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The Way of the Hermit: My 40 years in the Scottish wilderness

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The Old Man and the Sand Eel is a treat. Told with winning enthusiasm and a wide-eyed boyish glee at being outdoors in all weathers, it promises to do for angling what Roger Deakin’s masterpiece Waterlog did for wild swimming” The Cardiff Review

Gene: Up to a point, yes… but “there’s a line in the sand there dude and across that line, you do not cross! Drawing on his experience of travelling to some of India’s holy places, the life and work of writers like Thomas Merton, Charles de Foucauld and Abishaktanda and being himself a Benedictine hermit and Professor of Divinity at the University of St Andrews, Mario Aguilar opens up new possibilities for dialogue between three of the world’s major religions in today’s world. He shows how his own experience of an eremitic life has brought him into deep communion with pilgrims of other faiths, be it through shared silence or listening to each other’s experience, through reading sacred scriptures together, through poetry or interfaith worship that draws on practices and texts from Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity. Gene: It’s pure arrogance and the Lecture says that “Arrogance is a weed that ever grows on a dunghill… There is no arrogance so great as the proclaiming of other men's errors and faults.”

If you hanker for peace in all of its forms, do read this inspiring book with gorgeous wilderness descriptions and compelling anecdotes. Will Millard] is a master wordsmith and his first book is a joyful testament to that’ Heat Magazine Set a small routine of prayer and meditation for your daily life, start and keep to it. Do not read about it, or talk too much about it, just do it! And the Absolute will be waiting for you.

David: In theory that all sounds good, you know - oversight of power and justice, but it seems like that group would have the same problems. And if they did, they would need oversight. What do you do… create another group to watch over them? David: So, they were really were only supposed to intervene in cases where the justice system had failed because of the corruption of people in authority. Gene: Yeah, the accused is one of the judges. But I think that’s to reinforce that the tribunal is not above the law. Anyway, the first thing they do is swear you in, and the oath you take contains the last remaining link to the old degree mythology, so I’ll read it - “Do you agree and promise that you will be just and righteous, and in all things strive to emulate that patriarch from whom we take the name of Noachites: who alone, with his family, was found worthy to be saved, when God destroyed mankind with the deluge?”It has always been the challenges from outsiders who want a writer and a monk to become a small celebrity. I have had to clarify many times that hermits do not need other hermits to carry on their lives and that I do not have meditation classes in my hermitage. The keeping of a daily structure and discipline gets interrupted sometimes but I return to read the lives of hermits I admire and that set a very clear example for me: Abishiktananda, Bede Griffiths, Raimon Panikkar, and those sadhus without name who have inspired me in India over many years. Dialogue in silence; speaking without words; this complex book explores the possibility of connection between faiths in the sacred space that silence allows and is a useful addition to the growing literature on interfaith dialogue. Gene: After the deluge, God made a covenant with Noah which was to obey the “Seven Laws” and God promised not to destroy the world again with water. And the rainbow was the symbol of that Covenant. Gene: And that’s a good way to think of it, like a weight you’re carrying around but can’t see. But it affects your thoughts, your feelings, and your behavior.

David: I think it’s the same thing Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 13:12 when he says “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” Gene: Basically that while you were away on a Crusade defending the Holy Lands, you’ve been swindled out of your land by Count Reinfred and a Bishop of Vienna. In the Ritual, Adolf the Saxon says that “I returned to find my inheritance shared between the Count and the church, one-half to each, and all appeal has been denied me to this I pledge my Knightly word.” Could you leave behind the bustle of modern society and spend your days immersed in nature? In The Way of the Hermit, seventy-four-year-old Ken Smith recounts a life he has chosen to spend alone with the wilderness. Smith isn’t any sort of counterculture radical. He has no interest in politics. His lifestyle isn’t any sort of statement. He doesn’t even profess any environmental agenda, beyond being off-grid, loving wildlife and the great outdoors, not owning much stuff and refusing to engage with “civilisation” as most of us know it. He makes occasional reference to “the rat race” but isn’t polemical or proselytising, either in his book or in person. Nor is he cantankerous or curmudgeonly. Rather, he’s a gentle soul.” Robert Crampton, The Times. As a nature fiend, this book really connected with me on so many levels. Though not a "hermit", I am happiest fully immersed in nature and can understand Smith's passion for living the lifestyle and thereby learning multitudinous life lessons. His descriptions are stunning and his lifestyle while a hermit (he is now in his 70s) was clearly worth sacrifices and hard work, as all things worth pursuing are. The adventures he had! I'm thankful he wrote them so people such as me can enjoy them.

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Gene: Exactly. They were basically an appeal of last resort. Here’s another quote - “Accusations were made mysteriously, often by nailing a notice up to a tree, and failure to appear for trial was punished by death. The possible trial verdicts were death, banishment or acquittal.” Gene: It may be the archetypal “Star Chamber”. They also held initiation rituals and used secret language and signs. Gene: I noticed that there was an alternate Jewel that was gold instead of silver. It was in the shape of a triangle, with an arrow pointing downward. That made me think of the way the Vehmgericht signify that they’ve meted out justice. Gene: That’s uncanny. But we’re told that - “We need not enlarge upon these evils. They are apparent to all and lamented over by all, and it is the duty of a Mason to do all in his power to lessen, if not to remove them… There is no obligation resting on us to trumpet forth our disapproval of every wrongful or injudicious or improper act that every other man commits.” Gene: Yes. And also overreach. You know, by imagining you can bend reality in ways that aren’t feasible.

The Big Issue–‘What the hermit of Loch Treig can teach you about living your best life’ August 2023 David: Right. The Tower was a hedge against Divine Providence, which is doomed to failure because Divine Providence is inevitable by definition. And that’s what’s symbolized by the Tower’s destruction. Gene: Keeping yourself in the dark, or refusing to be self-reflective, which the Lecture says leads to the sort of arrogance that caused the destruction of the “Tower of Babel”. Dr Maureen Sier, Director of Interfaith Scotland 'How great the multitude of truths which the garment of words can never contain!' ~ Baha'u'llah The Reverend Dr Peniel Jesudason Rufus Rajkumar, Programme Executive, Interreligious Dialogue and Cooperation, World Council of Churches, SwitzerlandGene: So, in a nutshell, if you’re talking about someone, you’re supposed to focus on the positive, and leave it to someone else to list all the negative, because everyone has both.

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