside, and it is between God and me, and that is all I need to do this." Or, the man and woman (or homosexual couple) saying, "We are married, and we know this inside, and it is between God and us, anyway, and that is all we need." How would it do for a person to go into a classroom and say, "I am a teacher. I know this inside and it is between God and me and that is enough."
So, the issue is vocation. And while vocation is something imbued deep inside and is between the soul and God, there are certain conditions and responsibilities with vocation. One must consider and enact a real (and discern a perceived) call and have training, experience, accountability, and avow in commitment. In the Church this is witnessed as sanctified.
That is why consecration is so vital in the life of a hermit, as it is in any vocation. While secular "vocations" [perhaps "career" is more contextual, but some if not all careers should be a calling by God] may not fall in the realm of the spiritual as much as religious vocations, again they could and perhaps should. The work world would be a different place.
The act of consecrating, of being consecrated, is a wholly giving of self to the holy will of God. The historical roots of consecrate are connected with force, intensity, sacred. It would be ordained, or as this word's root meaning suggests: put in order.
God knows, and I know, also, that I need to be put in order.
Today I shivered again over the whole ball of wax (as my dad might have said). I realized the chills come from the reality that if I proceed beyond non-canonical hermit status to the eventual state of consecrated eremitic, I could end up losing all my freedom and liberty. This would be it for good, yes for GOOD. (And it would be very, very good indeed.) I recalled how I used to pray fervently St. Ignatius of Loyola's prayer, asking God to take all freedom and liberty. Yes, take my very life. So it is, should be and will be.
If I do not proceed, or if I opt for noncanonical status as a hermit, I will feel incomplete in the vocation, for I know myself, and I know that I will be holding back the option to not be as accountable, to not hand over all of my options, to God. When a window in my imagination opens (and I know from personal experience that I am prone to escape routes) I would buzz out like a fly, dim-witted from hitting myself against the screen. Then, sooner than later, I would be inside again until the next spasm of desperate escapism struck.
Part of my syndrome is the chronic pain. I feel a touch better with some energy, and I think I can go back out into the world of activity. I am squished every time. This has gone on for 23 years, ever since the drunk teen hit our car and life as I knew it up-ended. But part of the problem, and the most significant, is that I fear this vocation. Not a bad fear to admit.
I fear giving up my freedom and liberty, and I mean my most innermost freedom and liberty. I mean the dreams of doing other than what God has chosen for me. And this comes down to the fact that while I love God, or think I do, I do not truly love His command. So each day I pray to love His command, and that I value and honor the hermit life which He has chosen for me. It is a process. It is the process of dying to oneself and agreeing to one's vocation.
I suppose priests go through this, and religious sisters and brothers, and married couples (if they are honest about it). In the hermit's vocation, one dies to one's own desires and earthly dreams and through conscration is put in order to be accountable to God and His Church.
The ideal, I do love; it is the actual living it out that must be loved--loved in the silence, solitude, slowness, suffering, selflessness, stability, simplicity, stillness and serenity of hermit life. There are many unknowns in those nine s' and they hiss at me sometimes like a snake: sssssssss. And this can be s-s-s-scary!
But what are the options when one is called by God and one has discerned that call--and in my case and perhaps others', when one has flown out the window many times over only to be squished and crawls back? To not answer and heed the call has not worked. To not value and honor what God values very much, is abominable. It leads to certain death of the soul itself. Why keep second-guessing? Why hold back? It is fear, and perhaps it feels a bit like agreeing to be buried alive.
Yes, one must love the command, or one does not truly or deeply love, trust, honor the Commander. So I am learning to love God more by learning to love His command. It is easier if one just gives in, stops pulling on the tug-o-war rope, stops imagining all that cannot and will not be possible, stops buzzing about, slamming full force into glass, then flying off with mangled body.
Lord, take all my life, my freedom, my liberty, my all. I give it to You freely, as best I can muster, so I'd better ask you to take my imagination, too, and my stubborn will, my fears, and my desires for anything other than the hermit life. Help me to honor and value it as you do! I want to do Your will, not mine, and I am sorry that mine gets in the way. I want to love the hermit life You have chosen for me, and for the most part I am comfortable in it; but take the remaining obstacles that I myself place, and have them depart. My God, please.
