The term Gaia has caught on among those seeking a new ecological spirituality as a religious vision. Gaia is seen as a personified being, an immanent divinity. Some see the Jewish and Christian male monotheistic God as a hostile concept that rationalizes alienation from and neglect of the earth...I agree with much of this critique, yet I believe that merely replacing a male transcendent deity with an immanent female one is an insufficient answer...
~ from Rosemary Radford Ruether in GAIA AND GOD: AN ECOFEMINIST THEOLOGY OF EARTH HEALING
The truth of the hermitage comes down to paradoxes. It empties us so we may be filled; its simplicity is a luxury, and we go there seeking solitude so we can better serve God's people ... Whether we serve as parents, as pastors, as missionaries, as teachers, as peace-makers -- there is a monk in all of us. To get in touch with the silence of God is necessary for everyone. The hermitage allows people to get in touch with that silence. That does not mean the touch only happens here. But it can be refreshed here. It can be strengthened.
