Raven's Bread
Food for Those in Solitude
Vol: 4 No: 3 August 2000
Raven's Bread is a quarterly newsletter for hermits and those interested in the eremitical life published by Paul and Karen Fredette. The newsletter seeks to affirm and support this way of life. Raven's Bread is a collaborative effort and thus depends on the shared reflections, stories, news, notices, letters, and information from hermits themselves. The Raven's Bread Web page is an abbreviated version of our full newsletter, which also includes a Bulletin Board and Reader Forum.
Please send your written contributions, as well as address changes and subscriptions to:
Raven's Bread
P.O. Box 562
Hot Springs, NC 28743
The annual subscription to the printed newsletter is $8.00 in U.S. currency. (International money orders are the most convenient form of payment by foreign subscribers.) Any extra donations will be used to subsidize subscriptions for hermits who cannot afford the full cost.
To E-mail Raven's Bread directly click on this link: fredette@nclink.net Raven's Bread (formerly Marabou) derives its name from the experience of Elijah, the prophet, in 1 Kgs.17: 1-6. A raven, sent by God, nourished him during his months of solitude at the Wadi Cherith (the Cutting Place).
Thoughts in Solitude
By: Richard Simonelli, Boulder, Colorado
And so it is that morning. A spring morning with the phoebes singing their plaintive two- tone chant and crows calling through the sunlit air, a morning of green fir and pine against the limitless blue sky. But it is also a morning of deep inner tiredness and weariness. It is a morning of feeling worn out despite a full night's sleep. A morning of feeling the unique signature of ill health pervading your body.
You know: chronic ill health has come to claim you. You feel a blight on your energy even as you perceive the exuberance of the day all about. It is a morning when you know that both life and death are with you. From the silence and certainty of this morning insight you do not turn away. You do not say, "Get thee behind me, death..." because you know that death is not the enemy. Life and death are partners in a dance; in a strange way, life and death are one. And though you feel the exuberance of the life force co-existing with your lasting illness, you do not feel a lust for life or the need to cling to life at any and all costs.
Life and death are one thing, one dance in which you are a willing and grateful participant. Although there may be no cure for your lasting illness, there can be healing. In healing you may become whole despite desperate physical symptoms that impinge on your thoughts and emotions, testing your spirituality. You become whole the moment you cease to fear the dance of life and death. The moment of healing is the moment when life no longer wrestles with death, when life stops seeking victory over death, when you let death dance with life without fearing one and lusting after the other.
You will do all that you can reasonably do to moderate your lasting illness -- there is no death wish here. But finally you will come to accept the hermitage of a difficult health condition, know that this hermitage is your teacher, this environment of seclusion a unique gift from the dance. You will come to realize that you have already claimed a life where nothing is missing, nothing left out; a life good, complete and quite enough. This understanding itself is one aspect of your healing.
Outside the orderly healing process that may take time and the acquisition of both health management skills and changes in attitude, something sudden might happen. You might experience the Immensity of Love. Suddenly, you might come awake. Such experience lies outside process. It can be neither created nor manufactured. You are already loved and enlightened. Healing is not a prerequisite to this. Opening to Love is not a sequential journey. In fact it is not even a journey at all. Realizing this, you are beyond healing; outside of it. And this may be the greatest healing of all.
The phoebe's call drifts through the window in an act of healing quite separate from cure. In the next minute there may be the difficult reality of getting on with the day, dealing with the physical depression brought on by illness, the struggle with making ends meet in the context of a wider "abled" world. But to heal is to be a participant in the swirling, energetic dance of creation. Healing is an attitude shift that may occur like an earthquake when the tectonic plates of our belief system subside into new positions of humble participant rather than conqueror. For the sacred mystery of birth and death is one holistic dance of healing grace that we may enter in illness as well as in health. And so it will be... that morning.
A Word from Still Wood
High summer in the Smokies is lush and green, celebrated by alternating thunder showers and brilliant sunshine. Today is the feast of Elijah the Prophet. Was it a mere coincidence that last evening, as we sat on the deck, we heard the unmistakable “quark, quark” of a raven in the woods beside the house?
Ravens flew to Elijah’s aid as he cowered by the brook Cherith during a drought he himself had foretold. Fiery Elijah was not only frightened at times; he also had fits of anger that alternated with profound discouragement. A reader of First Kings might well wonder if he were not manic-depressive! Once Elijah despaired to the point of throwing himself down under a tree in the desert and praying for death. “This is enough, O Lord! Take my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” Even after walking forty days and nights to the "mountain of God, Horeb" in the strength of divinely given food (from an angel this time), Elijah had not shaken his melancholy.
When God asked, “Why are you here, Elijah?” he complained, “I have been zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, but the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to the sword. I alone am left, and they seek to take my life.” Talk about hitting bottom! It was at this moment that, summoned to the mouth of the cave where he had hidden, Elijah heard the “still small voice”, not in the whirlwind or the earthquake or the fire but rather in the “tiny whispering sound” that caused him to hide his face in his cloak. He feared again but this time it was a holy fear.
This issue of RB continues the theme of how disabilities can contribute to and enhance our life of prayer and solitude. Once again, we, the editors, are full of gratitude to those of you who have shared how the Lord has led and fed you in your own wilderness times. We also thank all who have written to tell us how moved and spiritually assisted they have been by this “bread” of the Raven that has fed their souls and given them courage in times of need.
We ask that you take note of RB's new email address: fredette@nclink.net. The Chicago Dominicans, especially Fr. Albert Judy, OP, web-friar, are keeping RB on the world wide web. We are most grateful for Fr. Judy’s expertise and the number of times he has pulled us out of muddles, real and potential, with his timely advice.
Please pray that we all may hear the “still small voice” whispering, “Why are you here?” May we have the courage to “be patient towards all that is unsolved in our hearts... trying to love the questions themselves; not seeking answers which cannot be given because we would not be able to live them ... but living the questions now. Perhaps we will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answers.” (cf. R. M. Rilke)
With Grateful love,
Karen & Paul
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Resounding SolitudezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzEditors’ Note: The ongoing conversation among the RB readership on the theme of disabilities vis-a-vis prayer and solitude can be found in the paper version. Information about obtaining the complete paper version is available at the beginning of this site.
Abundance is not measured
by what flows in,
but by what flows over.
The smaller we make
the vessel of our need
the sooner we get
the overflow we need
for our delight
By: Brother David Steindl-Rast
Pain and Attention: The Body as Mantra
By Elisha Emery, Obl. OSB.Cam.
Three months ago, I had bi-lateral hip replacement surgery. While I’m still very much in rehabilitation, only now, on this side of a long ascesis, is it possible for me to see the extent to which spontaneous prayer has found its ultimate mysterious expression for some twenty years in this progressive affliction of flesh.
There is an uncompromising interplay between the force of gravity and the force of grace. Gravity is given as limitation, darkness, breakdown, density, refusal and autonomy while grace issues forth as light, gift, exchange, blessing, attentive wonder, wisdom.
Nowhere is this tension between gravity and grace lived more graphically and with extremity than in the body. Temple of the Holy Spirit, the body, is also the playing field of little and cumulative traumas that can become transformative crucifixions.
The body in chronic pain numbs focal attention. It limits the kind of attention that reflects, plans, envisions and wants. It also limits the kind of attention central to intentional prayer. Attention is more than an agency of intellect and will. Attention, said Simone Weil, is also prayer as prayer is attention. Pain defines how and when attention prays.
As pain spreads and deepens, it possesses attention, both the focal and prayerful kind. The gravity of pain translocates prayer. There is a paradox in unremitting pain. Pain that persists without relief and refractory to the mind's intention becomes a spontaneous prayer of the ensouled body-self. Oscillating between gravity and grace, pain works like a mantra. It functions like an incarnated Jesus Prayer or a centering prayer of the flesh. The grace of pain is in the embodied practice of praying without ceasing.
There is, however, in this mode of embodied prayerfulness progressive dark nights against which the mind, not cooperating with the body, rebels. On the level of the ego, pain secretly celebrated becomes self-serving suffering. At other times, the personality rages: Not me! And also: Why me? There are feelings of persecution and bouts of depression. There is loss upon loss, an endless stripping. There is angst and angry refusal, abandonment and destitution.
In the quietude of surrender, however, pain works its alchemy on a level other than that of the ego-self. Like a dark night of the spirit, chronic pain vitiates meaning. Yet, in embracing this void, one can find glimmers of a dark illumination. Chronic pain shapes the undefinable soul-scape of an experiential negative theology.
The gravity of pain gives the hermit and the one who is called to rest in the still small voice of the Source, a rare and efficacious grace. As acting becomes progressively limited and limiting, and as the body-self narrows into an incompetence that humbles all drives, (including the drive to idealize suffering,) the pulse of the sacred heart palpates.
In this heart-wrenching fragility all one can do is wait. In waiting, another level of attention is revealed as is another challenge to the ego-mind, for waiting is itself a kind of suffering. The attention required to wait in unknowing Simone Weil identified with waiting for God.
The grace given in gravity, however darkly, points one toward the kingdom, the yet-to-come that is already, strangely present. This grace of gravity is imbued with a great mystery - that God took on body in order for body to become filled with God (to modify St. Irenaeus.)
Through the lens of pain, one also sees the great gift that is authentic friendship. One who is afflicted and whose life is progressively restricted and circumscribed is in a state of real and defining poverty that only the gratitude of exchange can address. Vulnerable and radically dependent, one so afflicted knows, from the inside out, what it means to be the victim lying alongside the road, for whom hope comes in unexpected gestures of compassionate recognition.
The flesh-taking, says Rosemary Houghton, is an experience of passionate exchange. One of the limit conditions that exemplify this truth is the hermit who, in affliction, waits for God as he or she waits for the gift given without contingency. Such moments are replete with the strangely present yet-to-come of God.
The world, seen through the lens of passionate exchanges, is seen afresh in moments of awakened attention. The breakthrough of exchange softens the harsh limits of gravity. There is renewed perceptual acuity. One sees the wonder of the first cardinals in their powdery but powerful reds and one sees, despite the dulling lens of gravity, the Other who befriends and who never abandons. One feels the fire that never goes out.
Topic for November 2000 Issue:
What Importance do you attach to security in your life?
What about issues of safety, especially for women?
Deadline: October 2, 2000
Resources Available from Raven's Bread
Readings in Spirituality - Annotated Bibliography by Sharon Jeanne Smith 31pp. $10.00
Solitude & Union: A Select Bibliography on the Hermit Way of Life by Cecilia W. Wilms 26pp. $8.00
Commentary on Canon 603 from "The Law of Consecrated Life" by Jean Beyer SJ, 1988 Translated from the French by W. Becker, 1992 10pp. $3.00
Hermits: The Juridical Implications of Canon 603 by Helen L. Macdonald, Researcher Novalis: St. Paul University, Ottawa, ONT 24pp. $8.00
Notes to Guide the Beginning Hermit by A Hermit of Mercy 15pp. $5.00
Statutes for Hermits by The Bishops of France (1989) 12 pp. $4.00
Discernment Survey 1996 6pp. $2.00
Raven's Rest The Silence...The Solitude...The Solace of God... Retreatants welcome to schedule time at Raven's Rest hermitage (a fully furnished apartment with kitchenette & private entrance) here at Still Wood. Offers opportunity to experience solitude and silence on a forested mountainside of the Newfound Range in the rural Smokies, approximately 35 miles N.E. of the Great Smokies National Park and 35 miles N.W. of Asheville. Spiritual Direction available upon request. Suggested offering $20.00 per day includes meals. For further information, contact: Paul and Karen Fredette
P.O. Box 562
Hot Springs, NC 28743
Tel: 828-622-3750
Book Notices and Recommendations
Dogspell, A Dogmatic Theology on the Abounding Love of God by Mary Ellen Ashcroft.A thoroughly delightful and reverent recognition that God (dog spelled backwards) loves us as eagerly as our hound; that God’s tracks can be seen throughout every room of our homes and lives; who from the beginning longs to go for a w-a-l-k with us in the garden. 2000. Paper, 88pp $9.95 Forest of Peace Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 269, Leavenworth, KS 66048-0269. TEL:1-800-659-3227
Simpler Living, Compassionate Life - A Christian Perspective Edited by Michael Schut. Selections from some of the most noteworthy Christian writers encourage us in our search for an abundant life freed of the clutter and clamor of “too much; too fast” 2000. Paper, 296pp. $14.95 From Living The Good News, a division of The Morehouse Group P.O. Box 1321, Harrisburg, PA 17105. Spencer, MA 01562-1233; TEL:1-800-877-0012
Silenced by Prayer, From Words to Contemplation by Peter Ward, CSsR.A biographical account of the movement of prayer from recitation and reading to conversation and finally, wordless communion. 1999. Paper, 153pp. $12.95 Twenty-third Publications, P.O. Box 180, Mystic, CT 06355. TEL: 1-800-321-0411
Spiritual Literacy, Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life by Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat. Using more than 650 brief examples the authors tutor us in the art of lingering with our experiences and seeing the world with fresh eyes. 1998. Paper, 608pp. $15.00 Touchstone Publications, Simon & Schuster; 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. TEL: 212-698-7000
Raven's Bread
P.O. Box 562
Hot Springs, NC
28743