Author: an absurd monk

I wanted to share this very good article: Living within four walls: A guide for modern day anchorites.

I think I need to adjust my ideas of solitude around a more inclusive idea of life. But this quote from Ancrene Wisse – a rule in English for anchorites – has the point that must be remembered:

What is a pure heart? I have told you before: it is that you neither desire nor love any thing but God only, and those things, for God, that assist you to come to him.

Ancrene Wisse

I think Kierkegaard would agree with the above.

Anchorites tended to embrace a much more constrained physical stability so that they were  required to remain within a single small house or even a single room. Sometimes they were even locked or walled into such a place. Otherwise, however, both groups dealt with others (sometimes the degree of interaction was relatively extensive); similarly both were often approved to some extent by diocesan canons and local Bishops. Hermits (always men) who traveled from place to place were often granted the hermit tunic and permits to beg and preach by the local ordinary, for instance. But anchorites (who could include both women and men) lived their solitude within a fixed abode; hermits (who were, as you say, more marginal) could wander from town to town or otherwise live their solitude in less physically constrained ways. …

Because anchorites tended to live in the midst of villages with a window on the Church altar and one on the village square, they were often unofficial counselors, spiritual directors, a friendly pastoral ear, teachers, wisdom figures, preachers (as, again, were itinerant hermits), etc. Contrary to what you have concluded, while some were certainly secluded like the modern day Nazarena (oftentimes reforms were attempted by priests who wrote Rules for them limiting and regulating their contact with others) the very fact that such reforms were seen as necessary confirms that anchorites were, generally speaking, not so secluded as all that. 

Stillsong Hermitage

I think that is a pretty good starting point. While in modern Anglican terms both are Solitaries, the distinction is present in how life is lived.

I especially like the part about being “unofficial”. And being part of a eucharistic community and a secular community.

I have started a post three times in the last couple of days. But none eventuated into a published piece of writing. I have been thinking about life in general and my life in particular.

So I was super-amazed at how God works! It means that things for the future are becoming a little clearer. And it also means that my own sense of vocation has been confirmed by other people. I am still unsure what that will look like but it will look like something.

I do not get as much solitude in my new (old!) context! I have had little time to meditate or just read. My parents have been extremely kind and loving during the last two years so I am not terribly upset by the distribution of my routine.

I make time to read. I am reading a collection of Carthusian texts for novices. (As you do!) These texts are full of practical advice that is very useful. I am also reading Underhill’s Mysticism.

Anyway, Jesus bless you today!

Normal day! I think I am really going to struggle next week when it is back to the “world”.

I have been moved by two Thomas Merton quotes:

À contemplative is not one who takes his prayer seriously, but one who takes God seriously, who is famished for truth, who seeks to live in generous simplicity, in the spirit.

Yes! It is not about solitude, silence, prayer, or meditation. It is about Jesus! Taking him seriously is the point. And all is gift!

I should add, not only for those who live a monastic/religious/vowed life – for all!

Hence monastic prayer, especially meditation and contemplative prayer, is not so much a way to find God as a way of resting in him whom we have found, who loves us, who is near to us, who comes to us to draw us to himself.

Rest versus action – that is the tension of the anchorite life. Simply resting in God, being present for him, and riding the wave.