Even now, I am becoming
wind, something less flesh, more
movement, more current, less
here, more everywhere. Though
the moment I think I know this truth,
the knowing re-solids me,
makes me into clay that pretends it is wind.
But becoming clay again, I am destined
to crumble, disintegrate, until
I am dust and once again one
with the wind. How to trust anything
then, except this infinite becoming and
rebecoming—and whatever
it is that is alive inside it all.
That. I put my faith in that.
An insight made available to us by the hermit's life is that we are all, each one of us, a hermit; that in the end we know we are a unique creation of God, and alone because of that uniqueness, and that this alone-ness become solitude is the meeting place with God. This is true no matter how social and communal our exterior lives may be. It is within our interior solitude, the solitude and silence that many of us (including hermits) try to shut out with noise and activity of various sorts in order to evade that encounter, that we are called into truth and confrontation with mercy, that we are given what it is we have to give in our encounters with other people who in their own lives are engaged in the same searching.