Love in Dark Settings

"The life of the solitary is not an easy life, since there are no prescriptions for it and each day must be faced anew. The signs which say 'keep in lane' and 'when red light shows wait here' are of little relevance to one who is called to strike across country, equipped with a rather inadequate map and a compass one has not yet learnt to trust. From time to time the solitary seeks affirmation, reassurance that the path along which he or she is being drawn is genuine and not an illusion. . . .

"Sometimes no guide appears, and one is given no such reassurance. This is a test of faithfulness, of perseverance in the face of doubt and darkness. The early pioneers of the desert of course had no guides. They just went out into the desert, the place of desolation, and got on with it."

--Eve Baker: Paths in Solitude.

Topics in this post: cowls and habits and other clothes, (not) finding a community, lectio, the Desert Fathers (especially St. Anthony), stability, family obligations, intemperate speech, schedule.

*** 10 May 2008

Two hours planned online. Six hours spent online. I'm running out of ideas on how to handle my Internet addiction.

I feel as though this week, in my attempt to attentive to my writing/publishing again, I lost focus both on my writing/publishing and on simplicity. I'd like to center myself on those two activities next week and see whether I can find a balance between the two. Other matters - such as history research - I'll put aside for now.

*** 11 May 2008

From the introduction to Frank Bianco's Voices of Silence: Lives of the Trappists Today: "Everything in this book is true, free of invention. . . . The monks portrayed in this book are composites and, to maintain the narrative flow, I have blended their experiences, deliberately relocating both to shield those involved."

Are there no narrative journalists left who understand the meaning of the word "true"?

*** 12 May 2008

I've been reading a post by Laurel M. O'Neal, a Catholic hermit, about the significance that wearing a cowl has for her. She says:

"Interestingly, the longer I wear the cowl, the more sure I am there is no serious disconnect between my life inside and my life outside the hermitage, and also, the more I am challenged to be sure this is true and becomes more true. I am not merely playing dressup in this cowl, nor merely doing something I was required to do by the diocese without it really being natural or reflecting who I am (although I must say I clearly see this as a charge and responsibility given by the diocese on behalf of the whole church which I have gladly accepted). While I was concerned at first it might accentuate a difference or disparity (between role and reality), and also be affected and anachronistic, I am finding that the more natural putting on the cowl is (and at first it felt REALLY UNNATURAL!!), the more it works to define me when I take it off. Perhaps it is the case that the cowl signals I am a hermit and monastic, and for that reason I do not need to go out of my way to 'play at' being these things. I can simply be myself. (Of course I believe I was doing that before, but I think we all need assistance in making sure the roles we play and the persons we really are coincide completely.) The cowl, I think, has helped me in that regard."

This has set me to thinking again about clothes. I've drifted into the custom, in the past few years, of wearing the same clothes over and over. In fact, I don't think I've bought any new clothes since 2005.

I don't have a great urge to throw out clothes, an act which seems to be a rite of passage for many hermits and monks; witness what I've always considered to be the highly humorous tale of how Francis of Assisi embraced a life of poverty (as recounted by the Encyclopaedia Britannica). This episode occurred when St. Francis was about twenty.

"At the ruined chapel of San Damiano outside the gate of Assisi . . . Francis heard the crucifix above the altar command him: 'Go, Francis, and repair my house which, as you see, is well-nigh in ruins.' Taking this literally, Francis hurried home, gathered some fine cloth from his father's shop, and rode off to the nearby town of Foligno, where he sold both cloth and horse. He then tried to give the money to the priest at San Damiano, whose refusal prompted Francis to throw the money out the window. Angered, his father kept him at home and then brought him before the civil authorities. When Francis refused to answer the summons, his father called him before the bishop of Assisi. Before any accusations were made, Francis 'without a word peeled off his garments even removing his breeches and restored them to his father.' Completely naked, he said: 'Until now I have called you my father on earth. But henceforth I can truly say: Our Father who art in heaven.' The astonished bishop gave him a cloak . . ."

I'll bet. I don't suppose that the training he received as a bishop told him how to react when one of his flock stripped himself naked.

At any rate, since I plan to make do with my current clothes as long as I can, I don't have any desire to throw out the clothes I'm not wearing, since I may need them as back-ups when I wear out the clothes I currently wear (though I do plan to ask my apprentice - who's a fabric artist - to give me tips on repairing torn clothes). Perhaps it would be a good idea, though, to somehow formalize which parts of my wardrobe constitute my daily wear, so that those clothes can have greater significance to me, as a symbol of my embracement of a life of simplicity.

Later:

I went through my summer clothes, and ended up putting all but five of my summer shirts in storage. Five shirts should be more than enough, since I have a very lightweight outfit that I wear daily at home in hot weather. (I'd call it my habit, but I'm not sure that clothing with neon-bright New Wave colors qualifies as a habit.)

The summer shirts I kept are all short-sleeved and buttoned, with a handy little breast pocket for my MP3 player, though I have a few plain tee-shirts in the winter section of my closet. My imprinted tee-shirts all went into storage. I just don't seem to want to display messages across my chest any more, though I'll probably bring out my college tee-shirts on special occasions. Wearing the Pythagorean Theorem across my chest is in a different order of matters, after all.

*** 13 May 2008

I quoted above from Eve Baker about the desire by many solitaries for a guide. I had the misfortune to receive the call toward greater simplicity at a time when I had no community that I could go to and ask, "Can you help me discern this calling?" That remains the case. Unfortunately, the very forces that are calling me to withdraw to a large extent from society are also proving to be barriers in my search for a community that would provide me with help in understanding my quest for simplicity. Much more important than that is the fact that, every time I search for a community, my life goes awry, while every time I withdraw from that search, my life gets simpler, cleaner, more self-disciplined, etc.

I don't want to rule out any developments that may occur in the future, but I think that, for now, my community will need to be other solitaries. These range from Christians to Buddhists to atheists to every other belief under the sun, yet there is a surprisingly large amount of overlap in their ways of life. Although I'm receiving or downloading information from a variety of solitary organizations, the ones that have proved to be of greatest help to me over the past five years have been Hermitary (interfaith/secular) and Raven's Bread (interfaith, mainly Catholic).

I've been tempted for a long time to identify myself as a person who seeks to lead a life of simplicity but not of solitude, I think partly because I haven't wanted to be grilled on whether I'm solitary enough to qualify as a hermit. But given that a large number of solitaries lead less solitary lives than I do - often because they must work outside the home to pay the bills - I don't suppose there's any reason for me to keep rejecting the label of solitary. And people whose lives are simple but not solitary - such as many Quakers - seem to emphasize social involvement in a way that just isn't applicable to my life. I've done social outreach work in the past, but ended up concluding that this interfered with my vocation as a writer, which is also a form of outreach.

I still feel that my primary calling is toward simplicity, and that solitude is merely a means by which I hope to obtain simplicity. But solitude does seem to be a vitally important means.

*** 17 May 2008

I've begun practicing lectio (formally, lectio divina), a discipline formulated by St. Benedict. To simplify a rich and complex practice, lectio consists of reading slowly and carefully a passage of text, and then using it as a springboard for meditation/contemplation. Since I'm an inveterate skim reader, I guarantee my slow reading by writing out the passage carefully by hand.

It turns out that this is much easier for me to do than regular meditation, because it so much resembles what I did in college: reading a text (usually not slowly and carefully, alas), going to Seminar, hearing the instructor speak the opening question . . . and then silence, as everyone contemplated the text. The silence could last two minutes or more before anyone ventured an answer. And unless I was the one offering the answer, there would be a period in which I was simply listening to what other people had to say - a sort of meditation/contemplation.

Today, my reading was from the Vitae Patrum V.i.1. The Vitae Patrum, or The Lives of the Fathers, is an anthology recording the lives and sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers - the early Christian hermits. As Benedict Baker, the translator of the edition I'm using, puts it, "The Vitae Patrum is in Latin and dates from 1628. It was compiled by Heribert Rosweyde SJ from ancient sources dating from the third and fourth centuries, written either in Latin or Greek."

Here's what I read today:

"When abba Antony was asked, 'What rule should I keep in order to please God?' the old man replied, 'Follow this rule which I give you. Wherever you go, keep God continually before your eyes and apply the yardstick of Holy Scripture to everything you do. Wherever you happen to be don't try to move on too quickly. Do these three things and you will live.'"

I wish I had the Latin edition, because I'd like to know what "Wherever you happen to be" was in the original. Was St. Anthony advocating stability, as St. Benedict did - the idea that you should remain in one physical location? Or did he have in mind a temporal sense of "wherever" - a mindfulness to the present moment?

Getting back to stability: I don't think there's enough of that in my life currently. My entries here reflect that. I'm constantly changing the rules I abide by. While I do want flexibility, I think I have a pretty good idea by now of what type of schedule works for me. I think I should concentrate more on that than on trying to move on to new rules.

Later:

My schedule is all out of whack; I've spent forty hours during the past two weeks with family and friends. Mind you, sixteen of those hours were during my two Sunday excursions with Doug. But most of the rest were spent caring for my mother, who's still bedridden after her operation. There's no way that this is going to change for the foreseeable future, but at least I should keep myself from going on browsing binges, as I did this week.

My mother says that I look much calmer than in the past. She thought it was due to me exercising. I didn't tell her that it probably had something to do with lectio.

*** 18 May 2008

Vitae Patrum V.i.2: "'What should I do?' Abba Pambo asked abba Antony. The old man replied, 'Don't put your trust in your own righteousness, don't go back on any promises, and be temperate in speech and appetite.'"

One of my e-mail addresses begins with the word sophrosune. Nobody has ever asked me about that, thus depriving me of the pleasure of offering a lesson in Ancient Greek.

At my alma mater, we students used to chant at one of our rowdy festivals, "Anêr! Gunê! Sôphrosunê!" which, roughly translated, means, "Man! Woman! Chastity!" This was obviously wishful thinking on our part. The word sôphrosunê actually means a great deal more than chastity, as we knew, and as the Liddell-Scott Greek-English Lexicon reveals:

"soundness of mind, moderation, discretion, Od., Theogn., Att. 2. moderation in desires, self-control, temperance, chastity, sobriety, Lat. temperantia, modestia, Ar., Plat. etc."

So I think it's likely that the word "temperance" in today's Vitae Patrum passage is the Latin version of sophrosune. Liddell-Scott gives more insight into the Greek word by noting that it is derived from sô-phrôn, meaning "of sound mind, Lat. sanae mentis: - hence sensible, discreet, wise". This, in a nutshell, sums up the Greek attitude toward temperance. Being temperate meant being sane; to be intemperate meant you had lost control, not only of your bodily desires, but of your mind.

I suspect that most Greeks would have considered the strong asceticism of the Desert Fathers to be as intemperate and crazy as most modern folk do. But the Desert Fathers' example does provide a powerful corrective to our world's reverence toward instant gratification.

What's interesting to me about today's passage is the linking of gluttony with intemperate speech. St. Anthony seems to believe that intemperate speech is self-indulgence, in the same way that eating too much is.

One of the reasons I believed that it would be helpful to go offline is that I thought that, communicating less on the Internet, I could give greater care to what I wrote to people. Yet I think I still have barely tapped into the long tradition in Christian eremitism and monasticism, of choosing words with care and remaining silent whenever possible. Today's reminder is therefore of help to me.

Later:

"It's 5:45 AM on the third day of my retreat. Vigils, that interlude of prayer that comes in the dark of night, is now a memory. The monks' early morning hours of reading, reflection, and silent prayer are drawing to a close." --Dianne Aprile: Making a Heart for God: A Week Inside a Catholic Monastery.

It's 4:33, and my early morning hours of writing, reading, reflection, and meditation are drawing to a close. It's odd how, just a couple of weeks ago, I was rolling my eyes at the monastic custom of getting up in the middle of the night, yet I seem to be replicating that pattern.

Thanks to my mother requiring me at a certain time each day, I've done the totally unexpected: gotten myself onto a regular schedule. Here's how my schedule currently stands:

* * *

Sometime between midnight and dawn (for roughly three hours):

Write fiction and edit what I've written.

Read about simplicity while eating.

Read fiction.

Lectio.

Write blog entry.

From about noon to mid-evening (for roughly nine hours):

Read about writing/publishing while eating.

Read fiction.

Edit or publish fiction.

Walk to my mother's apartment, care for her, and come home (my exercise for the day).

Read about simplicity while eating.

Read fiction.

Call my apprentice.

Calculate daily hours.

Write blog entry.

* * *

Except for the pre-dawn rising and the visit to my mother, the actual content of what I'm doing is similar to what I've been doing for months now . . . except that, spending two hours each day at my mother's place, I can't seem to find the time and energy to do household tasks. Hopefully that will correct itself once my mother is feeling well enough that she doesn't need daily visits from me.

RECENT SIMPLICITY READINGS

Stillsong Hermitage (blog).

Raven's Bread (newsletter for hermits): May 2008.

Fellowship Charitos (newsletter for hermits): Volume 2008, Issue V.

Dianne Aprile: "Making a Heart for God: A Week Inside a Catholic Monastery."