News article on Lebh Shomea, a Catholic hermitage in southern Texas. Three individuals function as staff, with 25 individual huts occupied for various lengths of time by visitors from around the world. The article writer says succinctly: “The rule here is silence, the only amenity: solitude.” URL: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/
MYSA062505.1R.wow_hermitage.43e7024.html
Newsweek article on Catholic hermit
A Newsweek article entitled “Life in Solitary” by Lisa Miller describes the life journey of Agnes Long, from comfortable middle-class marriage and motherhood to the unraveling of life to her canonical status as a Catholic hermit on an island in northern Wisconsin. URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8186598/site/newsweek/. The article is also in the paper/newstand issue of June 20, 2005.
Solomons Islands hermit
Brief news article about a Solomon Islands man who lived as a hermit for forty years in a mountain jungle cave. He returned to his native village because his fire had gone out. The villagers urged him to remain with them, and he decided to do so. The man is about eighty years old. URL: http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,15486825%255E1702,00.html.
Freedom of solitude
A short, reflective essay entitled “The Freedom of Solitude” by Gerald May, late Senior Fellow in Contemplative Theology and Psychology at the Shalem ecumical community outside Washington, DC. Brought to our attention by a friend of Hermitary. URL: http://www.shalem.org/sn/16.3gm.html.
Sister Wendy, hermit
Not a prototype hermit, of course, but Sister Wendy Beckett, the BBC popularizer of art history in the 1990’s, lives as a hermit on the grounds of a Carmelite convent, taking morning Mass at the convent and spending her days — when not granting interviews — pursuing her “real life, which is a life of silence and solitude.” Article at the website AD2000; URL: http://www.ad2000.com.au/articles/2004/may2004p12_1616.html.