PRAYERS NEEDED FOR THE HERMIT

Hermit in a garden

Painting by 

Hubert Robert

(1733-1808)

Since becoming disabled and, consequently, rather poor by American standards, I have been witness to and recipient of the hostile attitudes of Americans toward those on the lower end of the economic spectrum. While it has made me keenly aware of the mental suffering that is heaped upon the poor who already have quite enough in the way of difficulties in their lives, I have also been personally affected.

Although my Social Security is too high to qualify for almost all programs for the poor, I do qualify for a small discount on my rent. (Only the bottom third of poor people are eligible for government programs.) Very few properties have these programs, however, and when I moved into low income housing 14 years ago,  didn't know what I was getting into.

The onsite manager of the low-income property where I live is blatantly rude, greeting me with a pinched and ugly face whenever I try to communicate with her, and turning away from me when I try to speak. She has caused some chaos among the tenants by spreading gossip among us since she arrived here. (I became her target when I objected to her unleashed dog and its feces being left around the property and the multiple cars blocking the fire exit after she moved in.) It just escalated from there.

The manager's campaign of disinformation that was apparently calculated to draw down the ire of my neighbors on my head, has set off an apparently "sensitive" woman who now dances and chants 3 inches from my open windows. One of her performances last week had her chanting in a sing-song:

"Snippy snippy snippy

tattletale tattletale tattletale

You better not report me!"

She kept repeating this for several minutes, while she chanted into my bathroom window, as I was trying to use the facilities.

The previous manager who worked for the same management company ALSO spread rumors about the tenants. A social worker who regularly came to assess the needs of the elderly once pulled me aside and told me that the apartment manager was spreading some ridiculous lie of a sexual nature about me. The woman had a very strange imagination and, even though she knew that I had dedicated myself to God many years before that and that I had no romantic interests at all, I guess she thought it would be fun to just INVENT something. She did this all the time. She would get it into her head that something was true, despite having no knowledge of it at all, and then she'd spread a rumor.

This was the same manager who told me that poor people shouldn't ask for anything to be done in their apartments because they are getting a discount on their rent. They should just shut up and be grateful to have a roof over their heads. Other, similar comments were made. I am paying more than 30% of my income toward housing, yet I am often treated like the deadbeat friend who has been sleeping on your couch for three years.

The entrance to my imaginary hermitage

would be simple, small and inviting

For the longest time, the residents were dictated to as to when they were allowed to take a bath, wash the dishes or do the laundry. In another complex managed by the same company, the residents were told that they could not hang anything on their doors, decorative or otherwise because "poor people shouldn't expect to be able to do that kind of thing," or some such nonsense. ("No Christmas wreaths for YOU!" said Scrooge.)

All sorts of inappropriate measures of control and domination are employed against the poor, especially those who are alone, with no one to defend them. Single disabled old ladies, in particular, have learned to keep their heads down and not ask anything or complain. Most are afraid that they will be thrown out with nowhere to go.  Vacancies are few and far between in the low income housing complexes. The waiting lists are very long. There is simply not enough affordable housing. The housing that is available is in dangerous, crime ridden, traffic dense main streets, in neighborhoods that are usually "food deserts" with no grocery shopping for miles. Still - it is all there is. People who have no power cannot create decent housing out of thin air. They have to take what is available.

18th century hermitage

When I was a normal working person, I rarely had any interactions with the management of the buildings where I lived. I've lived in apartments for at least 40 years of my life, and never had any issues, except for one owner who was a drunk and who began showing up at my apartment, demanding sex. I moved out very quickly. That was an aberration. All my other experiences were pedestrian. I paid my rent. The landlords maintained the apartment. We parted amicably.

I imagined that, upon dedicating my life entirely to God, I would retire to a quaint little cottage, where all I would have to think about would be the God that I love. Having my attention diverted to unworthy topics by mean-spirited bullies is definitely not what I had in mind.

In my imagination, I live in this

"shabby chic cottage"

(with some adjustments for a prayer corner and chair!)

Recently, I read that our new head of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson (a retired surgeon) said that public housing should not be too comfortable, otherwise poor people will become dependent. He wants them to go to work and GET OUT.

Shortly after these comments were reported, it was discovered that he had spent $31,000.00 of taxpayer money for a dining room table, and that he intended to spend another $165,000.00 for a "lounge set." That dining room table cost nearly two years of my Social Security income, and is more than two years of a minimum wage earners take home income.

For a brain surgeon, he is an ignorant man. The vast majority of the poor are either working, have worked many years in the past, are unable to work or are CHILDREN and are not eligible to work. Fewer than 3% of the poor who receive "entitlement income" are able bodied people who are not working.

Evidently, a great number of Americans believe the same hogwash that Ben Carson and the GOP have been dishing out lately. I see it in the behavior of the management of the apartments where I live.

I also have a lot to say about the trend toward property ownership as a means of making money, rather than just having a place to live. "Flipping" properties is partially responsible for the astronomical rise in housing costs. The everyday American can no longer aspire to owning their own home, as a matter of course. A home in Boulder, Colorado that a friend's parents bought for $16,000 40 years ago, now sells for $350,000! That increase is not reflected in a proportionate increase in WAGES, however. Wages have stalled over the last 40 years, but corporate profits and CEO salaries have increased wildly.

I have spent years trying fix the issues that plague this apartment complex. First, I tried to make friends with the manager. That did not work very well. She continued to express opinions that were hostile to the poor residents, especially the elderly ones, whom she did not enjoy, and she spoke bitterly about them.

The current manager came to us from the same management company. She hit the ground nasty. Her demeanor is curt and rude, and that chip on her shoulder is quite large. (I have seen her switch modes on a dime, as it were, when an attractive man walks into the room.) With the tenants, however, she is ice.

It isn't just the tenants who are given the cold shoulder, though. Evidently, service personnel are lorded over by the woman in the front office. A delivery man was almost in tears one day after she abused him. I remember so vividly him saying, "just because she's beautiful doesn't mean she can just treat people like dirt." He was obviously feeling very stressed. He had to restrain his response, and I could tell that it was costing him some brain cells. His face was a little red. Tears were in his eyes, and I would bet his blood pressure was sky high.

In my imaginary hermitage

my kitchen window would look out onto 

a quiet and peaceful neighborhood.

Prior to becoming disabled, I was clueless about the mistreatment of the poor in American society. I never had a lot of money, but I was not on anyone's radar because I never received any services for the poor, even during periods of unemployment. I worked, paid my rent, and minded my own business.

Despite the rude treatment I have received from this manager, I have made a point to remark upon anything good that the management team did for me, and I reported it back to their boss. I think it is important to be fair to people. This was not appreciated. Instead, it was just used against me as "proof" that they never did anything wrong. It isn't anything of the sort, but dishonest people will twist themselves into a pretzel to make the facts into something that means the opposite of the truth.

Since making friends with management did not work, I began to try and get my needs met by reporting to the manager's boss, who just denied that her people had done anything I reported.

I have asked my state representative to step in, but, apparently, they couldn't do anything but forward my letter of complaint, which (after languishing for many weeks in his office) ended up in the hands of the very people who caused all the problems to begin with! Again, management just denied the truth and added some lies to spice things up a bit. They finished it off with a broad attempt at character assassination, escalating the whole mess.

Others who have lived in subsidized housing report very similar experiences of harassment, followed by gaslighting, which just feeds into the popular notion that people are poor because they are of poor character. People are poor because they don't have money.

The worst characters in the world can often be found among the wealthy, when you think about it. Many of them lack scruples, ethics and morals. No one wants to criticize the rich, however, otherwise they might not be able to get some of that lovely money with which the wealthy routinely bail themselves out of trouble when their misdeeds are found out.

In the Bible, it is made clear that the poor will see God. We have the best part of the bargain, in that case.

I imagined my hermitage might be

pink and sweet

Currently, I am in a Mexican standoff.  I have to conduct all my business with management in writing, otherwise they lie about it. A friend attended a meeting I had with the manager's boss and was as disappointed as I was about the result. The boss did nothing but deny and defend.

After 13 years, my patience has evaporated. I did my best to make this situation work, and I can only conclude that, in order to have some peace and quiet, I need to move to a market rate property in a more peaceful environment. In fact, I am amazed that I have endured this long. The Lord has blessed me with a very long fuse.

This experience has made me extremely wary of "low income housing." I can't imagine what else I will have to live without in order to pay another $200 a month in rent, which is what I estimate it will cost, but perhaps the new place will have cheaper electricity. Currently, the electricity in this apartment costs about $165.00 a month in the winter! I have often wondered if I am paying the electrical costs for someone else's apartment in addition to mine - or perhaps the exterior lights or something - but it may just be that the construction of this apartment is very drafty.

I ask for your prayers that I may find a proper space in which to pray, meditate, contemplate and get my physical needs met. My friends have been searching for a place for the last 3 or 4 years, with no luck. Let us pray that something in the right neighborhood opens up. I am hoping to be near friends who help me as well as a good church.

May God protect us all from the bullies!

Silver Rose
(c) Copyright 2018
All rights reserved.

SHUFFLING TOWARD THE LORD

Traffic outside the apartment complex

Put yourself in my position. I am inside my tiny apartment, trying to lift my heart to the Lord. Right outside the window on the back side of my apartment, painters who will be here for MONTHS having been running a gasoline-powered paint sprayer for the last 3 and 1/2 hours.

In the front of the apartment, in the parking lot, the "landscapers" (and I use that term loosely because they do not seem to know much, if anything about plants and especially how to trim them) are using gasoline-powered leaf blowers to move piles of dead leaves hitter and yon. They're also sandblasting any car that has the misfortune to be parked out there. Thanks be to God, I have a garage.

Where I would LIKE to live.

On the street right outside the apartment, there are several giant road machines, working furiously at smashing the sidewalks and lifting great chunks onto a truck that will haul them away. This project will be in progress for the next 30 weeks. First, they destroy what we HAD (including lovely trees in the median that they just ripped out of the ground and stuffed them into an enormous wood chipper), then they place temporary road surfaces, then they take those out when they're ready to install new types of medians for the new buses which will operate down the middle of the street. OTHER business, with more frequent stops, will still travel on the two remaining traffic lanes. This is a very small city...almost still a town.

My understanding is that the mayor owns stock in one company that is working the project, and his wife's family owns the OTHER company that is working the project.  When residents wonder why on earth we are getting this enormous and unwieldy BIG CITY project in our little town, all we have to do is follow the money.

At the same time that the roads are being ripped up in preparation for a transit system we do not need, the property next door to the apartment complex is LIKEWISE being prepared for the installation of a BREW PUB.  A brew pub.

When I moved here, it was a quiet place to live, placed in a natural setting. My health was also twice as good as it is now.

Now, however, my environment is a nightmare of noise and choking dust during the day, and heavy rap music, motorcycle races and dance music from the country club across the golf course that is on the other side of the ditch from our apartments. I can't get away from it, no matter WHERE I am in the apartment. This is how I can expect it to be for at least another 30 weeks.

While I agree with contemplative and mystic Catherine Doherty that small deserts of silence may be found in all walks of life and that one does not HAVE to live in an actual hermitage to experience communion with the Lord in the desert, there are limits to what I am personally able to shut out of my brain. Consequently, the project of finding a small house to continue my ministries is really heating up.

Since affordable housing is limited to the dangerous fringes of town, nowhere near my church or my friends who are helping me, I have to revamp my approach and just forget trying to find something reasonable in price. Based upon the common rents in the neighborhood in which I need to live, I will have to pay more than half my rent to find a suitable, safe place to live that addresses my lifestyle and my increasingly worrisome health. Since my income is so very low, paying half of it will be a crushing burden, but I have no choice.

Thanks to a couple of friends and well-wishers, I have paid off some oppressive bills. I will also try to sell some of my paintings and my crocheted items. All this is done in preparation for relocating.

All modern ideas about hermits aside, the hermit is typically pictured close to nature. He or she has a residence of some sort, usually very simple and poor, with a good deal of natural setting available to the hermit so that the voice of the Lord may more easily be heard. Contemplatives, in general, are often drawn to more natural environments, not because it is more lovely but because it is more CONDUCIVE to the life of prayer. Unfortunately, the simple, the serene and the natural have become the EXPENSIVE.

I am disabled and becoming more so. I will need access to medical doctors, etc. Some day, I will be blind. Also, I would like to be able to attend church one day, as I have been prevented from doing so for quite some time, due to lack of suitable seating and the distance between the hermitage and the church. Being of poor health puts a big dent in the contemplative life. This is why convents and monasteries do not accept sick people.

Only the monied class can afford to have personal daily access to wide expanses of natural environments. This points back to the era in Europe in which noblemen owned all the land and serfs were essentially slaves on the master's land. Europeans originally came to America because, supposedly, the land was up for grabs. No one "owned" it, which is a debatable point, since the Native Americans have their own view on this. People for whom land ownership was previously impossible suddenly became owners of vast tracts of land.

We have now reverted to the exact same situation we were attempting to escape when we left Europe a few hundred years ago. Since there is no land that is not owned, and permission of someone else is required to live just about ANYWHERE, this has put a big dent in the hermit lifestyle!  Now, if I lived in Austria, there is a town that is advertising for a hermit, and I could live there, but even that hermitage exacts a price:

There is no running water and no electricity. The town has requirements of the hermit, for instance that he does not install any modern amenities and also that he be available to anyone who wants to visit him. It sounds like a job verging on slavery to me, and not in the spirit of the hermit at all. The hermit is independent, most of all, relying upon the voice and guidance of the Lord.

For the last 3 years or so, I have been trying to find a suitable place to live, with very little luck. Most of the rentals that are available in this town are in the grip of corporate management companies, and these sort of companies tend to treat renters as interlopers, even when they DO pay the rent. The corporate model is soulless and certainly does not comprehend or support the monastic lifestyle.

I do not have the funds to PURCHASE property, obviously.

Because this is such a difficult search, limited by very low income and other factors, I ask that you please pray for me, that I may find a house that will address my needs: spiritual, medical, and emotional; one that has a washer/dryer on the premises, since I am unable to cart my laundry to another location; and one that has, at least, a small patch of fenced land for the small service dog. Please pray hard, my friends.

God bless you all.

Silver Rose