Hermits around the web – Hermitary
news, sites, and pages of interest about hermits and solitude
Ann Renfrew of Loch Morar, Scotland, is in her early 50’s and has been a Benedictine nun in Germany. She received the rite to become a hermit in an Arasaig ceremony presided over by the local bishop. A priest commenting on the new hermit remarked to the Press and Journal of Sister Maria Edith that “She will still talk to people, but it will be in a withdrawn way.”
URL: http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1344926?UserKey=
Interview article in Scotland on Sunday about Scottish writer Sara Maitland’s semi-autobiographical book A Book of Silence. Maitland, an established novelist and convert to Catholicism, moved to a remote area of Scotland where silence permeates the isolation and her daily life. The interviewer David Ross pursues Maitland’s motives and influences at this stage of her life (she is 58); there are trenchant observations on solitude and death.
URL: http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/spectrum/All-quiet-on-the-western.4669789.jp
Telegraph news item about Tom Leppard, the most-tattooed man in the world (until recently) and a hermit who “lived in a ruined bothy on the Scottish island of Skye for 20 years” without electricity or furniture. Leppard is now 73 and is moving to the mainland: “I was perfectly happy in the bothy but I’m like everyone else – I’m getting too old for that kind of life.” Article byline: “The Leopard Man of Skye, once the world’s most tattooed man, has left behind his remote hermit lifestyle to live in a retirement home. ”
Follow-up article: “The Rewards of the Hermit” at URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/30/healthandwellbeing-ruralaffairs