How Eremetic Life Limitations Meet the World

The nothing Catholic hermit is attempting to put the new limitations into practice. The attempt may prove incorrect and need revision. One must begin with a first step. The landscape man said he noticed the gardens were beginning to show signs of getting away from the nothing. The nothing agreed, saying it was depleted from helping a couple actively. But what the nothing couldn't explain was the spiritual depletion, the sense of loss of interior equanimity of spirit--the requirements the Lord has placed due to the circumstances within which He has purposely placed the nothing in this lifetime.

So the nothing, awakened from a series of nightmarish, exhaustive, night work, set sights on getting through this last active effort today. It also wrote a letter to the woman who had asked the nothing to have lunch and to visit. The nothing finally declined, and invited the woman to "visit" via e-mail, and expressed that the Lord is asking not active encounters and active charity but interior modes, of which e-mail utilizes little active energy and also hones the words and thoughts--a plus.

In the letter, the nothing was establishing, also, for itself a staking of the new limitations, much as the landscape man is planting and staking some trees, pulling some back due to the wind that has caused forms to shift forward, branches being trained to new, yes, limitations of direction. And we decided, the landscape man and the nothing Catholic hermit, that the White Pine "Tone" would be planted in a location that would not require the nothing to keep it pinched back, for we do not know what the Lord is doing with the nothing's body at this point. We wait and see.

Today I have the last physical effort for the elderly couple. The man pulled through, miraculously. I learned from this, however.

My aunt is having her 85th birthday on Sunday, and my cousin has asked me to come and go to lunch with them (some of her family members, also).
I must tell her I cannot.

People still cannot comprehend. Even the active work of mercy for this couple in extreme need at this time, has been an ordeal. Yesterday I could not go visit; but the crisis is over, anyway, and all I need to do now is to get them returned and resettled.

It confuses people who say I look so well. I do not share about what is the energy level; or those who know I have pain, after all these years, still do not get it.

Anyway, you may not understand, either, and my cousin might not, nor my aunt. I doubt if after this I will even be available for those in crisis--
unless the Good Lord builds the energy level once more. Silence helps. And solitude. Slowness, suffering, selflessness, simplicity, stillness, stability, and serenity.

Selflessness seems a misnomer for my boundaries which must be set, such as not expending energy on social or emotional but only on spiritual needs of
others in crisis. But, it comes to that, of suffering, for the spiritual needs of people require the most suffering from within. These are the souls in trouble who do not realize it, and there is the teeter totter effect, or the weights and balances. The acts of charity increasingly, for some, must be interior and not exterior actions. The former are not seen; and that is when people misunderstand.

The spiritual need could be of my own, and in that case, I must go physically for confession or for spiritual direction. Granted, there are times when the body feels more capable of physical than at other times. This is not one of those times. The upkeep of the place [cannot say "hermitage"] and gardens, the car, some errands, driving to and from Mass--these are the basics, with Mass being the high need but the others required as living basics.

I hope you recognized the invitation to have the visit via e-mail, for its sincerity, but you may have been offended. I anticipate my aunt might be offended, for she knew (people in [the small town] talk much about what others are doing even if not negatively, and I have learned to be private) within hours via someone who visited the elderly couple, that I have been "busy" helping them in the hospital. She will feel slighted that I do not drive to a restaurant to sit and eat and chat with many people on her birthday.

There is a certain good in people feeling sighted. It is humbling. It is also good to be misunderstood for the same reason. So, there is a kind of selflessness for everyone!

The nothing Catholic hermit will learn if this approach has helped the woman if she responds or not. It will also show if the woman did desire a true visit of a spiritual nature, for that can be accomplished, albeit with more discipline of words and writing, through a letter. Above all, perhaps, at this time of new limitations being set by God upon the nothing, the nothing hermit is writing out what it must do, how it must be. If God changes these exterior limitations (and limitations always expand the interior!), the Holy Spirit will make it known to the nothing.