A Stone Underfoot

The hermit vocation has various challenges. Recognition dawns for confession after early morning Mass. When the nothing has but one group encounter once a week in which interaction occurs, or any incidental conversational exchanges or group consorts, the details of such involvements magnify disproportionately to the many such encounters of most people, daily.

Interiority must wed with magnified charity. Charity meets others in reactions and responses, and charity informs the nothing when it is best to charitably draw back from distress and flee (smoothly and gracefully!) to rest in Christ.

The nothing is not out of the sacristan job for the one weekend Mass. It is a growth experience and one in which to practice all the more the charity that the confessor advised. The nothing must react in charity, approach in charity--and if that charity is not returned, to remain charitable. Yet, if certain situations or tasks of others are not properly dispensed, the nothing must kindly clarify. The Virgin Mary would act thus; the nothing must learn to act in kind.

And to think in kind.

It is humbling to realize that out of the one regular situation weekly, there is Trouble. It is humbling to recognize that the Lord knows the nothing is so inept that it needs a small and petty situation in which to learn and grow. So be it. The nothing will also learn to not ruminate on it, for that very magnification of a situation and the desire to flee from it--and not necessarily to go to rest in Christ--but to flee from in panic, is a stone underfoot.

The very tendency to focus on a negative detail, a disruptive and unpleasant encounter, rooted in envy and resentment by a very few women, must not take over a soul's quest for pure charity.
The magnification os such matters is itself the stone underfoot. And a very small stone, strategically placed and foot unaware, can cause a stumbling tumble.

Charity in thought, word, gesture and emotion lift the soul up immediately and the climb up the holy mountain continues. But to ruminate and illuminate, to magnify negativity, keeps the soul splayed out on the ground, face down--or maybe head lifted enough to see if others are advancing to stomp on it.

One must hold steady on steady ground, be prepared for little stones underfoot, and keep walking, keep smiling, keep loving. When the love is not returned, then one can quietly remove oneself--after the charge given it is complete and not before--and return to the Tabernacle seven feet away, or 7 miles or 70 times 7 miles. When one leaves disruptive people, it is only to rest in Christ.

And then, to return the next week (or minute, hour, day) to the duty given, and in that to approach with charity in thought, word (if absolutely required), and deed. Think with the heart, in other words. And do not be thrown off by how others perceive or react. Step on and through and over small stones in prayerful meekness but confident in love.

A hermit must adapt to this aspect of solitude and silence: that the infrequency of encounters with those in the world can become stumbling stones underfoot if negativity is allowed to swell and magnify, leaving bruises and indentations on the mind and soul that ought not be allowed within one's mind and soul to begin with.

A hermit must traverse God is Love as the surest step path.