Eremitic Spirituality and Hygiene Indifference

It's 5:59 PM Eastern on Thursday as I begin to write. I am just finishing up my supper-time green drink (I am running a little late this evening) and thinking how nice it would be to take a shower, but I also have my first psalter arriving from Amazon tonight, it is time to begin my Psalter and Psalmody session, the shower can wait until tomorrow morning when it fits better in my schedule, and I am too chronically depressed and/or spiritually hygiene indifferent to obsess about a daily shower in any event. I'll floss and brush my teeth, no doubt about that. But shower? Let's nail this down by the end of 2025: is daily showering a modern mental health necessity for a sedentary fifty-something anchorite, or is it just a waste of water, and especially of hot water, on my community's journey to ecological resilience and net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050? I will either go with the consensus opinion among those I trust, or I will do what I think is right regardless. I haven't yet figured out the balance, but I know that responsible American liberty requires me to find it. No one except Christ knows me as well as I know myself, and I probably still have a lot of penance yet to do for my years of youthful vanity. On the other hand, maybe the Holy Spirit is nudging me to ease up on the penance and attend more to my hygiene. My mom is about to turn 82. Should she be showering every day, or is the risk of a fall worse than the benefit? Who am I to tell her what to do? Is there a law about this - either American or Christian? Stop taking daily showers, and it's time for the nursing home or the hospital, according to the Judge?

Cf:

• Hygiene Indifference: The Symptom We Don’t Talk About | NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness
• Vanity and the Beauty Pageant | Catholic Answers Magazine
• How Often Should The Elderly Bathe & Shower? | Helping Hands
• Can Family Members Be Held Liable For Allowing An Elderly Parent to Live Alone
• The Search for True Happiness: Diogenes and His Lantern

Bottom line, this has been a good initial mind sweep of this project stream. I think my mom and I are doing really well here. I don't need to worry if either of us is not into daily showering, so long as we are keeping up a reasonable standard of hygiene. My mom is definitely a role model for good elder skin care, while I could probably use a little less ecological overshoot penance. I'm still rather hard on myself for failing the next generation at my 5-acre vegan permaculture pilot site in northern Maine. That's where my schizoaffective disorder set in. Or was it earlier, in 2005, in Ohio, around the time of Hurricane Katrina? New job stress, ecological overshoot panic, family of origin risk factors and a biochemical imbalance. I turned vegan in 2005, too. Was that an eating disorder? Did it trigger a biochemical imbalance? Or was it the root of a genuine Christian eco-spiritual awakening? Is everything the secular side calls schizoaffective disorder best understood as spiritual warfare on the Christian side? Are these complementary perspectives?

Wow. There is a lot to look at here. I've never thought that my conversion to veganism for religious, environmental and public health reasons might have triggered a biochemical imbalance that enhanced my risk of developing schizoaffective disorder, on the one hand, and/or put me in the middle of a spiritual war within the Church, on the other. This is a good post to share with my therapist tomorrow morning. Maybe it's also time for a discussion with Pastor Frank Hoffman on Sunday afternoon. Has Craig Wescoe given any Friday Night Live talks on Christian vegans and spiritual warfare? That is something else for me to look into.

Afterthought: Joan Osborne - One Of Us.