Hermits are a rare breed. Married hermits are about as common as spotted owls. Marry a Roman Catholic priest to a former nun, nest them in a mountainside hermitage named Still Wood, and you may have a brand new species. This memoir is a three-way love saga - God, a priest and a nun joined to minister to hermits world-wide and to the mentally disabled in the isolated mountain county of "Bloody" Madison, North Carolina. Each chapter weaves together incidents from four periods of my life - seventeen years in a middle-class Catholic home; thirty spiritually challenging years as a cloistered nun; six transformative years as a hermit, and sixteen loving years as a wife. My earlier book, "Where God Begins to Be, A Woman's Journey into Solitude" has created a crowd of curious readers asking "Why would you?" and "How could you?" marry a priest and continue your commitment to eremitical life? Answering this unforeseen Call has colored my autumn years with excitement, love and challenge. |