Life lessons from modern day hermits

Life lessons from modern day hermits


On the side of a hill, a lonely cabin is being prepared. Made from cheap timber, it will provide a small chamber for sleeping and praying, an alcove for washing, plus an area big enough for a stove, a sink, a table – and little else. From a bench outside, you can gaze over the fields and hedgerows of Shropshire. On a clear day like this, the Malvern Hills are visible some 50 miles away. Yet in all this panorama there is scarcely any other sign of human habitation.
With a smile of contentment, Stafford Whiteaker surveys what will soon be his home – or more correctly, his cell. “I shall be in solitary,” he says, “and it is lovely.” On a sunny afternoon in the 21st century, this softly spoken figure, in simple attire – smock and bifocals rather than beard and loincloth – announces himself as a hermit.
“It’s called the hidden life,” he says. “No wonder you weren’t aware of it. But it is alive and well and living here in England, Scotland and Wales.” It is hard to be precise about numbers. Hermits, after all, tend not to be over keen on announcing themselves. But one recent report suggested there may be around 200 hermits in Britain today.
Some, like Whiteaker, will be enjoying the monastic life, but alone, rather than in a community of monks or nuns. As they would in a monastery, they will follow a fixed “rule of life”, sticking to a timetable (horarium) that can trace its roots to early Christianity. Hermits such as these will often describe themselves as following the eremitic life, distinguishing themselves from “solitaries”, who follow a less regulated path, and who might not necessarily subscribe to any defined religion. Solitaries will, however, invariably be seeking the spiritual, although as one put it, “It’s rather more experimental. I make it up as I go along. I don’t know what will happen next.”
Not every hermit enjoys the bucolic surroundings of Whiteaker’s “cell”. As I explored the anonymous prayer circles that pass for a hermit network (communications are by post), I discovered the existence of “slum hermiting, in dreadful bedsits, in dreadful cities”, as one source put it. A kinder term is “urban monasticism”: living in the city but alone, in a flat from which one emerges as rarely as possible. Some of these “urban hermits” even have blogs. “Yes,” begins the latest entry of one, “I do try to post once every three years or so…” The second most recent entry is indeed from 2009. The profile picture shows what looks like a medieval nun. But the writer is a laywoman-turned-hermit in her late fifties, living in an apartment in New York City. She works for a living, but from home, which enables her “to stay ‘in cell’” nearly all the time. “I have groceries and pretty much everything else delivered. I rarely leave my apartment except for church or choir.” She became a hermit in 2007, nine years after experiencing “a devastating event in my life”. “I began to notice that time I spent alone was balm for my injured soul. Worldly ties began to unravel.” In her most recent posting, from April 2012 (“Current mood: contemplative”), she writes, “I am happy. And no, I’m not lonely :-)”.