Catholic Hermit Given Another Chance

There's been so much occurring in the past week--but this nothing consecrated Catholic hermit has now written.  Been working, trying to build up bodily strength and stamina; and the writing done has been in response to some emails, mostly.

Yesterday had to make a trip into civilization.  Needed a prescription refill plus a few supplies--not many, thankfully.  And with each trip back into the busy world, I get Precious Blood (pick-up truck, you figure the color) filled with another load of black bark mulch.

There are several topics of which to share:  Bi-location experience and confirmation thereof; more incidents of adaption to death of will; example of another death of will with friend given quite ithe vision; medical considerations for a hermit; another type of tactile-kinesthetic praying; praying for death of intellect and replacement with God's Mind; and God giving this hermit another chance with the beloved family member.

While the other topics, particularly the bi-location experience, being of interest, what is paramount to me personally is that the Lord has given me yet another chance with the beloved adult daughter, son-in-law, and little grandson.   It is a grace given, as right before a phone call from the daughter, I had pleaded yet again rather emotionally, that surely His Real Presence could let me have relationship with but one of the three of the children living here on earth?

The phone rings, and it is this one.  As the Lord provided, my body was already in too much pain and the emotions in the old, ingrained pathway.  I did not answer fast enough--had to find the phone.  I get few phone calls and make few phone calls.  This is increasingly so due to my realizing how busy are active people--plus the fact of my pain effects can make it difficult for others.  It is an act of charity on my part to not burden others with what can be uncontrollable effects of pain, no matter that my intellect knows it is only pain.

So the daughter called and explained that a relationship is a two-way street.  Yes, it is.  And I had only sent an occasional message via computer.  I had confessed to a confidante my horrible rudeness and how I'd "lost it" on one of the last times I'd been to visit the daughter and her family.   That confidante advised that I should not reach back in much but to let whatever upset, hurt, and anger have time to heal.  I know one of my irritating aspects is analyzing to what can seem an extreme.  And, I did not want to risk causing more hurt than what I'd already done.

Hermits are far from perfect.  Hermits who are mystics are far from perfect.  Hermits who are consecrated in the Church and who have been hermits for over 15 years are far from perfect.  In fact, parents are far from perfect.  Christians in general are far from perfect.  I qualify as far from perfect; and it seems as if the older I become and the more I pray and try, the less perfect.

Perhaps it is an aspect of spiritual growth to realize how imperfect--but without going overboard into what is known as "false" humility.  No, I won't do that, for it only plays all the more into tendency to over-analyze and then make very false assumptions.  The daughter mentioned she had read my blog and that I made some wrong assumptions.

I was thrilled within that I had been wrong in many of the assumptions.  She took the high road and assured me that they felt terrible about moving away, leaving me without close contact or support.  And, of course, I knew this even though my own intellect and darker thoughts had decided that they actually wanted to leave, to be rid of the burden that I can be to others.

That I can be a burden is a true statement.  I know it.  Especially the past four months I've been a horrible mess of blurred existence, physical fatigue, emotional unpredictability.  I cannot emphasize enough how the pain has increased with age and now is also very much affected by weather shifts, as well.  And increased pain does things to not only body--but to the mind and emotions.  Pain is a thief of life as we knew it or would like it to be...from our human view, from our own intellects.

Regardless, the daughter assured that she does "like" her parent and always has.  Yes, our three years living close to one another started out on bad footing; we had differing expectations.  And the daughter prefers being practical but also to move forward and not linger over disagreements or "storms" that--she is so correct in this outlook--come but also go.  She also clarified that in some of what I'd written, though anonymously, I was incorrect and it hurt.  I am sorry for that!

Oh, yes, this hermit is sorry.  In the time of such pain and the suffering that was going along in the spiritual realm toward the death of my will, the spiritual father was burdened by a phone call and letter.  He did what he could to help, sending two gifts which helped relieve some financial strife.

The Lord has given this hermit another chance.  Although I will not physically be visiting the daughter and her family due to distance, what a gift is the re-opened relationship.  I know it is very good for me as this daughter's soul is a luminous soul and always has been.  I was able to express in our phone conversation, how much I appreciated her all along, for as a child she would generously tend me and encourage when I'd be in bed with a pain siege which happened quite often.  It was too much, really, but she helped carry the cross at an early age.  I thanked her, but I think she deserves a break from it!

Also, for a hermit who is also a mystic, I can see the value of having those in our lives who also can help bring balance.  Being able to listen to and discuss the here-and-now trials and life experiences of those whose mission is with the world and in the world and yet who are Christians living out their missions and purposes, is a marvelous opportunity for someone with a mission of suffering, prayer, solitude and more inclined to spiritual.  Yes, it is good that the Lord gives us variety that balances, for those Christians in the active life are invaluable in their missions and purposes.

I had sorely missed not hearing the details of their lives so that I can picture what they are doing and thinking, and thus all the better to pray while doing my bits of manual labor or when waking up in the night, reeling from pain.

Regardless, I've been given another chance with this relationship; and I pray that I do better.  I don't deceive myself that I will be at all perfect, but I'm convinced that this person's soul--this daughter--is as luminous and generous as I've always thought.  She is able to forgive and to love and like and give of herself.  We keep going, we simply keep going.

I like that!  It is good!  It does not always work out this way in life.  The Lord decides how it is to be in such situations, according to His will.  Once again, I'm given an example of His will within--not mine anymore.  I don't react the same way as I used to.  Even with the resurgence of a beloved relationship, there is a sensibility amidst the awe of God and the gratitude.

I've even considered that perhaps I should remove some of what I'd written out of the experience.  Yet, it seems as well to just leave it as part of the process and the way in which I made some assumptions but also learned to see how the Lord takes us through shifts in life, growth periods which involve losses...but end up with gains even better than ever.  I now have a greater appreciation for this person's soul. I needed to hear that I am liked despite my flaws, and to know that I can serve in whatever ways I need to learn to serve, for I so admire the person, her qualities, her family, the faithfulness and hard-work in her own life, the spiritual growth going on but also the practical, every-day aspects.

While two other of the living adult children still do not want a tangible relationship, the Lord has granted me one.  And I do know that I needed this entire experience for many reasons--including those reasons God knows and I do not.  And I do know that I am far, far from perfect; but it is all right to be in soul school yet or for however long it may take.  How marvelous that the Lord gives us repeated chances to improve!

The purpose of life is to love, to love to learn to love.

Catholic Hermit Shares Pseudo-Macarius: On Earthly Loves

May is the month of Mary, Mother of God.  In this country (USA), Mother's Day is celebrated on the second Sunday of May.  In June, Father's Day is celebrated on the third Sunday.  In the history of the Church, the hermit vocation is one in which many hermits had been married and were parents to children.  So it is that this nothing consecrated Catholic hermit has been considering how it was and is to be a parent and yet a hermit in the Consecrated Life of the Church.

Historically, in some cases, the Catholic hermits of yore who were also spouses and parents, professed the hermit vows after receiving permission from their spouses and children, and with approval of their priest or other such spiritual advisor.  In most incidents of hermits who also were married and had children, life situations played out first, prior to their answering God's call to the hermit life.

In this very first week of May, we find hermits on the saint calendar whose spouses had died and their children old enough to either enter monasteries themselves, or were otherwise on their own by then, so that the parent professed the hermit vows and entered into the hermit life.

One woman had eight children, was widowed, and each child was of age to enter monasteries which at that time often took in children to rear in the absence of parents (and also took them much younger than now, to educate them or as potentially remaining in their orders, when the children expressed desire to be a religious brother or sister).  The patron saint of Switzerland received permission from his wife and his yet-at-home children, to live in a hermit hut in the Alps and fulfill a call he received to the hermit life.

Yet we do not have many specific details of how the parents-to-be-hermits or the younger or adult children of hermit-parents, lived out this shift in parental vocation.  So this nothing Catholic hermit of today, has been pondering what it may have been for the adolescent and mostly adult children of the hermits of yore who were widowed, abandoned by an errant spouse, or whose children had grown to an age of leaving the nest to live out their adult lives.

Perhaps due to lesser modes of communication and also difficulty in traveling, the hermits of yore may not have faced the dilemma of hermits today who have been spouses and parents previous to the call by God to the hermit vocation.  

From personal experience, having been a spouse to a spouse who no longer wished to remain married and left, as well as a parent to three children, the call to the hermit life came in gradual stages and with other terms used.  The word "hermit" was not introduced until a few years beyond conversion to Catholicism and as the youngest child was readying to leave home for college.

Frankly, being a single parent of adult children, two married and one nearly so, and two with children themselves, is awkward.  Part of the awkwardness is having a chronic disability [pain] and part is being single and part is being a consecrated hermit in the Catholic Church when none of the children are practicing Catholics, and two do not claim Christ.  If there were an earthly spouse, there might be stronger boundaries as to expected temporal roles and interactions.  There might be a greater or more acceptable sense of the single parent having a "life" of his or her "own."

As it is now, the prayer time, spiritual reading, writing, book discussion, and spiritual correspondence are virtually unknown or at least unrecognized by the adult children. Thus, it may be thought that the single parent [this hermit!] does not have its own life and thus is kind of out there, as a dangling responsibility or frustration or problem to be looked after and resolved.  One of the three has accepted the task of keeping in contact and interacting.  

However, the entire aspect of the spiritual life as a consecrated hermit does not seem to resonate, or is not understood, perhaps, by the adult child and her family.  This is possibly due to their not being Catholics and partly because when the hermit does interact with them, it is as a single parent and grandparent--a person in physical pain and rather limited in active ways--and not as consecrated Catholic hermit.  The hermit has only recently admitted to the adult child that its main offering and gift to share with others are the spiritual and helping with gardening or other simple, manual labor pursuits.

Perhaps a habit worn or some sort of public recognition might remind that this hermit does have a life of its own, a life of spiritual value with its own rule and way of being?  But this hermit is not called to justify or make credible its hermit vocation through externals.  This hermit is called to live its vocation in the silence of solitude, in praise and prayer and penance, in stricter separation from the world and hidden from the eyes of men.  Yet charity is pivotal in the Gospel Rule of Life--the perfect rule.

Regardless, being a single parent of adult children, especially when the other spouse is physically active, financially well-off, and remarried as are both the divorced parents of the adult child's spouse, makes this phase of parent-child relationships awkward for this consecrated hermit who is also a single parent of adult children.  His Real Presence has figured it out according to His perfect will.  This hermit has not and maybe ought not--just trust His Real Presence and go with God's flow.

When reading a section in the fourth homily of Pseudo-Macarius, the content struck a soul-chord. The elderly friend with whom this hermit is across-the-miles reading the book and e-discussing it, concurred that it did fit well the hermit's unfolding and altering relationship and love of adult children and other family members, the more the hermit steeps in its vocation and is brought to full flavor by His Real Presence, over the present moment spiritual passages of temporal time and experiences.

Whether or not other consecrated Catholic hermits (publicly or privately professed) who are single parents of adult children (and toss in the factor of the children not being Catholics) experience the awkwardness of parent-family expectations of adult children and (hermit) parent, the thoughts of Pseudo-Macarius help this hermit understand better the progression in both "roles".  (Perhaps a hermit priest might also grasp the situation, with previous parishioners not quite understanding the shifted role and life of the priest-called-to-and-living the hermit life.)

"Just as iron or lead or gold or silver, if thrown into fire, will melt and be transformed from its natural hardness to a soft substance, and as long as it remains in the fire becomes all the more a molten liquid, losing its natural hardness because of the powerful heat of the fire, the same is true for the soul that has turned away from the world in its desire for the Lord alone.  It awaits god, unflagging in hope and faith.  It has then truly freed from all attachment to the world....It considers all other things superfluous compared to the heavenly Bridegroom alone.  It rests in his fervent and ineffable love.

"I tell you that even those brothers, loved in God, whom the soul thinks so highly of, if they are a source of leading it away from that love for God, it, I would say, would reject such.  For that is its life and rest, namely, the mystical and ineffable participation of the heavenly kingdom.  For if an earthly, loving participation of spouses can separate the pair from their fathers, brothers, mothers, and all other things become for them rather extrinsic in their way because of their deep conjugal love for each other--for it is said:  'For this reason, let a man leave his father and mother and adhere to his wife and they will be two in one flesh' (Gn 2:24)--if, therefore, I say, earthly love can detach one from all other loves, how much more in the case of those who have been made worthy to enter into a true fellowship with that holy Spirit, the heavenly and loving Spirit?  They shall be freed from all worldly love.  All other things will seem indifferent to them since they have been conquered by a heavenly yearning and have become totally one in that surrendered state."

Pseudo-Macarious continues the Scriptural and holy insights, but we get the flow.  

It seems that the situation at hand for this consecrated Catholic hermit who has adult children and some grandchildren, and various relatives not Catholic and not viewing the hermit as a hermit and part of the Consecrated Life of the Catholic Church but rather from their perspective as a parent, sibling, relative, friend--the best avenue remains this awkward one.  

In charity, this hermit must continue to strive to remove awkwardness from the relationships and simply be what the others perceive, yet at the same time, interiorly be very much living the rule of life, the Gospel Rule, and do so with the platform of the Nine S'* as modality of that rule.  The hermit vocation at this phase is the vocation; the parental-sibling-cousin-relative-friend role is superseded other than in the others' perceptions and needs.

Then, in the vast majority of time and place, the hermit pursues that true fellowship with the Holy Spirit, freed of all worldly love.  The hermit enters into the consuming fire of God-Is-Love.  And, admittedly, some of the awkwardness has resided with the hermit in not grasping God's game plan for this phase of life as a consecrated Catholic hermit, a nothing to all but God's All, though it be.  The hermit has waffled at times in thinking it should enter more into the familial world, or should have specific family love and attachments.  

But no, this is not at all to be.  To love, yes, but in God Is Love--no longer as active, involved, responsible parent-love.  God rights the situation according to His Word.  The adult children are to cleave unto each other and live their married vocations.  If the hermit had a son who was called into Holy Orders, would it not expect that son to live his priestly vocation?  

This consecrated Catholic hermit is, also, to live its vocation in the Order of the Present Moment, which for the past 14 years has been as consecrated Catholic hermit.  The parent role remains in charity of charity, on an as-requested- and as-needed-by-adult-children basis.  And that is not often, if truth be told.  God rights all matters according to His Word and Will in the Order of the Present Moment.

God bless His Real Presence in us!  Little children, let us love one another for Love is of God! Remain in His Love, and all will be as He wills.

*Nine S':  Silence, Solitude, Slowness, Suffering, Selflessness, Simplicity, Stillness, Stability, Serenity