More Hermit Hospitality

Hermits are to drop what they are doing when an opportunity for hospitality arrives. Of course, this would include not dropping the spiritual focus of the hermit's life and existence.

The youngest visitor to Agnus Dei has been here three days. She is 15 months old, had never been to a church, has not been taught prayers or seen people pray. She is at an age in which the instinct to testing the negatives has begun. The hermit has tried to drop the usual routine yet maintain the solitude and peace. The hermit and the guest went to Mass two mornings, with the second Mass being difficult; the child became quite active.

The hermit recognizes weakness in the physical endurance. Patience is challenged. An added long-term sinus problem has lent to the exhaustion, in addition to the chronic pain. There has been no attempt, though, to busy the child with going here or there. Frankly, the hermit is taxed with the lifting and getting the child in and out of the car seat!

But the child has had adjustment, as well. The child is used to the stimulation of two parents, much activity, much conversation between mother and father, television and day care, driving to and from, and errands. Plus, there are far more toys at home.

The hermit has maintained the same stillness, as much as possible. There develop times of challenge: after two days the child tests and challenges right and wrong: authority. At those points, the hermit's patience is shaken. Attempts to distract the child fail; a stern word is used: "No!". The power struggle ensues.

How do such small children develop a taste for wrong-doing--evil in a modified form? Is it our original sin? Is it our instinct to test and to desire that which we have come to learn we are not to have or touch?

The hermit's inner peace is increasingly challenged as the visit continues. Memories of the past taunt the peace...memories of rearing three children, solo, and in ill-health. The feelings of inadequacy, of knowing patience wore far too thin, of wishing things could have been different, could have been better, easier, calmer.
The memories extend to childhood and the hermit's grandmother. How did she manage with so many grandchildren, and often alone with them, and older than the hermit but without the physical pain.

The grandmother's patience is recalled, and the realization of such self-sacrifice for years as a widow, and of living with various adult children and their children.

The hermit attempted no other tasks during the toddler's visit. On the final morning, when the hermit had fed the child, to the brim, the hermit needed to eat. The child did not like this slight lack of attention; the hermit firmly explained that it was only fair now, that the grandparent got ten minutes to eat a rather hardened bran muffin adn drink a cup of coffee!

Later, when the child decided to pull large books off a shelf--something she knew was not allowed and had not attempted previously--the hermit snapped the books back, replaced them, and realized that one must be as one is, and this hermit does not tolerate belligerence, not in even a toddler.

G.K. Chesterton writes of boundaries, of borders and frames, in his book Orthodoxy. Much of life has framework, and the boundaries help focus the vision and bring about greater appreciation and beauty in what is seen and experienced. He uses an example of a stage. What would a performance be without the boundaries of the stage, the framework on four sides and back, and no curtains? How could the eyes and mind focus appreciably on the performance?

The hermit learned something of boundaries from the youngest visitor to Agnus Dei. The hermitage remains as it is, in its function and purpose, its designation as a house of protection, respite, prayer and spiritual succor. Visitors enter into the hermitage much as a patron views a play. Once within the framework, the purpose is as within that framework. The visitors enter into the hermit's world, within reasonable expectation, age considered.

Yet, the young one did adapt to quite a change from her world of two busy and active parents, two dogs and a cat, television, day care with oodles of children and stimulation and much noise, and errands here and there. At Agnus Dei there was just the hermit grandparent, scenery as seen from large windows, two experiences at Mass, one trip to the grocery, the silence of Lake Immaculata, and the noise of an occasional train and a rumbling earth mover. The hermit demonstrated prayers before meals and at bedtime, and the little one saw for the first time, pictures of Jesus and was told "That is Jesus" and "Jesus loves you." She saw many religious sacramentals about the hermitage. It was a time of taking it in.

The hermit learned that the hermit does have limits as to what is allowed and not allowed in behavior of guests, even the tiniest. These limits or boundaries are expectations of manners and of learning that some things are not to be touched and other things are. Distraction can be a good thing, but sometimes a rebuke is acceptable, as well.

Do we not have expectations from Our Heavenly Father? Did not Our Lord, as a human child come from Heaven, learn also from Mary, the boundaries of earthly interactions? And that peace reigns in order and cooperation, in good and not evil, and very much thrives in the Order of the Present Moment. Memories and wonderings, past and future, remove the soul from the peace at hand.

The experience of this youngest visitor to Agnus Dei lends itself to the Advent Season, now approaching. It is a time to bring Christ to the young one, and to take Christ to the parents through the young one, and to all who enter Agnus Dei, and to all to whom the hermit meets when going out. It is a period of gestation in which the hermit learns the way of the present, of how Christ will BE in situations of serving guests, of interacting with guests, of living within the framework of Christ-life: learning, waiting in patience for the growth, loving even the fumbles in attempts to be Christ to and in the present, for others--even wee others.