After dining out with a couple who are in need of friendships, and a spiritual conversation, I drove back to the hermitage, pondering. Why is there a need for a label? What is the Bishop considering regarding my request to be canonically approved a hermit? Or has he turned it over for a decision by the Vicar General-Chancellor-Rector?
Baseball popped into mind. Now, in baseball the Bishop could relate.
A hermit needs a focus, label, position, job description just as a baseball pitcher requires these in order to be and do what he is and does.
A pitcher must practice and focus on his form and duty. He must learn all he can and zero-in on the batter, using total effort on what he is to be and do. Without the label of "pitcher", he would not have the rules or focus; it would not count for much of anything for a housewife to stand on the mound. Nor would it count for much if a pitcher stood in for a housewife. Labels define the job to be done and provide necessary identity for focus. Focus and practice are necessary in any vocation, for success in vocation.
A hermit must practice and focus on form and duty. A hermit must learn all he can to zero-in on the task at hand, using total effort on what he is to be and do. There are rules to be learned and followed. Without the label of "hermit," he would not have the necessary identity or form; it would be difficult to focus and be successful at the vocation. For, what vocation would it be without the label identifying it and the rules defining it?
Yet in both baseball pitcher and hermit, unique form and individual style play through. Certain moves and characteristic details provide variance within the identity and definition. These develop through guidance as well as trial and error, and through past experience of other pitchers and hermits.
To be successful in a vocation, one needs a label which identifies and defines the work to be accomplished. The degree of success for both pitcher and hermit depend upon God-given talent, graces, cooperation, practice, desire, focus, and willingness to put one's whole self into the effort. If God wills a person to be a pitcher, he signs the contract. If hermit life is God's will, then one must make the fiat. A pitcher's contract is negotiable; a hermit's vow is not. A pitcher plays baseball until body gives out. A hermit lives the life of the nine s' (silence, solitude, slowness, suffering, selflessnesssimplicity, stability, stillness, serenity) until God calls the game.
