The Hermit Burns Bridges

Typically, it is imprudent to burn bridges. One can be arrested for arson.

In the prudence department, it usually means that one is not going to be going back into a situation, and the innuendo in the admonition, "Don't burn your bridges", is that one might want to go back.

Sometimes, though, it is best to burn the bridges. Burning a bridge (or more) keeps one from going back into a situation that it might be best NOT to go back. Or, it also has the advantage of preventing others from going over that bridge (or more), for from one person's experience, another can benefit.

In the Gospel, Jesus admonishes the man who was asked to follow Him. The man asked to go back to bury his father. Who knows if the father was already dead or near death, or that the man wanted to go and wait around until his father died. The man wanted to go back over a bridge, and Jesus didn't want him to do that. He wanted the man to obey, to leave what was either dead or would die, and to come alive in following Him. The man became dead himself in going back to bury the dead.

The hermit has recently learned an invaluable lesson about bridges. The hermit for several years has tried to cross bridges, time and again, which turned out to be draw bridges. Once at the middle, the bridge would be drawn up, and the hermit was tossed back, down, down, down.

Finally, the hermit realized that God had other ideas, other bridges to cross. It seemed inconceivable, for what bridges are better than that of a Diocese or the Church?

Go ask St. Paul. He was sent out to the Gentiles.

This hermit has been sent over the bridge into the secular world and not to try again to cross over the Diocese bridge, in any Diocese. It has been a revolutionary experience. Once the shock was over, in traversing a bridge proffered, without having it buckle up under foot and toss the hermit back down into the troll-hole, the hermit experiences a kind of freedom and joy and happiness that have been missing for years.

In the process of being able to breathe again (deep gushes of fresh air into the soul), the emotions cleanse the mind as oxygen to the lungs to the heart-blood. The hermit is replenished, just like that!

The hermit has burned some bridges as a result. In one case, it was a bridge to any work or function in the Diocese. No need to go back over that. In another case, it may well mean not crossing the bridge to canonical approval.

The hermit is an uncommon hermit. The hermit breaks the mindset of what those in the environs of these bridges and countryside envision a hermit to look like, to act, to think, to be.

God only knows, God and what tidbits He feeds to the hermit. This is part of becoming a complete hermit, more complete than being canonically approved or noncanonically consecrated, privately or publicly avowed, privately or publicly consecrated.

Completion has to do with the state of the soul, wherein dwells the intellect and will and all matters ordained and formed by God, in union with God, in cohesion, in completion, with, through and in Christo.