© Anglican Religious Communities 1998
An increase in vocations to an eremitical life-style has been a noted feature of Religious Life in the past
thirty years. Brother Ramon SSF felt a call to the hermit life even before beginning to test his vocation
with the Franciscans in 1976. The year before he had attended the Hermit Symposium, held in Wales, which was a
gathering of about thirty men and women interested in this particular call. It included both those who were following
an eremitic call and others who were knowledgeable about the history of hermit life, drawn from Orthodox, Anglican
and Roman Catholic traditions. One of the main themes of the conference was an exploration of the difficulties
of following such a vocation in the West.
Following two six-month periods of experimentation in solitude, Brother Ramon began a serious exploration
of the hermit life in 1990, continued permanently in a hut enclosure in the grounds of Glasshampton monastery,
one of the SSF houses in the UK. Here, he reflects on his personal call and his relationship with his community.
Thomas Merton has always been a radical catalyst for my thinking, praying and life-style as a Franciscan. I
would like to quote a significant paragraph from his later writing, and indicate how it works for me in the context
of my vocation within the Society of St Francis.
‘The monastic hermit realizes that he owes his solitude to his community and owes it in more ways than one. First of all, the community has bestowed it upon him in an act of love and trust. Second, the community helps him to stay there and make a go of it, by prayers and by material aid. Finally, the hermit ‘owes this solitude’ to the community in the sense that his solitary life with its depth of prayer and awareness is his contribution to the community, something that he gives back to his ‘monastic Church’ in return for what he has been given.’
(Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action, Allen & Unwin, London, 1971, p 242)
First, the community has bestowed my solitude on me in an act of love and trust. From the first, I trusted
SSF to listen to me as I spoke of the increasing pull toward solitude. I did expect a certain amount of misunderstanding,
though, and even opposition. But the fact is that although there was one gentle but real confrontation about my
reluctance to become a member of our SSF Chapter, I have only experienced ‘love and trust’ over the whole period.
I have felt loved, appreciated and encouraged by the community, and because SSF has trusted me to live, act
and respond in terms of the Gospel and our covenanted vows, I have endeavoured to return that trust. Misunderstanding
and opposition has not been evident. I have not acted at any point without prior consultation and sharing, and
there has been a warm and reciprocal awareness that I had the freedom to develop in my own way and not according
to some preconceived or traditional mould. Of course we both kept before us the great tradition of contemplative
life within the Church catholic.
My threefold inspiration has been: a) my own Celtic roots; b) the desert father tradition; c) the vision and
lifestyle of St Francis and the early days of the Order. The freedom to experiment with this marvellous ‘threefold
cord’ makes me immensely grateful to SSF, and we have been able to affirm that it is not simply ‘my vocation’ but
‘our vocation’. This has been brought about particularly because of the ‘three wise men’ who support me. They are:
Dr Donald (A.M.) Allchin, my spiritual director; Brother Anselm SSF, who was Minister Provincial when I went off
experimenting with solitude in 1982 and 1984 and initiated me into the real thing in 1990; and Brother Damian SSF,
who is our present Minister Provincial. This ‘act of love and trust’ expresses a relationship between us and the
SSF Chapter, and is not primarily a bureaucratic decision or transaction. I must add that during the decade before
her death in 1988, Mother Mary Clare SLG was my spiritual director, and especially after the Hermit Symposium in
1975 at St David’s, she enabled me to retain balance and humour, seeing things in perspective during the time of
experimentation.
Second, the community helps me to stay there and make a go of it, by prayers and by material aid. Certainly,
I had sufficient trust and determination to go off into the desert. Because of the powerful initiatory push which
came as a result of the Hermit Symposium, I would have attempted it anyway – even as a parish priest and without
the support of a monastic community. But I may well have made a mess of it, or suffered because of my own idiosyncratic
nature. I need my community to support, encourage and enliven me in my vocation.
The fact is that I have negotiated the joys and sorrows, the ecstasies and existential angst, with a gentle
assurance – and I want to acknowledge the wisdom and the positive encouragement of my community in this. Prayers
on both sides go without saying, and these include the faithful, ordered liturgical remembrances and the personal
commitment of sisters and brothers at a contemplative level.
As to the material aid, it is true that I earn money by writing and manual work, and I supply the monastery
here with vegetables. But it has been affirmed that if a sister or brother were to pursue this path with no financial
ability, it would make no difference. My huts, my food and basic needs are supplied, and, though they are modest,
there is no question about availability.
Third, I owe my solitude to the community in that I live within the reciprocal circle of offering back to the
monastic Church that which has been offered to me. My solitude is communal, for it is in God and within the communion
of saints. There has been a pattern of light and darkness, and I have been confronted by dark powers in the intercessory
and contemplative dimensions of prayer. But it is also true that I have been involved in the renewal of the image
of God in my own life. I am experiencing, though still a beginner on the path, the transformation in Christ that
the Orthodox Church calls theosis or divinization (2 Peter 1:4). There is an objective reality and a subjective
appreciation in my experience of spirituality. The solitude in which this is possible is the gift which my community
offers me, and which I accept with gratitude and return with joy.
In all this I am a microcosm. By that I mean that within myself is the whole monastic tradition, the whole Church
and the whole world. I am here for God; I am here for the Church; I am here for the world. And I am here for myself
– for, although I hope I am not pursuing an individualistic narcissism, I am certainly pursuing an intensely personal
path – though in the fellowship of the communion of saints – on earth and in heaven.
And to get me grounded again, I must affirm an increasing sense of humour as to the ridiculousness of living
alone in a series of wooden huts on a plot of ground in the middle of nowhere. And it is not simply being allowed,
but positively encouraged. And for that I am immensely grateful!
Being firm and stubborn enough to affirm the vision of solitude on the one hand, and being pliable and humble
enough to listen in trust and love to the community on the other: these are the two poles kept in creative tension
by that opening paragraph of Merton’s. So I shall conclude with another:
‘The person who can live happily without snuggling up at every moment
to some person, institution, or vice, is there as a promise of freedom to the
rest of humankind. (Thomas Merton, op. cit. p 246)