Back around 2015 or so, there was a spurt of growth in the community, with daughter houses springing up here and there as various members dedicated their homes as priories of the mother house in Ithaca. My husband and I had attempted more than once to create a similar form of house church or meditation center or something along those lines in our own home as well. But it never "took." A few friends might come, but not often, and we could never really settle on what we wanted to do - eucharist, or bible study, or meditation. The house church/priory plan never truly emerged.
Then one day as we were driving up the driveway after work I looked up at the house and said out loud, "It's not a priory, it's a hermitage!" My husband simply said, "Duh," meaning, "It's about time you figured that out."
Some challenges arose as we began to articulate what "hermitage" would mean for us in this particular time and place. We both had jobs, we have family, we were not intending to cut ourselves off from the world. But we also haven't attended churches in the area for a long time, even though both of us are ordained Christian clergy, and deeply love the life of worship. What started to become clear was what I've come to call a "theology of place," the notion that the driving force here was not so much a "lifestyle choice" on our part, or even a sense of call to eremitic life. It was a growing awareness that the locus of encounter with God for my husband and me was here, in this place, in this house. We were not called to go anywhere (church, etc.) to "find" God, nor was this a place where others would necessarily come for worship. It is a simple house on a dirt road in the woods on the side of a (small) mountain in rural New Hampshire. It is where we encounter God.
Once that became clear, other things fell quickly into place. We live near Lake Sunapee, which means "wild goose" in the native Algonkian language. Serendipitously, the Wild Goose is also considered a symbol of the Holy Spirit in some Celtic circles. A friend of ours made a sign that now adorns the front of the house by the door: Wild Goose Hermitage of the Lindisfarne Community. Other friends gave us a beautiful oil painting of a lone goose taking flight, which now hangs in my living room. I adopted the wild goose logo from our website to add to my scapular, and at Abbot Andy's urging have taken the title "Amma" as an homage to the desert mothers whose escape to the edges of civilization I admire.
I still work at a local college, teaching and helping out in the library, and I do see that as a form of ministry. But the longer I remain at the Wild Goose Hermitage, the more I realize that I am a hermit at heart, that I crave that daily encounter with God here, and leave this spiritual space only reluctantly. It was not, at least in the beginning, a vocation to a spiritual role or identity, but to a particular kind of place, a place that continues to shape me day by day.
Amma Beth+, your post really rings a lot of bells for me.
ReplyDeleteI, too, have struggled with nontraditional "traditions" here at Grace Gardens. We've had Bible studies, Eucharist, Prayer and Meditation groups, and even some Spiritual Direction but have had the same results as you describe -- very few people attend. But we always get the same response from people when they come here, "Oh, I love this place. It feels like home. It's so peaceful." I think this has a lot to do with all of the prayer, meditation, studying, and creating that happens here all of which is bathed in Spirit through different wisdom traditions.
Thank you for putting into words for which I've been at a loss. Much love to you and Charlie.