[I'm technologically challenged, and somehow am having difficulty embedding the photo of Charles Burchfield's (1893-1967) painting: Solitude. I will put in a proceeding or preceding post for you to see. Perhaps at some point I will figure out how to embed in this blog, but thus far the writing gets blocked by the image. Time to finish up some painting of walls in a closet here in Te Deum Hermitage! Time to cease fiddling with the art of computer technology. Praising God I was at least able to rescue the words written, even if not essential to anyone's existence, that is for sure!]
This nothing consecrated Catholic hermit has been drawn to the art of the late Charles Burchfield. I knew nothing of his work until this past year, from postings by the Burchfield Penney Art Center which include photos of his art as well as excerpts from his journal.
I find it particularly interesting in reading the excerpts and noting the dates given, that the artist would often create a work of art, such as the above painting, and yet later--years later--would put it back on his easel and work on it more: reviewing, altering, lending experience and perspective as his life and vocation progressed.
This painting, "Soliltude", particularly draws me. I notice the appearance of a cave opening beyond the pool or calmed stream of water.
Since my own recent need to assess and review aspects of my hermit vocation, events which let my mind, heart, and soul know that all was not as it ought be, required alterations, corrections.
Of course, when we make an alteration in some aspect of our lives and beings, we are not assured that we will hit upon the correction we hope for or desire--or more importantly what God desires and wills for us. We only know and sense that something is not quite right, or that we recognize something seems incomplete, or that there is some new learning or experience which we must try to incorporate into our "art" of living.
The past few days, having set (or perhaps re-set) boundaries as far as how much communication and the types and content of communication, adaptation is taking place. (I'm sure the others of whom I had to request a respite from so much communication, also are adapting.) Adaptation is good, all around!
We grow through adaptation; we evolve. We seek and heed and allow God to further form us in His will and also more in His image.
As to solitude, there is more to it than meets the outer eye. Solitude can be visual, sensory and interior. We may most often consider solitude as being alone. The thought or action of being alone can be daunting if not frightening and uncomfortable--even unbearable to some. I suppose the reaction to sensory solitude is a clue as to our vocations and God's will.
There are a few married hermits in the history of the Church, but if so, they tended not live together. St. Nicholas of Flu comes to mind. It thus stands to reason that those called to the married vocation will not be comfortable with much sensory solitude, nor should they; their life's work and purpose involves a spouse and most often, a family, a career outside the home for one or both after children are older, or if need be, while children are young.
For a hermit, sensory, physical solitude is requisite. The process of adapting to increasing degrees of sensory solitude may take time; but the desire is there, the ability to live in sensory solitude is a grace God gives to those He calls to be hermits.
Solitude is also visual. We can see with the outer eye many examples that reflect or inherently proffer the essence and reality of solitude. A cave, a hut in a woods or field or desert, a lean-to or tent, a burrow, a hole in a tree, a closet, cellar, a nook or cranny such as under a stairway in a building--can trigger in our thoughts a reminder or aspect of solitude.
Even colors can evoke and suggest solitude. Gray tones, bark of trees, stones, deeply dark waters, charcoal of fires--perhaps these hues and shades stir essences of solitude.
Or, we may see someone who appears to be alone--if we remain with an initial case of solitude as that of "being alone". We may see someone who reminds us of someone homeless, or who bears the stereotypical visual, exterior affect of the hermits or recluses of history: unkempt hair, long fingernails, wizened and hiding from the hustle of an active life.
Visually, the more I view Charles Burchfield's artistic rendering of "solitude", the more I see solitude in the scene. The forms of nature, the colors, even the medium of charcoal on paper--all within this work of art delineate and lead further the image of solitude. And the image is not simply exteriorly visual, sensorily so. The depiction draws us into a deeper grasp of solitude as an interior experience, a grace.
Rain evokes solitude, at least to me. Fog and overcast, frost, and heat waves rising from earth, snow, ice, and cloudless skies--visuals, to me, that remind me of the intimacy with God that solitude gifts.
A single word, or a phrase or sentence--can lead to reflection upon the beauty and freedom in solitude.
There can be visual and other-sensory forms of solitude; but all reminders, nudges or outright shoves of solitude, can and hopefully should, lead us toward interior solitude.
And the amount and degree, level, of interior solitude varies depending upon the person and God's will for that person--the person's vocation in this life. And the phases and degrees of exterior and interior solitude will fluctuate--even and perhaps nuanced especially so in the life experience of a hermit.
Thus, lately I have understood far better why it is that a hermit would not be that involved in the details and dilemmas of those in married vocation or active single life. In this way, the hermit vocation finds similarity to a priestly vocation; or as a Catholic hermit is in the consecrated life of the Church, there is more a draw to interior life such as many in religious orders.
However even with priests and ordered religious, a hermit is called to more visual, sensory, and interior solitude than priests and ordered religious. Even those in contemplative orders, are not called to the amount of sensory solitude to which a hermit might be called by God.
That is why a rare few in the religious orders may become a hermit, live as a hermit, within the religious order's agreement but outside the communal monastery habitat.
St. Charbel Maklouf, comes to mind; or Bl. Charles de Foucald, a hermit priest who lived outside the Muslim community in the Sahara. Or in essence and substance, actually, lived Bl. Anne Catherine Emmerich--so confined to her bed in a rented room and tended by her sister, visited by a priest now and then and later on, by a man God sent to write her visions.
(While she did not profess vows in the eremitic vocation, as she was an Augustinian nun whose order had disbanded and dissolved), she is an example of some of the forms and phases of solitude that a vocational hermit would, should experience.)
For a hermit, when there is much noise in the thoughts and the emotions erupt in frustrated cacophony, it is time to bring up to the easel, the "art work" of the hermit's exterior and interior rendering of "solitude". Adjustments, alterations, adaptations are in order. Serenity that accompanies solitude, or perhaps more so enhances and fulfills solitude, must be restored, increased, embellished.
The result will be exhilarating in a daring and challenging way. The element of the unknown and blind-faith of going forth further into the fog, the mist, the unknowns of solitude's interior reaches is worth the awkward moments when one tries to grasp--let alone explain to others--the need for change, for separation from that which is not the hermit's path outward into the temporal world of which so many belong and exist as their rightful place and ways of life.
This is not to say that those not called by God to be hermits should not desire, pray for, and make time for solitude which includes sensory solitude exterior as well as learning to still the mind, heart and soul for some times of interior solitude. It is just that due to their obligations in active life (and this for priests and ordered religious in active ministry or living in cloister but yet surrounded and interacting at various times of day with others), the solitude will be far less, and hopefully, for the times in which solitude can be theirs, to cherish that solitude.
The eruption of frustration, desperation, and chaos of which I found myself feeling "over-peopled"-- even when there was but one couple who physically came on Sunday morning bringing Holy Communion"--has beautifully calmed. Jesus is in my boat, slumbering but awakened to my frantic cries that I was being buffeted and on verge of going overboard from too much intrusion, too much communication, too much dependency by those in the outer world, upset with their temporal trials and various issues.
Jesus has stilled the storm all about me and within me. I had to cut the tethers and set out into the deep, not knowing quite where for the overcast surrounds, not knowing how deep for solitude is unfathomable.
Yet there is such peace and beauty in the exterior and interior of solitude once again. The painting of woodwork and walls reflects a functional piece of art that takes one into its evocations of the essences of solitude itself.
God bless His Real Presence in us!
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