Introduction for My Mother's Two Other Children

Thank you so much for all the support you have given me since I launched this weblog last Friday. I have received pivotal encouragement from my family members, my healthcare team, and my Christian vegan support network. I was even blessed to hear back from Sister Laurel (she is amazing!) Am I really being called by God to become a Christian vegan hermit, blogger, and Spiritual Director with a caseload of 5-10 students at some point in the next decade, or is this an unhealthy projection of eremitic dilettantism, bipolar grandiosity, and Post-Incarceration Syndrome that I need to embrace, thank, and then let go? Discernment is a collective effort and time will tell. After five years of expert outpatient care, my therapist thinks I am in a stable enough stage of my recovery to experience and write my way through whatever old patterns and new insights arise from storehouse consciousness as I dive deeper into American contemplative life. "The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight," as Joseph Campbell put it. Welcome to my joyful schizomystic swim sessions!

There is much to look at in my contemplation these days and it is difficult for me to limit myself to five paragraphs on a single topic each week, but I am committed to these weblog training wheels for at least the spring quarter of 2025. Sister Laurel has given me such valuable advice about the hermit life to ponder that I am not ready to make a decision about the future of my full-sized bed just yet. That will take an entire 5-paragraph update of its own, especially if I link my decision-making back to Chapter 22 in the Rule of Saint Benedict. Nor am I ready to brave Catholic mass at on one, two or all three of my local parishes. It looks like that will happen later this spring or summer. This week, it is more important that I share some introductory thoughts specifically for my mother's two other children, my beloved older sister K in Colorado and my beloved older brother J in Kentucky. (I am thanking God, J, that you dodged that recent tornado touchdown by three hundred yards, and I am sending my condolences to those who lost homes and workplaces. Mom and I have started a safe room in the basement because tornadoes might be happening more in New York, too. I haven't put together go-bags for us yet. It's harder than it sounds.) 

First and foremost, K and J, thank you for being two of the best teachers I could have. We've been through a lot together. So how do I explain this discernment to you? Doesn't the vocation of the Christian vegan hermit imply the abandonment of my delicately balanced caresharing arrangement with Mom? Let me reassure you that Mom was my first consultant as I launched this weblog. I live upstairs, and she lives downstairs. Apart from Friday errands, medical appointments, and a daily walk when I am up to it, I rarely leave the house. But I am always within earshot if Mom has a need. She is very self-sufficient and practically a hermit herself, so it works out well. I plan to be her caregiver here in the house until the end, and she plans to be my caregiver, too - at least until she is 100! That's what we are aiming for. My call to the eremitic life isn't about leaving Mom unattended. As I understand the instruction of the Holy Spirit to me in this matter, helping Mom age in place with comfort and peace of mind is an indispensable part of my formation as a Christian vegan hermit, blogger, and Spiritual Director. 

Mom is teaching me how to age through challenges with grit and grace. She is not Mary the mother of Jesus, of course, but the light and love of Mary reaches out to me through the cardinal mystery of Mom's being and aging. In terms of organized Christianity, Mom is not a member of any church, as you know, having rejected organized religion in her childhood because of the violent conflict between Protestants and Catholics that she witnessed in Northern Ireland. But in terms of informal Christianity, Mom is as much a part of my church as it gets, simply because she is Mom. Caring for Mom (and through her for all of God's creatures in concentric spheres of mindfulness) is central to my conception of Christian sonship. Not that I ever measure up to caregiving as well as I think I should, but then I am very clearly a work in setbacks, recovery, and progress - not in perfection.

As to what becoming a hermit would mean in terms of my future communications with you and the rest of Mom's family, I don't really know yet, K and J. While I think many contemporary hermits probably do cut down on most of their family communications, I trust that some hermits are more flexible, and I lean on the flexible side in this regard. I certainly look forward to your visits here at the house, and to our continued judicious use of phone and virtual communications. I want to be as independent as Mom when I reach my eighties, and I believe that means doing the best that I can to follow God's plan for my health, including everything from medication management and prayer to this contemplative weblog ministry. Maybe I will need to give and receive too much family support to make the hermit's path viable for me. Spiritual Direction will help me sort that out, and there are several other vocational options for me to consider over the next several years of my discernment. One of these options is the Franciscan Missionaries of Jesus Crucified. Is it just a coincidence that this secular institute started right here in Albany? But more on this in the summer or fall. I've already taken up too much of everyone's time again this week. Thank you for reading and for keeping me in your thoughts - as you are all in my prayers.