The Hermit, Part 2

The second in the Hermit Series comes this week. The first hermit essay can be accessed here. It is a meditation on finding the pathway between two opposites. Its a meditation of finding my way through faith and doubt in myself and my own practice. This week we are exploring another resonance I find in the Hermit.

Movement 2

The Hermit is “the far out elder in the forest who gives a young seeker a sacred chant or prayer to recite in the case of great danger, and only the greatest of dangers.”

—Jessica Dore on her Social Media

I will let you in on a little secret. My embrace of the hermit far out on the edges of society is the result of heartbreak. It’s born of that screaming chasm of pain that comes from being weird in a world full of conventional wisdom, people, and institutions letting me down. I have always been the square peg to so many people’s circle hole.

“James, why do you look so tired?”

“James, what is magic?”

“James, why are you sweating so much?”

“James, what are you going to do with that degree?”

“James, James, James, James, James,” the avalanche of questions our society begs of those who wish to be out on a fringe. Well, its either those little pinpricks of questions that beg a conformity with some unknown norm that I was playing with or the paralyzing silence of just finding someone dumbstruck by your way of living. Have you ever encountered a person who just is so profoundly confused by your lifeway that they can only beg the question why with their eyes? Ugh, honestly, the whole thing of being constantly questioned for being yourself is exhausting.

It’s born of the pain of having institutions put you through unspeakable horrors. You want to be a father who takes a paternity leave longer than a day? Oh, well, let’s subject you to the 407th layer of some hellscape with the forms, requesting donated time off of your co-workers, and subjecting you to microaggressions when you return. You want to be supported during an international pandemic? Well, we will throw you a little bit of cash but still subject you a dizzying array of horrors, including, but not limited to, fighting for toilet paper and can goods amidst thirsty, apocalypse-seeking stockpilers and being left in the harrowing abyss of official statements that the pandemic is over when people are still dying and being disabled in our continued plague time. You want the basic dignity of some basic level of health care for your family and fellow humans? Well, you will get slapped in the face with some idiotic vote blue no matter slogan telling you, “gosh, people should be able to keep their employee offered health plans.” Tell that to my mom, who is dead of a completely preventable form of cancer, because she didn’t have healthcare.

I feel like just existing as myself on this planet has broken my heart again and again. Our conventional wisdom in the United States keeps needlessly sacrificing the lives of the disadvantaged, those experiencing disability, those experiencing homelessness, those experiencing generational disadvantaged on some altar so that a very small group of people can go on blissfully unaware or fully convinced of the legitimacy of their opulence. In this most recent heartbreak that broke my will, I watched over a million people in my country, predominately those experiencing some form of disability or disadvantage, die because of a poor response to a pandemic.

Over 1 million and counting have died to COVID-19.

Over 1 million and counting have died to COVID-19.

Over 1 million and counting have died to COVID-19.

Yes, behold the barbarity of our supposed “lighthouse on the hill” democracy where we can send billions in weapons support to a country halfway across the world to fight a proxy war during a pandemic.

It brings me back to the solemn tears I shed in the encroaching darkness after my mom breathed her last breath. Honestly, I don’t thing I have ever come back from those tears. Nothing makes things more clear than to lose your person due to the barbarity of the public policy that just lets people die because it is primarily invested in machines of destruction and not saving. Yes, I grieve my moms loss, but I also grieve the loss of so many mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and friends who could have been saved if we defunded the pentagon of its 1.64 trillion dollar budget and redistributed all that money to feed, house, heal, and educate the people here. How many people would still be here if our public policy was not dominated by a death cult bent on distributing its war machines to its 154 outposts around the globe?

So, yes, dear reader, my move away from society to embody the hermit on the edge of society is born of this heartbreak that comes in society’s rejection of the value of my and my kin’s life. Rather than run to the barricades for the 1.6 trillionth time, I have retreated underground for this season of my life as did the hermit in other dark ages of our species’ history. I am with my books and music, my looms and spindle, my incense and candles. For, as our season of darkness and cold approaches, I will retreat even further from the frantic discourse of our times to find my own way, my own wisdom to make it through this time. For, as history has always shown, time and nature make follies of all empires, all tyrannies.

To your survival in these dark times.

In solidarity with all my beloved here,

a hermit fiber druid

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