Can we learn something from the modern day hermits?

Modern day hermits bringing back an ancient tradition


The Archbishop of Louisville, Kentucky has agreed to receive the Life Vow to be a hermit from a Bardstown man next November. Our pastor being a canon lawyer was given the task of researching the Church's canons regarding accepting hermits in a diocese. When he related this story with me, it piqued my interest in this form of consecrated life outside of religious communties, and how it is lived in today's world. Definitely, a path less taken by men and women called to devote their lives to the praise of God and salvation of the world through a stricter separation from the world. The consecrated life of a hermit is also part of the Anglican Church tradition, and other Christian denominations. An article in the New York Times talks about a city dweller named Richard Withers who chooses the life of a religious hermit:

The reverent Brother Withers bows
to a joyful friend. NYT

Richard Withers does not fit the popular image of a hermit. His beard is neatly trimmed, and he is friendly, not taciturn. He lives here in a tiny row house, which he rehabilitated, and while the struggling neighborhood might appear daunting, it is not the desert.

And, of course, this is 2001, not the fourth century, when solitary religious life flourished within an emerging church.

The life Brother Withers has chosen -- as a canonically recognized hermit within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia -- is possible only because the Vatican revised the church's canon law in 1983, adding a provision allowing bishops to accept hermits within their dioceses. Since then, others have chosen this path, bringing back an ancient tradition, although Catholic officials do not seem to know how many live as hermits today.

''There's this commitment,'' Brother Withers said in an interview, ''an almost unremitting desire to be alone with God.''

Put simply, he lives the life of a monk, but without the support of a monastery.

He rises at 5 a.m. for an hour of prayer and follows a monastic discipline -- praying according to an ancient schedule that follows the rhythms of the day, the offices of lauds, vespers, compline -- along with set periods for meals, work, spiritual reading and writing.

Until this month, when he made vows of poverty, chastity and obedience before Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, the Philadelphia archdiocese had never recognized a hermit. Officials were skeptical when Brother Withers, 46, proposed the idea. Twice, they turned him down. They are supportive now.

''He's as authentic as they come,'' said Monsignor Alexander J. Palmieri, the archdiocese's chancellor, or administrator. Such a life, Monsignor Palmieri said, is ''being alone with God, not just for your benefit but for the benefit of the church and the world.''

Brother Withers said he sought recognition as a hermit out of a desire for ''a greater sense of obedience'' to the church. The status carries no financial or health benefits, he said. He felt that God was urging him, despite initial rejections by the archdiocese. ''The message I was getting in prayer was, keep trying,'' he said.

The church's Canon 603 recognizes the life of the hermit, ''in which Christ's faithful withdraw from the world and devote their lives to the praise of God and the salvation of the world through the silence of solitude and through constant prayer and penance.''

The Rev. Daniel Ward, executive director of a legal resource center serving men and women who have taken religious vows, said the law was written without specifics as the church's way of saying, ''this is possible, now let it develop.''

''It's reviving the practice of the early church, where people didn't belong to a group or what we call a religious order or congregation,'' Father Ward said.

For centuries, the church has recognized hermits attached to monastic communities, men or women living separately near a monastery. One order built around this purpose is the Camadolese, founded in 1012, which has a monastery near Big Sur, Calif.

But how many dioceses now recognize solitary hermits is an open question.

''There are lots of hermits,'' Brother Withers said.

He is in touch by e-mail with at least three others. But there are more.

One man was accepted as a hermit in August in a Pacific Northwest diocese. He lives in an hermitage within a ponderosa pine forest, his days guided by a cycle of prayer centered on the Psalms and Bible readings. In an e-mail interview, he said a hermit's intention was to seek union with God in this life, not the next. He asked that he neither be named nor quoted directly, to preserve his isolation.

Brother Withers was born in Los Angeles, one of seven children, and raised, he said, ''culturally Jewish.'' His family moved to Camden, N.J., when he was 8. Eleven years later, through a series of influential acquaintances, including his supervisor in the bicycle repair department of the discount store where he worked, he was drawn toward Catholicism, was baptized and lived for years with others who shared a commitment to the church.

Early on, in prayer, he took his own vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and felt he saw signs from God that he was on the right path. For example, within a week of taking his vow of poverty, he came home one day to find that a burglar had stolen his tools, an event he regarded as helping him break a bond with material things. For years, he considered joining a religious order but did not find one that seemed right for him. In 1984, he ended up living alone -- a move he feared beforehand, but found spiritually enriching from the first day.

In 1994, he became aware of the canon law provision allowing hermits. He applied to the archdiocese for its recognition in 1995, but was turned down. As he was about to apply once more, Monsignor Palmieri asked that he wait another year. The archdiocese asked him and his spiritual director, a local priest, to send in regular reports on his life.

On Oct. 14, Brother Withers made a public profession of his vows in his parish church, placing his hand in the hands of Cardinal Bevilacqua. The event made the newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer. Brother Withers said he had found the attention challenging. Being in ''a public light is no consolation,'' he said.

Besides, he said, his life has much that is ordinary.''I've got to do the wash, sweep the floor, earn a living,'' he said. To make ends meet, he works one day a week at a company that makes scientific instruments.

But his purpose is distinctive. ''It's the amount of time spent in prayer, which is why I live alone,'' he said. ''It's in the solitude that I hear God best.''

Richard Withers is recognized as a hermit by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

 In the UK, this article from The Independent describes the lives of hermits in Britain:

 By the time Sue Woodcock came to retire from her career as a policewoman, she'd had enough of   Hampshire, where she was based and longed for a more traditional and natural way of life – one where she could "live by [her] own rules". In her old life, back in what she calls "that England", she had become disillusioned by politics, by society as a whole. So she moved north to become a crofter in the Yorkshire Dales.

In 2004 she bought Mire House: a deserted heap of stones with no running water, no electricity and not much of a roof. What remained of her savings she spent on rare- breed sheep and an old Rayburn cooker. Before long she was installed in her leaking hermitage along with a family of dogs, cats, chickens, sheep, goats and Henry the turkey. 

Her plan had been to do all this with the man she was seeing at the time, though that didn't work out. Instead of wallowing in heartbreak, she discovered she was excited by the idea of solitude. Surrounded by "bats, owls and plenty of animals" she says she never gets lonely. Sue Woodcock is a modern-day hermit. 

"I love it," she explains, from the unplastered interior of her home, which smells of stone and damp and where everything in sight is functional and worn. "It means I can fart and belch as I like. I can wander round in my pyjamas, make as much mess as I like, go to bed when I want, and there are no arguments." 

Being a hermit is about much more than just living an uninhibited, single life. As well as being someone who lives alone, a hermit is seen to have gone back to nature, leading a life of asceticism free from materialism. With the prediction that, by 2010, up to 46 per cent of UK households will be lived in by only one person, perhaps the hermit is about to come back into vogue. 

For Woodcock, there is more to it than just the freedom of living alone: "I have no morals, see," she continues, "personal principles – but not morals. They're things others impose on you." Her desire for a people-free existence was perhaps formed in her youth. "At school I was the fat, red-haired girl with freckles and no parents – they decided they didn't want me and moved to Australia, which led to bullying. I've always been the odd one out. When everyone else was mad about the Beatles, I liked Frank Ifield. He could really sing." 

For centuries, Englishwomen beyond child-bearing age who lived alone would arouse suspicion. As recently as the early 20th century women were sectioned for offences such as living by themselves, not cutting their hair or not tidying their kitchen. Historically, our understanding of what is eccentric or threatening has been articulated by masculine elites threatened by female non-conformity. 

"There's no way I could have done this 100 years ago," Woodcock says. "They would have called me insane." Which is not to say she has escaped persecution. Less than two years after moving in, the local park authority decided they wanted her out, claiming the house that she had bought legitimately should remain a ruin and that by patching her roof with tarpaulin she had altered its state illegally. Arguably, it was her lifestyle that was deemed unacceptable. An eviction notice was pinned to her door, which she chose to ignore and she has since – after a hearty battle – won the right to stay put. As a result, Woodcock became something of a local hero. Amid all the suspicion, the English have always had a peculiar affection for hermits. 

Lawrence Durrell once called us a nation of islomanes who are drawn instinctively towards islands. With the hermit a human island, it makes sense that the English find something inherently admirable about them. 

Hermits are embodiments of doing your own thing, knowing your rights, minding your own business, my house is my castle; 18th-century landowners would even employ "ornamental hermits" to live in grottoes on their estates. Charles Hamilton of Painshill Park advertised for a hermit who was not to cut his beard or nails, leave the grounds, talk to the servants, attack the guests, or wear anything other than a camel-hair robe. The only known applicant was sacked after three weeks when someone spotted him at the local pub. 

Tom Leppard is by no means an ornamental hermit. I interviewed him, along with Sue Woodcock, for my book on English eccentrics. 

After a brutal convent education, and retired from the armed forces, Tom Leppard moved to London, which he loathed. It made him realise that every time in his life he'd been unhappy people had been involved. So Leppard vowed to become a hermit and moved to a remote part of the Isle of Skye. Before leaving London he had 99.2 per cent of his flesh tattooed with leopard spots, projecting his acute sense of apartness on to his skin. 

That was more than 20 years ago. Tom is 73 now and – when we finally meet, after I track him down in his remote lair with the help of a local fisherman – he is wearing a woolly hat, a fleece with a flap that covers his groin, and very little else. His home, Paradise, as he calls it, is very neat. Most of his daily chores are aimed at keeping it that way. At the heart of his encampment is a cave made from the remains of a sheep pen and bits of timber from nearby beaches. He survives on tins of food he buys with the pension he picks up when he kayaks over to the mainland. 

Before we can chat, he has to find his dentures. "Haven't spoken to anyone in a while, see," he explains. Leppard says he was lonely in London but never gets lonely now. But why choose such an extreme path? Leppard puts it simply: "I'm selfish. I've got all this," he nods at the view that sweeps past a flank of Scottish scarp. "And I want to keep it. I don't want to share it with anybody." 

As well as reminding us that it's possible to live without material possessions, by their example Woodcock and Leppard remind us not to confuse the words "alone" and "lonely". Companionship is not always a prerequisite to fulfilment. As our population gets older and we grow increasingly fond of living on our own, this is more relevant now than ever before.