I am reading Asceticism – a collection of papers on various topics related to … yes, you guessed it … asceticism.
The opening paper has a quote from The First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn when the prisoner says to the Minister:
I’ve got nothing, see? Nothing! … You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything he’s no longer in your power – he’s free again.
I was reflecting on that quote in the context of the oft-quoted Albert Camus:
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
As a community (ie the Church) we often speak of not being ruled by the world. But in reality what does that mean for the individual? There is a political aspect to the solitary life: a life not ruled (in theory!) by the standards of the world. For me, and I have thought about this a lot in the last month, the solitary life is a place and that place is a person. I refuse to be objectified! I refuse to be put in a box and then told, “see you are not acting right (ie according to the box which you have been put into)”. For many years I have looked for the “right box” – the right objective truth that defines me.
The only freedom is in Nothing (ie a NOthing, a Person!)
Anyway …
this solitary life 