The title of these reflections is The Hermitage of the Heart, and I hope in the course of these four talks to explore a little bit with you what that term, the Hermitage of the Heart, may mean for our lives and what it suggests for us. I want to begin with two quotes. The first quote is from Paul's letter to the Colossians, chapter 3, and I'm just going to do a very short excerpt from that section. It's a very famous quotation that we hear and see often enough. He says, You have died, and now your life is hidden with Christ in God.

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And the second quote is a quote of Thomas Merton from one of his later writings, a quote which I believe reflects a certain amount of accumulated experience in his life, which makes it a significant statement. And Merton writes, Our real journey in life is interior. It is a matter of growth, deepening, and of our ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts. End of quote. That first quotation from Colossians I think has at least two senses of

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meaning. One, if you read the further context of that excerpt, brief excerpt, the more obvious possible meaning is that Paul is referring to the future of the Christian, the future life in the parousia after the second coming, when the kingdom is fully established, that our future, the future of the Christian, the future glorified life is hidden with Christ. And the text goes on, When Christ returns in glory, then who the Christian really is shall be revealed along with who Christ really is. And the glory of each Christian will be revealed in, within the glory of Christ. So in that sense, that hidden life with Christ in God that Paul is referring to refers to that future. Our

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future may, and the glory of that future may not be fully apparent in the imperfection and limitation and travails of this life. But it is there, it is assured us, it is somehow already given to us to some extent. And that's what leads us to the second sense of that word hidden. It's not only that who we really are is hidden in God's future, which we await and hope, but also if we certainly take John's gospel and the letters of John, that future has already been given to us and is already ours. And so in that sense, it is hidden within us and maybe has not come to full outer manifestation in our individual lives and in the lives of people around us, society, the world, and even creation itself. Much

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like Paul's notion of creation being in labor pains, that there's something within creation seeking to be born and completely revealed. Well, there's something in us, likewise, waiting to be born completely and fully revealed, fully manifest. And that's this hidden life of Christ, hidden life with Christ in God. John tells us that the fullness of the Trinity, the Trinitarian life, for those who love God, the Father and I will come and we will dwell within them. And I think that's what Merton is getting at in his rather stark or startling statement that our real journey in life is interior. It's a matter of growth, deepening, of an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace

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in our hearts. And I'm really using these two quotes, the Colossians 3 quote and this Merton statement as kind of the guiding lights for these four reflections with you. And if I were to give a title to this first reflection, it would somewhat, I suppose you could say it's, well, what is the hermitage of the heart? Is there such a reality? What is it? Where is it? I think in Thomas Merton's statement, there are some very key words that are worth pausing over. The first right at the beginning of the statement is real journey. He says our real journey. What he's suggesting is that life is a journey and that perhaps there are two principal journeys in life and that of the two,

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one is perhaps more real than the other, more important than the other, or has first place while the other has second, or one follows the other. I don't think he's suggesting that one is real and the other is totally unreal or unrelated. Now, I think we all know that life is a journey and often we use that word, the metaphor of a journey to refer to our individual lives, to refer to history. History is sort of like a journey, a movement, a progression, and our own personal experience, I think, bears witness to this. We think of a journey as going from point A to point B and covering a certain amount of geographic territory with different events and sites and people and twists and turns and ups and downs

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and mountains and valleys, etc. We know that this is also a very, very pronounced image in the scriptures. The whole Israelite experience is one of a nomadic people who journey, for whom life is very much a journey, both metaphorically and concretely, literally, as nomadic peoples. And so the father of their people is Abraham, who is called out of his homeland to journey. And in Christianity, that same word is used referring to the new Israel, the church, the followers of Christ, who are continuing the journey of their ancestors. But it's given perhaps less of a geographic meaning. It's less of a journey towards a geographic promised land, but rather it's the journey in relationship, the journey as relationship,

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the journey for relationship, relationship with the Lord, covenant with the Lord, relationship with one another, our brothers and sisters on this planet, and relationship with the planet itself, with creation itself. The Vatican II Council appropriated this ancient term and gave it added emphasis and force in describing the church not only as the people of God, but also a pilgrim people, to reclaim the sense that we are wanderers, we are pilgrims, we are still nomadic people, we are people that are constantly moving and growing and seeking more and more for ourselves in relationship with the Lord and one another and with the earth itself. However, having said this, I think we live in a time and a place and an age and a culture

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where that sense of the journey of life is given almost exclusively an exterior dimension associated with external geographic places, events, people. And we take this to be the only journey of life, the only real journey, to the neglect of this other journey, which Merton says is very important, perhaps the real journey, and that's the journey inward, the interior journey, the real journey. As the writer and poet suggests in one of his poems, In Life, we return to the place where we first started and we know it for the first time, that somehow this, what we take to

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be an exclusively exterior affair, has very much to do with an interior affair, or as Merton says, our local New England poet Robert Frost once observed, we dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows. Or as the ancient desert fathers often put it, go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything. I'll say more about this a little later. I want to go to another key word that follows in the same first part of that statement of Merton. He says our real journey in life is interior. Let's dwell on that word interior. He's suggesting that the externalization of life and the preoccupation

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that we have as human beings, and particularly as Western human beings and Americans, with perhaps fulfilling the ancient scriptural injunction to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth, we seem to be so preoccupied through our science and our technology and our work to subdue life around us, and the life we create for ourselves seems to be the life around us. And we put very little energy at the life within us, at the disposal of exploring this life within us. We marvel at the explorations of outer life and now even extending to outer space, and this is all well and good. There's a vastness out there that is marvelous and intriguing and arouses our awe and inspires us and makes us so curious. But what Merton is suggesting, this interior journey

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leads to a world within us, a universe within us, not any less great and perhaps even greater, some might say, than the universe out there. The problem with so much of our outer exploration is we develop techniques and tools meant to master, control, manipulate, and at times often exploit the outer world and exploit others. I suppose there are at least two senses of this word interior, if not three. This interior journey is referring to the interior of each explorer, each person, but it perhaps refers to the interior dimension of every living thing. Every living thing has an outer dimension and an inner dimension, an outer principle of existence,

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an outer manifestation, and an inner principle of existence, and that the outer is only possible because of the inner, and the inner seeks outer manifestation. I don't know if it's somewhat like the old philosophical notion of the essence of a thing and the form of a thing, both two dimensions of one reality. But so often I think what Merton is saying is we take the outer form to be the total reality, to the neglect of exploring through the outer form to its inmost secretive dimensions, which one of us experiences or really believes that all that I am is completely manifested outwardly. I think our experience teaches us that we're always trying to manifest more fully

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something within us that has yet to be matured or developed or actualized or brought to the surface of our life. Another way of putting that is isn't there more in us than meets the eye? Isn't there far more within us than gets communicated to the surface of our life? And that in fact the externals can often betray what's within us, as well as reveal. So this interior dimension is the interior of each explorer, each person, but each thing, each reality. And then there's a third dimension of this word interior that Merton may be implying, and that's the the interior of God. He's saying or suggesting the real journey in life is interior, is within God,

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not so much to God as if we were outside of God and journeying to God, but rather an awakening and discovering that the journey is really within God, that we find ourselves within the mystery, and we seek to journey within the mystery, within the One. I think that gives one's journey a very different color, a very different sense, because in that sense where does one go when one realizes one has arrived, when one is within the mystery? Then one is not going from point A to point B. One doesn't explore from outside and moving towards inside. Then what is the nature of that journey? What is the nature of that exploration when you are already within? And conversely, when you find that same mystery is already completely within you?

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By interior journey, Merton seems to mean this entering into the depths of life, this entering into the depths of my own personal life and of life around me, this entering into the depths of God. And it's an entering that requires less and less control and manipulation, an ever greater surrender. It is a surrender to someone greater than ourselves at work within us. And Merton uses that word surrender, and that someone within us and within whom we find ourselves who is grace, who is love, who is the very principle and source and culmination of growth.

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I think what Merton is suggesting by this interior journey, this going within to the depths of all reality and not to the denigration of the exterior or the outward form or manifestation, one must reverence that too. But part of our reverencing it and part of our savoring it is to precisely not sell it short and not superficialize its existence, but rather to really delve as deeply and to savor as deeply the presence and the existence of that reality. So for the individual, it means an interior journey within oneself, within one's psyche. And that means dealing and exploring one's thoughts and imagination, memory, emotions, the will, rationality, and the irrational,

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both one's consciousness and unconsciousness. It means exploring one's psyche and going even deeper still to a place that I would call and that others in the tradition would call this hermitage of the heart, or that the Hindus would call the cave of the heart, or that the scriptures might, Christian scriptures might call the one's heart of hearts, that very core, central, that source of all that I am in process, of all that I am becoming. The challenge, it seems to me, for every human being, but especially for the Westerner, is to, first of all, believe that there is this inner dimension to who I am and to who I am becoming, and to all reality for that matter. That such interiority is extremely important for my growth

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into Christ-like wholeness and for the growth of the world. I think Merton and others utter prophetic words calling us into this vast unknown world within, for all the ills of our own personal life and that of society, all the imperfections come from the brokenness within us that so often we have not embraced and that we do not know. But rather act out of blindly or project onto others. So it's important that we come to know this inner dimension, but even more important than these areas of my own weakness that I need to discover within me, is discovering also within that same place, that same dimension, is God and is God's grace and loving presence. Without this inner exploration, you and I, the world, will never find peace, or the source of

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peace. We will never stop harming one another, harming our environment, because we would never have faced the source of our own selfishness and our own fears. The term hermitage of the heart is a rich one. The word hermitage, coming from the word eremos, usually refers to a desert-like solitary place apart from others, which can also mean a wilderness or a forest or vast empty expanse of ocean. To journey within, I must be willing to leave the crowd and face my own solitariness. That's what's evoked by this image hermitage.

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And there's two senses of the crowd. There's the crowd out there, and that can be people, places, and things. All that keeps my mind preoccupied can be activities, all the things I crowd my life with. But beyond that, there is also one must leave the crowd within one's own mind, within one's own psyche. And when I say to leave, I don't mean to repress or deny, but rather not to equate one's inner life with these realities. And that's all I am, are this churning of thoughts and feelings and images and memories, and etc. I go to a solitary outer place to leave the outer crowd for a while,

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but I must also find that inner solitary place by leaving the inner crowd for a while, by sort of passing through their midst, letting them be on the fringes of my conscious awareness, and going deeper to some deeper dimension. The image of the hermitage captures both dimensions of outer spaciousness and inner spaciousness. Usually the sense of a hermitage is an uncrowded place, but suggesting that one within oneself is likewise an uncrowded space. That outer spaciousness and inner spaciousness belong to me. To journey within I must be

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willing to leave the crowd and be alone in a vast empty solitary space. And I think for at least for Westerners, this is very difficult for us, and tends to be threatening and frightening. When Jesus often leaves the crowd and his disciples, it is to go to a solitary place and enter the hermitage of his heart. When he tells us to go to our inner chamber and shut the door and be seen and known only by God in prayer, he is speaking of the hermitage of the heart. Or when Moses goes up to Mount Sinai alone and is enshrouded by the cloud, this is another image for the same dimension of this hidden place within us, the secret hidden place with God, with the mystery.

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Or when Elijah leaves the city and travels through the desert alone and finds a cave and enters there alone, and within that cave hears the still small whispering sound of the Lord and covers his face, it is the cave of his heart, the hermitage of the heart. Biblically, the image heart refers to that most inward reality, the seat or ground of the personality, out of which emerge thoughts, feelings, images, memories, desires, speech, and eventually actions. The seeking of the hermitage of the heart is something like the Hindu renunciate, the Hindu monk who travels up the famous and long

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Ganges River seeking the source. Which one of us has not been out hiking somewhere or traveling somewhere and seen a stream or river and wondered where its source came from? How many powerful stories and accounts, historical accounts, there are of explorers who have sought the source of rivers? According to the Bible, God alone knows the source because God alone is the source. God alone knows the heart to its utter depths. Biblically, the heart is the center of a person, the taproot of their existence as a living being, the center of their religious awareness. It is that place where each one of us most truly desires and seeks God,

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where each one of us is most able to listen to God, to serve God, to praise God, to love God, and to love the world. It is that place of unity in us where there is no duplicity or hypocrisy or doubt or second thoughts, this heart of our hearts. Thus the image, the hermitage of the heart is a rich expression referring to that most inward, solitary, naked, uncluttered dimension at the core of our being from which our life flows moment by moment. It is the place where our uniqueness is created and born by the Spirit of the Creator in the image of Jesus. It is where we are most unique, most solitary, and yet, paradoxically,

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most united with everyone and everything. It is both the source of our uniqueness and the source of our communion. It is not a place of isolation, but rather where every uniquely created thing celebrates in communion. As Merton once wrote, true communion is one solitude meeting another. Its importance lies precisely in it being the source, the center, the core, the ground, the foundation, the axis around which our life turns and pivots. It is that place of pure being in us. It is the still point around which our world and the whole world is turning. It is the most pure and intense and naked and unadulterated

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and undistorted level of my being and existence. It is that place in me that, because it precedes the other levels of my psyche, is pure, is untainted, while as that place from which my life flows passes through my own psyche with all its various dimensions and especially its own woundedness and defense mechanisms and limitations, then it tends to be distorted and tainted and rendered incomplete. It is for this reason that the outer world and our outer journey is not completely real, in the sense that we never see reality fully as it is. It's always conditioned, and by that I mean somehow slightly distorted or altered,

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by our way of seeing things. And our way of seeing is colored by our own psyche and its own way of being put together, the way we've been put together, and the way we've learned to cope with life and to deal with life and to exist within our life. And so this source is very important to continue to explore. The very ground of our being is important because it can be a corrective to the confining, limiting ways that we relate to life, even our own life, the way we see life around us, the way we even see ourselves,

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the way we love or do not love life around us or love or do not love ourselves, even the way we see God and relate to God and love God. The whole point of human growth, it seems to me, and Christian growth, therefore, is to expand these constricting, limiting tendencies in us. And this expansion requires inner knowledge and inner exploration as well as the outer exploration. But I want to stress in these talks the importance of the inner because I believe we live in a time and an age and a culture where that has been sadly and grossly neglected. I suppose we could say the whole point of Christian human growth is the unity of the inner and the outer. But to achieve that unity, I think we need to emphasize the inner

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dimension because it is so neglected. And so this inner dimension that I'm calling the hermitage of the heart is that dimension within me that is most pure and intense and naked and unadulterated and undistorted. It is where I am most myself, where God is most God's self, where the world is most itself, and where other human beings are most themselves, all in relation to me, in relation with me, and where the universe is most itself in relation with me. We cannot, I think, be reminded enough of its importance and encouraged enough and supported enough in our efforts to journey within, especially considering the rather superficial

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external society we live in. We are in a society rich in things, yet some have observed we are spiritually impoverished. Others have said we are without soul, we lack depth. We live in a society for whom the real monk, as well as the inner monk within each person, remains a stranger and useless to society. And for even many members of the church, the monk, both the monk out there living in a monastery, but I would say the inner monk within each person, is unknown, is a stranger, and is seen as somehow valueless, useless, not important to our life of creating a better world out there. I suppose the first task of the Gospel, therefore, is to get people to take their inner life

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seriously, to get people to realize that all that their life appears to be on the surface and all that life around them appears to be is not all, is not the full reality. There is a secret hidden dimension to all of life, and we are made for that secret hidden dimension. We are not just made for the external world, and that all of the problems that we have in the external world perhaps are largely related to this unknown world within that we have not explored. Now when I say this, the hermitage of the heart is not referring to the unconscious. That is the part of us we need to certainly explore as we go inward on the way. But this hermitage believes that even beneath the unconscious, or at its core,

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is this other reality. We need to develop an ever-deepening interiority and to grip less tightly to our life as it is, or our way of thinking as it is, or feeling as it is, or remembering and imagining and believing as they are. I think so often what we think is perhaps really isn't, and what we think isn't perhaps really is. This is what I believe Jesus calls us to when he says that the kingdom of God is like a treasure buried in a field, the field of our life. Who would not sell all that she or he has in order to purchase that field, and then dig within that field and seek and cherish that

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treasure buried within the field? Elsewhere he says the kingdom of God is like a rare pearl, the pearl beyond price, the pearl of great price, hidden in the depths of the ocean. Who would not give all that they have to possess that rare precious pearl? There is a rare precious pearl, there is a rare precious treasure buried within us. And so the first task perhaps for the search to the hermitage of the heart, the first task of the explorer is to perhaps leave the crowd. Both the outer crowd of things which have such a hold on us that they pull our energy

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and our worry and our concern and our focus and our senses and even our intuitions, they pull it almost all exclusively outward, outside of ourselves. So to leave that crowd, that kind of crowd that has that role in our lives, and then to leave the second crowd, the crowd within. I think as soon as we try to sit still and explore within, we notice there's a crowd within us. Our mind is crowded with thoughts and images and memories, flitting to the past or to the future, worries, fears, emotions, that we need to explore those certainly, but to also realize there is,

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there's another dimension deep within those. Perhaps some reflection questions to guide you in this inner exploration is the first, I think the first question is to ask, do I really believe in this inner reality called the hermitage of the heart? Do I really believe my life is now hidden with Christ and God because I've died? And what is Paul referring to? What kind of death? Death to what? I'm not dead, I'm alive. A second reflection question might be, do I value this dimension of life, both my own personal being, my own self, life around me? Do I really value it by, and do I show this by seeking it, by learning and practicing ways of interiority,

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which are bringing about a greater unity in my life between the inner and the outer? A third question might be, how much of my time and energy and life and attention is focused outwardly, outside of me? Does this interior life, this hermitage of the heart or the inner world of my own psyche remain a strange, unknown place to me? Do I find I really don't savor life? And what I do is pack a lot of life into my life, a lot of doing, a lot of experience, and a lot of things, and that's what I think is a full life. And so I don't really have the time to stay long enough with one thing, with one reality,

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and savor the depths of what it is. And the last reflection question might be, how much does my Western society influence me in this regard of putting the exterior dimension of life over and above the interior dimension? And finally, let me give you some scriptural references to use as you reflect and pray about this. Matthew chapter 13, verses 44 to 46. Luke chapter 4, verses 1 to 13. Chapter 5, verses 4 to 7. Chapter 6, verses 43 to 45.

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Chapter 12, 22 to 32. Chapter 17, verses 20, 21. And chapter 24, verse 32. And then from the Gospel of John, I have quite a few here. Chapter 1, verses 12 to 18. Chapter 3, verses 1 to 21. And then skip to 29 to 34. Chapter 4, 7 to 26, 27 to 42. Chapter 6, 26 to 27. Then skip 52 to 58. Chapter 7, 37 to 39. Chapter 8, 31, 32. Chapter 10, 7 to 18.

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Chapter 11, 34 to 44. Chapter 12, 23 to 32. Chapter 14, 15 to 29. Chapter 15, 1 to 17. Chapter 20, 1 to 10. As you see, there's a... John is very concerned about this indwelling, this inner dimension. And Paul's letter to the Ephesians, chapter 2, 21 to 22. Chapter 3, 14 to 21. Chapter 4, 4 to 6. And finally, Colossians 3, 1 to 4. So, this concludes our first talk.

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