After seven years waiting, enough was enough. So I stepped back from offering all my work and talents trying to build my life within the institutional side of our Church. Instead, I will focus on living my calling outside the formal institutes and representatives of our Church, while obviously I will keep visiting them for the sacraments.

This is a real pity, because I think my life as a hermit could have been more focused and fruitful when structured within the institutional Church, while the institutional Church could have meaningfully benefited from my proven legal, financial, and strategic talents. However, this was apparently not meant to be. Therefore, from now on I will not only devote my main hours of the day as a hermit to theology in prayer, study, and practice, but on top of that I’ll use the few remaining hours to earn my own income not within the Church but in the world, to save for my pension, and hopefully one day to buy my own hermitage in a very silent and secluded region.

In other words: now that I have to become self-sufficient in my own worldly needs, you will now have to become self-sufficient in your own spiritual needs and education. Because over the last seven years I’ve been giving and helping a lot for free in name of our Church, hoping for a mutual kindness as was common tradition in the old days. But with only four or five notable exceptions (two of those whose sizeable help I refused because of their own limited financial means), there has been scant financial support other than some coffee money. In other words: neither the institutional Church and her formal representatives, nor the many lay people I’ve helped over these last seven years came forth to support me in return. And this despite spending hours and hours of my time, with often with very good short and long term results - see the comments & commentaries of people I’ve helped.

Though - in our current modern era - this was a pretty foreseeable reality from the very start of my hermit life, I nonetheless felt I needed to prove this to be so with my own real world experience. And unfortunately, after seven years it was indeed as prophesied and as I expected, and not as I hoped. Therefore, from now on I will, in effect, accept the fact that we are not any longer living in the common traditions of the old days, but instead in a new era. And I will adjust to it according to the prophecies of the Dessert Fathers. Hence, I decided to become an undercover hermit.

A major consequence of this decision is - as the English expression goes - that after seven years waiting and funding myself: “something’s gotta give”. Which means in my life that I cannot continue helping others, while also living a full scheduled hermit life, and having to work for a self-sufficient income. And as I cannot do less of my hermit schedule, and I now have no choice but to start working in the world for an income again, it’s therefore inevitable that my help to others becomes the break-point. This means that I either don’t help others at all (as is traditionally a very valid option for a hermit), or I get paid for it to recompense me for my lost income. Having chosen this latter option, this in effect forces people to self-select better whether they need my specific help or not. If not, then I will maintain the silence and solitude that is considered necessary for a hermit’s life, or otherwise I will get paid helping others. This is all in line with the more traditional days, but with an apparently necessary modern shift in which the traditional student-servants and generous lay Christians got replaced by an invoice. Not my preferred way, but an unavoidable adaptation after the last seven years experience.

In other words: my calling to the hermit life prescribes as much seclusion and isolation as is achievable. And that is not very compatible with being open to help everybody at all times, as I’ve nonetheless been doing these last seven years while having to wait for the institutional Church. But after waiting for seven years, those days are now over. So if you need help with your personal religious questions and struggles, then from now on please first turn to your priest or reverend. They are God-appointed to help you, and they are trained, ordained, and paid to do so by the institutional Church. By their own admission they are Christ’s representatives on Earth, God chosen wearers of His loving kindness and wisdom, and therefore the only ones allowed to teach about God (+), prayer, and the like. So they should be your first port of call.

But if their help leaves you nonetheless unexpectedly helpless, then feel free to use the contact form on this page to contact me. I’ll be there for you, too. However, then please realise that from now on I will have to ask you explicitly to recompense me for my time helping you. Why? First, because the worker is worthy of his wages (Luke 10:7). Second, because we live in a new era of self-sufficiency to which I’ve had to adapt after seven years trying the traditional model I would have preferred more. Third, because the time I dedicate to solving your problems I consequently cannot use to earn my own income. Fourth, we don’t live anymore in a time in which sickness equaled destitution. In fact, in our modern Western welfare state with its extensive social safety nets, And fourth, if Christ’s own representatives on Earth cannot help you enough, then apparently some special expertise from my hermit life is necessary, as it was in the days of the Desert Fathers and Mothers. They got help from their students, fellow hermits, and lay Christians. But that era is no more. So, we adapt.

This does not mean I leave you an orphan. Because if you don’t want to recompense me, then you remain fully free to not ask me for my help and instead to try and obtain the same kind of expertise somewhere else, either within the world and / or within the institutional Church as they are here to shepherd you. And last-but-not-least, if you feel you are too poor to pay me for my help, then please send me your government issued tax documents over the prior three years. If those documents indicate that you indeed are reasonably unable to pay for my help, then I will fully and wholeheartedly spend all the time I can for free on helping you solve your Christian struggles and help you progress on your way towards our Heavenly Father (+).]

Your brother-in-Christ,

bartholomew