Caryll Houselander Writes of a "Rule"

The hermit read the first chapter of Reed of God by the dear eccentric and mystic Caryll Houselander. The hermit loves to look at Caryll's photo on the dustcover, for she reminds the hermit of the equally beloved Flannery O'Connor.

As Flannery once wrote in a letter that she was a "literary hermit," one could surmise that Caryll was a hermit of the interior vistas in London.

Caryll mentions in the Introduction that "we need some direction for our souls which is never away from us; which, without enslaving us or narrowing our vision, enters into every detail of our life."

This is the need for a rule. The need for a rule of life is not just the hermit's need, but it is the need for every soul created by God. As has been written in previous blogs, the rules of the Virgin Mary, the rules of various saints, the rules of obscure hermits, the rules of great religious orders--the rules are unique to the individual soul or souls. In the case of religious communities, the rule is set but each soul lives out that rule in the unique way God forms that soul...and in the unique way each soul conforms with God's will in that very formation.

Caryll Houselander continues on the topic of a rule:

Everyone longs for some such inward rule, a universal rule as big as the immeasurable law of love, yet as little as the narrowness of our daily routine. It must be so truly part of us all that it makes us all one, and yet to each one the secret of his own life with God.

Houselander, Caryll. The Reed of God. 1944. New York: Sheed & Ward, p. xiii.

The hermit cannot comment on such profundity as this! Sip slowly in the silence and solitude.