You Might Be a Part-time Hermit if...

An MRI machine reminds you of a solitary cave for a prayer retreat?

You Might Be a Part-time Hermit if:

- Going to the grocery store feels like a strenuous social activity.

- Reading with a skull and crucifix on your desk seems normal.

- Attending a choir concert inside a giant church, you sit way in the back by yourself like a serial killer because the flocks and flocks of people make your arms hurt.

- Streaming an event online that is big or crowded feels exhausting, even though you’re not really there.

But here’s the kicker, dear readers:

- You might be a part-time hermit if you find yourself, around 4pm on the day before Thanksgiving, delighted because you are quietly waiting in a large, half-darkened, pre-procedure room for your MRI. There is only one other patient in this large room, also behind a curtain, and a couple staff. The MRI team is running late. You feel like a desert queen, wearing not one but two long-flowing hospital gowns and a pair of pajama pants (because MRIs rooms are chilly, the PA warns you). You are sitting on a plastic chair behind a rectangle of sliding privacy curtains. You have nothing belonging to you except your body and a little key to a clothes locker.

But you realize you feel very happy. Like, VERY HAPPY. And you start chuckling at yourself, because who feels happy in a situation like this except a hermit recluse person?

This room is SO quiet. (No mood music! Hardly any people! Nothing going on!) You feel snug, closed off behind the curtain: a temporary anchorite. No one needs anything from you. There is nothing to do or think about except to be where you are right now. You can notice time, space, consciousness, energy, and being, without any distractions.

You are laughing at yourself. because this is goofypants.

---

It turns out you might be a hermit, also, if you find you enjoy having an MRI.

CONTENT WARNING: If MRIs or enclosed spaces are disturbing for you, you may want to stop reading. A couple friends visibly recoiled when I told them this story. If that might be you, feel free to skip to the end!

They ask over and over again before an MRI: “Are you claustrophobic?”

Nope. I’m agoraphobic, if anything. (My mother used to say that about herself, too.)

I don’t like big open spaces that are full of people or stimulation. (Big open EMPTY spaces on the other hand are fantastic.) But tiny spaces where I’m wrapped up like a little burrito in a cave? YES.

I am a claustro-phile. I love small spaces. (The word “claustro” is related to the medieval word “cloister,” which makes me happy.)

My mother used to tell the story of bringing me home from the hospital, and for a day or two, she couldn’t get me to relax and stop crying. Then she remembered ye olde practice of baby swaddling – so she wrapped me tightly in a baby blanket and put me in a corner of my crib with stuffed animals walling me into a corner.

I stopped crying and went right to sleep.

I am basically still that baby.

At the hospital, after about a half hour of happily waiting in the quiet and empty holding area, a tech came and took me down the hall. I laid down on the MRI table, a long tongue sticking out of a narrow cave mouth in this big machine, its mechanism humming with a rhythmic beat. I was wrapped up in my three layers of hospital gown, then they cuddled my head in some towels. Swaddled up. After asking if I felt ok (I sure did!), they slid me into the machine.

Maybe it was the ten years I spent as a pastor, but at this moment I found myself thinking, “YES! No one is going to talk to me! I can just lie here for forty five minutes! Heaven!”

I resisted the urge to laugh out loud at myself because I would ruin the image if I moved too much, but I was grinning with my eyes closed.

The MRI machine uses sounds to create an image – “magnetic resonance imaging.” So some very LOUD sounds reverberate around you, in different tones and frequencies. It is WEIRD. One of the strangest things I’ve experienced in a long time. I can understand why an MRI freaks some people out. Admittedly, I shut my eyes the whole time – except for a brief moment when I peeked and yes, friends, it was a little more snug in there than even I had expected, so I closed them again. And thank goodness they give you ear plugs, although I would suggest bringing the gummy, silicon kind with you, because they seal shut better.

But my hermit brain found the whole thing fascinating. Strange for someone who tends to avoid high-stimulation environments, right? But it was so focused – I think that’s why it was more interesting than upsetting for me.

As the different tones sounded, I would experience a variety of colors and images. One was a deep maroon. Another sounded like a cat: “meow meow meow meow!” Another produced a strong image in my mind of birch trees towering over in my head. Wacko, right? But fascinating.

It’s okay if you’re laughing at me. Who enjoys an MRI??? A part-time hermit, apparently.

---

As many of you know, I am going through a life reset: a divorce after sixteen years of marriage, moving home to Chicago, a new job, a new life trajectory.

Part of that reset means I am faced with my strengths and weaknesses in very clear and present ways. Like, feeling joy while sitting in a mostly deserted hospital the day before Thanksgiving.

On the other hand, a couple weeks ago, I thought I was going to pass out after having to go to three different grocery stores to get ready for a work event. I felt sick and nauseous. I was tempted to get angry at myself (Why can’t you do this? Other people can do this!). But that doesn’t really help anything. Better to: notice, accept, choose better next time.

I heard Howard Thurman preach a sermon in a recording where he said something I think of often: You must accept your Fact !

In other words, you have to come to terms with the fact of yourself: your body, your brain, your past, your present. How your culture perceives you. What you are and what you are not. Maybe that sounds stark. But, like me laughing happily in the deserted hospital, it can also be freeing, humbling, and amusing to come face to face with who and how you are. Which has likely been true since the day you were born.

We are all neurodivergent or “abnormal” in some way, it seems to me, and I wonder if we may as well just accept whatever it is about us that is different or odd. Doesn’t this just save time and avoid wasted effort?

This is not the same as giving up on our sinfulness - or the ways we are greedy, angry, afraid, and lashing out at other people or creatures. But that’s another post for another day.

It is useful to accept that other people also have their neurodivergent ways, oddities, and handicaps, too. No one is a frictionless human unit. No one will do things just like you do. No one is totally healthy and balanced. We are all wackos, in some way or another, and hopefully we will use our wackiness for good instead of evil.

What does this have to do with Advent? I’m not sure. If you want to read something about Advent, here’s what I wrote last year.

The holidays tend to bring out the best and worst in us. So, if you are not going through a major life reset, December can serve the same purpose. Notice what you do and don’t do, what you like and don’t like, what you can do and can’t do. No need to fix or prevent. Just take some mental notes. Maybe choose different next time. Accept your Fact.

God made you in God’s image. Just like everyone else.

Merry Christmas, friends.

Heidi

** I have a CD collection (because I am old) of Thurman’s recorded talks and sermons that I used to listen to while I drove around for hours and hours when I was a suburban parish priest. I couldn’t figure out which sermon this was from and decided not to re-listen to all six CDs to figure it out. If you are interested, it’s available to buy and stream as “The Living Wisdom of Howard Thurman” — you won’t regret getting it.

THINGS I’M READING

Midwinter Light: Meditations for the Long Season by Marilyn McEntyre - The Advent devotional I’m using this year. Beautiful, thoughtful, veers towards the melancholy, with lots of good poems. Secular-ish but spiritually Christian. A new favorite.

Home: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson - in her Gilead series, about a delinquent son who comes home to his elderly father and his somewhat lost but determined younger sister.

Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation by Emily Van Duyne - uncovering more of the story of this poet, who may have been less a “crazy woman” and more a women enduring physical and psychological abuse from her husband, Ted Hughes, which she could not speak about in that place and time.

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkwell - I am rereading this for the third time. It’s very spiritual, for a secular book: we are limited creatures, how can we manage our time, knowing we’re going to die one day?

SOME OF MY BOOKS

Advent in Narnia -A book I wrote for adults and older kids, back in 2015. My publisher, Westminter John Knox, recently advertised it as one of their “Advent classics”! Which was both a delight and made me feel old. In a good way.

Everyday Connections: Reflections and Practices for Year C - Personal reflection! Sermon prep help! Great for small groups! Full of wonderings, humor, and seriously meaty questions for you, your life, and your community, because that’s what I want in a devotional myself.

Holy Solitude - A book I wrote as I was figuring out I was a part-time hermit - about solitude, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving as Lenten - or anytime - practices. Original title: “Lent With Hermits”! Lent starts March 5.

Free bookplate! I will mail you two signed bookplates if you fill out a form on my website. No strings attached and I don’t keep your address.

New here? Want to know more? For more about me and my other books and writings, check out my website.