Good Advice for Hermits, Taken from Caryll Houselander

Caryll Houselander, inThe Reed of God, gives what seem to be excellent advice for hermits.

These words joggle the hermit who writes these blogs! It is ever a reminder of the call to silence, to nothingness, to obscurity from any notice in and by the world. A hermit is to be a seed--yes, that seed crushed, fallen to the ground to be buried, to die, in order that life may be brought forth.

"It is not necessary at this stage of our contemplation to speak to others of the mystery of life growing in us. It is only necessary to give ourselves to that life, all that we are, to pray without ceasing, not by a continual effort to concentrate our minds but by a growing awareness that Christ is being formed in our lives from what we are. We must trust Him for this, because it is not a time to see his face, we must possess Him secretly and in darkness, as the earth possesses the seed. We must not try to force Christ's growth in us, but with a deep gratitude for the light burning secretly in our darkness, we must fold our concentrated love upon Him like earth, surrounding, holding, nourishing the seed....

"The light is shining in the darkness, but the darkness does not comprehend it.

"To such a soul in such a condition, peace will come as soon as it turns to Our Lady and imitates her. In her the Word of God chose to be silent for the season measured by God. She, too, was silent; in her the light of the world shone in darkness. Today, in many souls, Christ asks that He may grow secretly, that He may be the light shining in the darkness."

Houselander, Caryll. The Reed of God. 1944. New York: Sheed & Ward, pp. 45-46; 51-52.

The hermit wonders about the sharing of the process of the growth, for that is in a way sharing the growth. Perhaps even in writing in a blog venue, the growth is not secret, not buried in black loam. Yet there remains in this hermit a need for expression, of chronicling the hermit experience, much as a botanist studies the process of a seed and its gestation, its growth into fruition. Anonymity is the saving grace in this. The hermit is no one, nothing, a genderless seed.