A rule for involuntary anchoresses

Crash is working on a podcast episode about Julian of Norwich, a late fourteenth century anchoress. Meanwhile, one of Crash's friends is bemoaning her isolation, she says she feels like an involuntary anchoress. She's right, of course. Our lives are suddenly subject to rules not terribly different from the rules of life kept by the medieval anchoresses walled into the churches of England.

Anchorites — both men and women withdrew into the walls of churches — were at their peak in Julian's time, some churches had a waiting list for their anchorhold. It can sound macabre to us now, to receive the last rites and then to be walled into a small room or rooms off a church's nave, but despite the walls keeping them physically separated from the world, anchoresses remained connected to and were integral parts of the local community. They received guests at their windows, offered spiritual guidance, and shopped in the markets.

Forthwith - my rule for today's cornonavirus-isolated anchoresses drawing on the Ancrene Wisse, an early 13th century guide for anchoresses, which was on my shelf. (Parenthetical references to the text.)

• When you have to take anything, your hand should not go out, nor anyone's in. Neither should one touch the other. (2-10)
• Do not go out to eat at friends' houses. (8-6)
• No parties! (8-7)
• Send only one person out to shop for food, they ought not to linger in the market place. (8- 31)
• If you have a knife or a piece of cloth, or food or drink (or face masks or Chlorox wipes), or anything else that would be of service...you should be willing to do without it yourself. (4-90)
• Keep a cat. (8-11)
• Dress comfortably, skip the wimple and wear a soft cap. (8-19)
• Read assiduously and at length. (4-82)
• Pace yourself. (8-28)
• Take a bath. (8-29)
• Don't snack between meals. (8-33)
• Support each other. (4-64)
• Be grateful. (8-32)
• Pray. 

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Crash's podcast is Missing History, two friends trying to answer the question "Why haven't I ever heard of her?"

Tales from the hermitage: Sleeping beauty

Every morning when I walk through the door to the back patio to go out to pray, I have to brush the spider webs off my face.  I wonder if I've slept, not for a night, but for years.  I've been trying not to disturb my guardians - and you can see that their web has attracted quite a bit of detritus.

The week of near total silence in my ad hoc suburban hermitage has passed quickly, and productively.  I've sent two pieces of writing of to their respective editors, and am nearly ready to dispatch a third.  Tonight I will break the silence by driving up to Wernersville to see Patient Spiritual Director.

This is a luxury, this time of silence and solitude, but it's not a fairy tale isolation either — the spider webs notwithstanding.  But like fasting, which sharpens my eyes for hunger around me, this solitude has also helped me see the isolated and lonely who live around me.  The new mother across the street, juggling a little one who'd just thrown up while her toddler tugs at her hand.  The woman hustling to walk the mile to the church on Sunday in the heat of an August noon.  Reminders that this time is oriented outward, it's not a "staycation" or a retreat from the craziness of the world (though I admit to some pleasure in not having to make the transition into the beginning-of-the-semester chaos), it's a teachable moment.

"Sit in your cell," says St. Romuald, "and your cell will teach you everything."

Boundary conditions

There is a tendency to think of boundaries as problematic. Either they are problems in themselves — something to be gotten around or through — or they are responses to problems, proxies for a sense of self-discipline — like putting the chocolate on a shelf I can't reach.

But in quantum mechanics, boundary conditions are more likely to be part of the solution than the problem. The solution to the Schrödinger equation for a particle trapped in a square well emerges from recognizing that at the boundaries, the wave function must be zero. Boundary conditions clarify, they sharpen.

I've been thinking about boundaries in my own life. There is the new door to my study, which no longer requires that I shove a pile of heavy chemistry texts against the door to keep the cat out. It allows easier access (and egress -- I no longer have to interrupt what I was doing in order to blockade the door again) to my guys, but makes it impossible for the cat and much of the household noise to get in.

Good boundaries are to some extent permeable. The monastic enclosure at New Camaldoli keeps out clueless tourists and wandering retreatants, but lets God and a view of the Pacific in. My challenges at the moment are less boundaries in space than boundaries in time. How I can plant a sign for a monastic enclosure in time, rather than in space?

Column: Of prayer and pinball (with apologies to The Who)

My thanks to Inward/Outward, who in October posted the tidbit from Henri Nouwen that I quoted here -- and which has been bouncing around my head since then. The reflection by Karl Rahner, S.J. appeared in Die Presse, an Austrian newspaper, on December 22, 1962. I found in in a collection (alas out of print): Everyday Faith.

And finally, here's a link to a clip of Elton John's performance in Tommy - the real pinball wizard!

The photo was taken at Eastern Point Retreat House in an early summer's fog. The ocean is there - really!

Publish Post

This reflection appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times on 19 January 2010.

Who shall climb the mountain of the Lord? Who shall stand in his holy place? — Ps. 24:3

A few weeks ago I was multi-tasking away in the kitchen: sorting through school forms, responding to student email, organizing the week’s dinners, drilling Latin vocabulary, all while a pot of chicken stock simmered on the stove.

For a moment, I felt like Tommy, The Who’s “Pinball Wizard,” pulling levers and snapping flippers, while lights flashed and bells rang and glittering silver balls danced around the machine. I’m just racking up points. Four for figuring out a tough Latin cognate, two for dinners using up leftovers. How do you think she does it?

The game is seductive. How many points can I collect before a ball misses its mark and it all ends with an obnoxious honk and a flashing “Game Over?” I end up bouncing tasks off a multitude of bumpers, each item dispatches with a neat quick flick of my pen, though no lights flash or bells ring to advertise the win. It’s definitely all in the wrist.

As crazed and demanding as the ongoing pinball game of my life is at times, it’s hard to ignore the comfort that conquering a well circumscribed set of tasks and clear goals brings. It gets tempting to shortchange my prayer time in favor of getting one last task completed or catching a few extra minutes of sleep, the better to tackle the list tomorrow.

But being productive in prayer, as Father Henri Nouwen points out, requires the commitment of unproductive time: “Being useless and silent in the presence of our God belongs to the core of all prayer.” It takes more than a bit of discipline, humility and courage to spend time with God, and God alone. Without multi-tasking.

In his reflection The Answer of Silence, Karl Rahner S.J. sounds a similarly bold call to abandon what seems to be most urgent, and seek God: “Have the courage to be alone.” This is practical advice he is offering, no mere rhetorical device: seek out a quiet path or a lonely church; find a room where you can be alone; wherever you go, he says, go!

Once there, wait. Silently. Don’t talk to yourself, or even to God. Just wait. Just listen. Patiently. Without expectations. And courageously. For this takes courage beyond measure.

What might we see, alone with our God, standing in His holy places? Ourselves — and each other — as we truly are, cracked and broken and glorious and beloved of God? God, mysterium tremendum et fascinans? God within us, and without?

And most frighteningly of all, what if we hear nothing? In Colum McCann’s novel, Let the Great World Spin, the monk Corrigan tells his brother that his prayer has been reduced to the point where there are no words on either part, his or God’s. He is sure only of this: “God listens back.”

I’m still learning to be unproductive in prayer, still practicing how to listen patiently in stillness and solitude. No lights blink, no buzzers sound, there are no points to be counted. Success lies only in going — faithfully, quietly and alone — to stand in His holy place. The place where God listens with me.

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Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
— John O’Donohue, from “For One Who is Exhausted" in To Bless the Space Between Us