How my house became The Hermitage - and why this blog was born

In late November 2019, I was diagnosed with depression resulting from burnout. I was signed off work from Boxing Day that year. I ended up being off work completely for four months, and then starting a very slow return to work thereafter. I'm a Church of England vicar by profession (officially called a rector here, but same difference - or a “minister of religion”, as drop-down lists on official forms would have me say it). That is a great joy and a privilege to me. But the demands of that role, together with a whole bunch of stuff about my personality and other circumstances, led to me burning out. One of the symptoms of burnout for me was that I just didn't want anything to do with people, which is rather a drawback when you're a vicar, and a bit of a problem when you live in a vicarage which is on site with the church and the church hall. I needed somehow to make that vicarage not just a roof over my head, but my safe space, my bubble. It needed to become a place where I could be apart from everyone else, free of their demands, and free of the need to try and respond to them appropriately. I craved solitude, and lots of it. I needed to be a little bit of a hermit.

And so my house, officially called The Rectory, became in my mind “The Hermitage”. It was a joke, a way of saying in a light-hearted fashion to other people that I wanted to be left alone; but it meant a lot more than that, too. To me, it was a place that became my hideaway, my retreat, my safe space, and my sanctuary. My house became my Hermitage. I won't say that I was 100% a hermit: I did occasionally meet up with a close friend for coffee or a meal, but the majority of the time I chose to be alone.

The irony has been that, just as I was feeling a bit better and ready to see more of other people, the UK went into lockdown due to Coronavirus. So this Hermitage has been a place where I have been on my own without visitors for several months now, a place where I'm kept company by my cat and the wildlife that ventures into my garden. I do venture forth occasionally, of course, but only in compliance with what's allowed under lockdown.

A hermitage might often, in our minds, be a bare and basic place. This is a modern, functional home containing rather too much stuff, so, in physical terms, not your typical hermit’s cave! And emotionally, spiritually, I have found this to be a rich place, a saving place, a healing place. I have found many, many blessings here. It's not all been easy; I've struggled, cried, shouted, and had to do a lot of hard thinking, and the road ahead won't be smooth. But my time in the Hermitage has been a good time. It has been a gift. And even as this place becomes once more The Rectory with a working rector in it, in my mind I somehow need to still hold on to it being the Hermitage too. As I increasingly reconnect with other people and the wider world, virtually for now but hopefully in the flesh at some future point, I want to keep a sense of this space as a place of sanctuary, where I can withdraw, find solitude, and in Revd Dr Sam Wells’ words, “sink to the bottom of the pond” away from the glare and noise of the outside. Starting this blog is a way for me to try to do that. It’s also a way to combine my love of thinking and writing with a bit of mental self-discipline to see if, from the ashes of burnout, my brain can now string words together in a productive order. And as I am still processing the experience of burnout, pinpointing the causes and triggers, and reflecting on how to shape life differently in future, I hope that writing will help me hear myself, and God, more clearly, and remember the lessons of this time.

So I share reflections from this place in this blog. In many ways I’m writing for myself, and using the published form of a blog to give me a bit of self-discipline as I do so. But just as I find nuggets of encouragement or wisdom or hope in things I come across online, so maybe there might occasionally be someone else who is helped by reading what I write. If so, that’s a bonus, and I’m glad of it. If not, I’m still enjoying the process!

Although this is a Hermitage, do feel free to knock on the virtual door and leave a comment if you want to get in touch.