For more than 20 years now, I have lived as a religious hermit, and it has not manifested in the manner in which I had originally imagined. I find that, rather than being in charge of my activities of daily life, my physical limitations are running the show.
I originally intended to devote myself to a daily cycle of prayers and some rigorous spiritual practices common to most hermits, but because of the intensity of my constant global pain, and the severe limitations that it puts on my daily functions, I find that I am in service to my body, rather than my body being in service to my aspirations.
I have gradually come to realize that it is just as well that my activities of daily life have been removed from my direction and control, because it has forced me to live in humility and obedience, to follow the dictates and demands of something other than my imaginative goals. Every hermit needs something that keeps the ego in check, and this is the version that God has decided is best for me. In obedience to Him, I surrender to the reality of the situation.
My spiritual disciplines have necessarily experienced a transformation out of the necessity of the situation in which I find myself. This surrender of my mode of worship is itself a submission to the will of the Lord, and I think it is actually a very good thing in an ugly suit because it has forced my spiritual disciplines to become increasingly hidden and interior.
While on the outside, my body and my life have become grotesque, the merging of my will with the will of God has plunged my spiritual disciplines into a deeply internal state of constant communication with Him who is my all-in-all. This has happened because I am entirely unable to accomplish any of the physical postures or appearances that are associated with what we imagine holiness looks like! I am not even able to keep a regular schedule, as the physical pain keeps me from sleep, and I am up at all hours.
When I decided to dedicate my later years to the Lord as a type of urban hermit, I had originally imagined that my hermit life would find me combining some schedule of at-home daily spiritual disciplines with regular weekly or daily visits to one of several remarkable old churches in my neighborhood. I imagined a beautiful life, surrounded by the memories of the saints, the beauty of religious rites carried on in a holy, incense-filled environment, and a daily routine of exquisite prayers.
But my physical disabilities and constant global pain that makes it difficult and, at times impossible, to walk more than a few feet, combined with the poverty, have rendered a much different scenario.
With regard to the limitations of poverty: I am unable to own a car, which constantly interferes with my ability to manage my day-to-day affairs. This has taken some getting used to because, since I was 16 years old, I have had some sort of car. Of course, I always found it to be expensive, though my tastes ran to the used and tasteful. But, even in those early years, even the most modest car required certain means, if you were going to safely operate one. However, it wasn't the money pit it is today, with all the on-board computerized nonsense. In any case, though I worked from the age of 16, my Social Security income is modest and not nearly enough to purchase a car, once my last car had died.
Many folks presume that I can use public transport, but when you are in a wheelchair, you are vulnerable when you travel by yourself. It takes great planning and nothing is simple. In order to go anywhere, I would have to call some sort of van to pick me up with my wheelchair, and everything is highly regulated, while at the same time the irregularity of my body's abilities requires that I be able to behave in a spontaneous fashion, as and when the body is ABLE to be physically occupied with some task. My physical circumstances need to be responsive to my body, but my financial circumstances require that my body be at the mercy of OTHERS and their conveniences.
All of this was SUPPOSED to have been ameliorated by a promised inheritance, but when my poor father got dementia from Parkinson's disease, his long-time doctors, attorneys and accountants were fired by greedy disreputable crooks who had their hooks in poor Dad. The quack "doctor" who prescribed the pills that killed him eventually went to prison for 7 years for issuing prescriptions in the names of persons he had never met. Look up Dr. Nazar Al-Mussam and his arrest in about 2010, and you can fill in the blanks of this story.
By these circumstances, I have been saved from the curse of wealth, and it is probably just as well, because hermits are not supposed to live in comfort and ease. I had no idea just how painful and inconvenient it would be, but I am gradually, over the years, learning to accept it.
The beauty of what I initially imagined my spiritual retirement would be composed has been replaced by stark and sometimes ugly reality, however. For instance, the giant construction project of my apartment complex has me living in previously unimagined unsightliness.
Both my environment AND my body have become problems in old age. Speaking from the viewpoint of being stuck in a body that does not work well, the time it takes to do anything has multiplied in a ridiculous fashion, and I am unable to hire anyone to relieve me of the manual labors. None of the agencies that the insurance would pay to care for me have been able to supply the necessary personnel. The chaos that these non-religious strangers bring to the hermitage ends up disrupting the atmosphere so badly that I have just decided to dispense with trying to find someone. Instead, I have decided to opt for holy obedience.
Merriam Webster has a lovely definition of obedience. It is, "a readiness or willingness to accept or adapt to a given circumstance." I know that my circumstances are willed or allowed by God Himself, and by welcoming whatever He gives me, I am in union with Him, which is the greatest beauty there is!
Having recently come to terms with the necessity of giving up my previous ambitious imaginings of how the hermit life would look on the outside, I am feeling some measure of relief, in addition to the delights of communing with the Lord internally. This marks the end of a long internal struggle which allows me to create an alternative vision of the remainder of my life, from age 72 onwards.
I needed to decide how to adapt to my body's relative inability to adhere to a schedule of activities. Somehow, I had to adjust myself to be more flexible in response to its unreliable periods of ability, while at the same time adhering to the spirit of the hermit life.
As soon as the apartment complex where I have lived for the last 22 years has finished this enormous construction project in which I am entombed, I intend to do a massive overhaul and removal of everything that is not absolutely needed, so that the beauty of simplicity replaces the chaos.
In the meantime, I am carving out one dedicated space to my fine art paintings, from which I will express the spiritual in acrylic and oil paints. This is something I can do when I am feeling relatively more "well" and which may eventually produce some income with which I might buy a car and pay for a proper attendant who is Catholic and understands the prayerful atmosphere needed by a hermit. The fine art world has expanded considerably since the old days when a handful of galleries had a stranglehold on that market. The creation of the internet has really opened things up - for buyers and sellers BOTH, and it is a great thing.
In addition, I am writing haiku poetry again, and attempting to get myself on a schedule of writing at least one each day. At the end of a few months, I intend to pen them into a beautiful book, add some original artwork, and then sell the book as a piece of original art in itself. Later, I will find a commercial publisher for the haiku and have it printed up and sold in the normal manner.
In this way, some sort of beauty may return to my life, and it will be something I can contribute to the world, as well. I will know if this is in God's plan if it works as I hope it does.
In the meantime, we continue on as we are.
Bless you all!
Silver Rose
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