The physical pain continues at higher than average levels. The weather shifts frequently, causing this nothing consecrated Catholic hermit to be mostly on the mattress. And soon the mattress will be gone (too soft; company changed formula without notice of what used to be quite firm), and I will be not on the mattress but on the floor. As well, I think.
With the increased pain (debilitating at times), I've utilized live-streaming the yacking of newscasters to distract my mind from the pain. I came upon that by inspiration, and I praise God for how effective are the "talking heads." Years ago when working on a master-doctoral program in clinical psychology in San Diego, CA (was not able to finish it due to...pain sieges), I learned some aspects of therapeutic distraction, of placing the mind from pain.
Meditation can be helpful, but my pain has been so wretched that my mind is quite exhausted, and thus the noise of news is quite simple. Yet, I admit I've become rather sick of it; I'm not used to temporal noise in other aspects. Yet I have praised God for such a simple "fix"; and now I pray for some divine intervention to help me cope with the pain. Rather nauseated today, and my mind cannot think well due to the drain of the pain upon all aspects of body.
I will try music after awhile.
I've been, during less painful hours, reading another collection of writings of the desert hermits. I'm making discoveries! Their lives are helpful in the examples given of some of their circumstances and daily activities, as well as their reception of Holy Communion. Thus far of over 15 hermit saints, only one received the Eucharist when someone brought once a week to his hut. Most often, the hermit would by God's intervention and signaling, the hermit would be told of impending death, and to go to a monastery or cathedral and receive the Eucharist once prior to death.
So this morning the couple from the parish, returned from an extended time away, brought Holy Communion to my unfinished hermitage. I shared with them, asking them to understand what I'd written to my spiritual father (who will understand), that I have not "missed" the Eucharist, yet I need the Eucharist whenever possible, while in my temporal body on this temporal earth. I explained that ever since the first ecstasy during Mass, now over nine years ago, I never had the yearning nor did I miss not receiving the tangible, consecrated Host. The time of union with God filled me in ways I cannot describe; yet I do not miss the experience of the ecstasies.
Those brief times of the of mystical union, of being not in this world but maybe more accurately on the stairway to heaven, sustained me and has continued to do so without my missing or yearning otherwise. Yet since the couple has been bringing the Eucharist most Sunday mornings, I have considered that there has been a linkage as well as strengthening with the Body of Christ Militant. The loving action of the couple has also been rather healing in many ways.
I think the couple understood as best they can, for I wanted to tell them of what occurred in the night. I'd read a few more lives of the early hermit fathers of the desert, and another theme besides the harshness of conditions runs throughout: attacks by the devil. So I wondered about this, relative to my hermit vocation now nearing the 17th anniversary of profession of vows (after a period of discernment and experiencing aspects of the vocation).
I have not had for several years the types of demonic assault to which I used to be subjected--the more external and tangible, demonstrative demonic attacks. (Not able to move, large dog standing on me, fire across the bed, being placed in a plastic bubble with a cat attacking, etc.) I have had some temporal interferences, such as with manual labor and various such obstacles. But I wondered about the seeming respite from demonic attacks as I've learned to put those other types aside: identify the culprit, turn the attack into good, laugh and praise God, then move on.
I had a dream last night. It was of the couple who bring me Communion, and they were not at all as they are for what I've discerned over nearly a year of their coming here most Sunday mornings. Perhaps they've grown to trust me, even, as today they invited me to their family Thanksgiving. (I doubt I'll be able to go, mostly due to the increase of pain with its nausea and spinal headaches, but how open and kind of them, and we will see what that present moment brings, pain-wise.)
Well, the couple were off kilter with deception, and there was great chaos going on in their household. (To this, in my telling, the woman this morning laughed and said that would be Thanksgiving with five grandsons running around.) But in the dream there was an element of some ugliness or even taints of evil surrounding them, and again, they were not themselves. I was saddened in the dream, and disconcerted, to see them as such.
Then when I awoke in the morning, the dream was not the first thought but was the second. The first thought was to do myself in, to kill myself and be out of this constant and intractable high-level pain. That thought created a brief scenario, and I dashed it as I always do. However, I had my answer. The level of demonic assault that goes on not uncommonly, as I reviewed it, is that of trying to get me to end my life of suffering by first-morning, insidious mental suggestion.
As I told the couple, it really gets "old." But, now that I have it illuminated (and wonder why I did not before see this thread of the devil, through the needle poking at me more often than I kept tally (for I push it aside, of course, despite the prick of despair it can bring), I realize that I don't have someone coming with promises of wealth, nor is there some rescuer as in an earthly spouse tempting me to leave off my vocation and return to the world. No, it is this other, the devil poking me often enough; and I might now pay more attention to just how often, and am going to experiment with ways that might put a stop to it, although I guess I've been successful by the grace of God thus far. I'm still around, suffering, enduring the suffering, and laughing when possible.
Anyway, after the first morning nastiness of the devil, I remembered the dream of the couple, and of course, immediately I identified their being not the loving Christian people they are as the devil creating that dream of chaos. And, I realized that this, too, is another answer for me. It was quite obvious the devil was not pleased with the couple bringing Holy Communion after being away five Sundays. And that fact has me realize that the power of the Eucharist when I am able to receive, is what I must continue as long as God provides through such as this loving couple.
Praise be to God for so many answers to thoughts and wonderings I've had on various fronts.
One time in years past, when I was having an extended pain siege, a monsignor was unsympathetic (not the half of it...) to my plight, and then I did yearn. To no avail, on the temporal level, would I be brought Communion; but after the negative phone call, Jesus appeared in corporeal vision (this means He was tangibly present as a recognizable person) beside my bed of suffering. He reached over to me with His right hand in which He held a Host, and placed the Host on my tongue.
This is an event I will never forget, as I do not forget the power of union in the mystical ecstasies during Mass.
So it goes.
Another reminder I'm pondering from reading the hermit desert fathers (have read other books in the past but this covers yet more hermits of Orthodox connection in later centuries), is that of their ascetic existences, which are rather extreme in the telling of their lives. Thus, I've considered how in the past I chose to rid myself of all but basic possessions in order to function in contemporary life, and it was simple and easy.
And I stood out as ascetic and stood out as extreme. And that very point of being "noticed" let me know that I thus was not so "hidden from the eyes of men" as is what, according to the Church, a consecrated hermit is to be.
Thus began my journey, quite by accident or at least unexpected to my view and mind, to end up where I am now, and for the past nearly five years to be stripped and formed and pruned and emptied out in ways I could never on my own doing would or could have accomplished. Even the mattress I have--purchased thinking it to be firm, as another I'd slept on elsewhere was firm--will bring about my sleeping, on the floor in here.
The old, old mattress was increasing the back pain, making me more ill; the new mattress is not sufficiently better so is going to be donated. If I can locate a very firm mattress to put on the floor, fine, but right now I'm too ill with pain to deal with any of the sort. I have learned from my spiritual father to not create my own sufferings, at least not intentionally so.
That point is where my hermit life intersects with austerities and ascetic practices. I take what God decides, what God provides in detachment and austerity; and I take what God provides in sustenance and help when I call upon His Holy Name.
I have no idea what the future will bring, that is for sure. And to refer back to a previous post and the love song I adapted to sing silently to Jesus, "I love Him, and that's all I know."
