Heather Hansen ‘How mastering the art of being alone can boost your mental health’ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26134840-400-how-mastering-the-art-of-being-alone-can-boost-your-mental-health/

Ellie Hunt in New Scientist 22 May 2024 https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26234920-300-new-psychology-book-reckons-with-separating-solitude-from-loneliness/, referring to Solitude Netta Weinstein, Heather Hansen and Thuy-vy T. Nguyen (Cambridge University Press)

Onli [alone/at one] is a soule whanne it loveth Jhesu and tendeth fulli to Hym, and hath lost the savour and confort of the world; and that it myght the betere kepe this onlynesse it fleeth companye of alle men yif mit mai, and seketh oonlynesse of bodi, for oonlynesse of bodi moche helpith to onlynesse of soule [integrity of soul] and to the free wirkynge of love. pp. 236 & 239

The soul is a mirror, in which you shall see God spiritually. And therefore you should find your mirror and keep it bright and clean from bodily filth and worldly vanity, and hold it well up from the earth so that you can see it and our Lord within it. [p. 206]

Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, ed. Thomas H. Bestul, TEAMS, (Kalamazoo, 2000)

— trans. Leo Sherley-Price, The Ladder of Perfection (Penguin, 1957)

On the Desert Fathers and Mothers:

The Desert Fathers, trans. from Latin with Introduction by Helen Waddell (London, 1936)

Alexander Ryrie, The Desert Movement (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2011)

The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks, trans. Benedicta Ward (Penguin, 2003)

Cate Gunn, ‘Was there an Anchoress at Colne Priory?’ Essex Society for Archaeology and History: Transactions, 4th series, vol. 2 (2011/2013).

—-, ‘The Anchoress of Colne Priory: A Solitary in Community’ in Medieval Anchorites in their Communities, ed. by Cate Gunn & Liz Herbert McAvoy (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017).

Tom Licence, Hermits & Recluses in English Society, 950-1200 (Oxford University Press, 2011)

E. A. Jones, Hermits and anchorites in England, 1200-1550 (Manchester University Press, 2019)

In this cell, following a formal rite of enclosure closely resembling the funeral rite, the recluse would be locked up to spend a life praying, meditating and mediating between humanity and its God, veiled from the world behind a small window and dark curtain.

Liz Herbert McAvoy, Medieval Anchoritisms: Gender, Space and the Solitary Life (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2011) 

 ‘The case for an anchorhold’ https://oldwillingham.com/SMAS/Lander/Lander.htm

The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love, ed. Nicholas  Watson & Jacqueline Jenkins (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006)

Julian of Norwich: Showings, trans. Edmund Colledge & James Walsh (London: SPCK, 1978)

Margery told Julian about the grace she believed God put in her soul, the ‘dalliances’ or conversations with our Lord that she experienced and the revelations he gave her; she asked Julian if there was any deceit in them ‘for the anchoress was expert in such things and could give good counsel’

The Book of Margery Kempe,  ed. by Barry Windeatt (Pearson Education, 2000)

 

There forget all the world, there be quite out of the body, there in burning love embrace your lover, who has descended from heaven into the chamber of your breast

Ancrene Wisse, ed. Bella Millett EETS os 325 & 326 (Oxford University Press, 2005)

Ancrene Wisse: A Guide for Anchoresses (University of Exeter Press, 2009)

‘All by Myself’, Guardian Weekend, 28 April 2018, 19-25

Rachel Overton, anchorhold.co.uk

Mary Vickerage,  https://www.singleconsecratedlife-anglican.org.uk/

 

I pray for about three hours a day; for much of this time, when I can, I try to hold that apophatic imageless silence, that complete emptiness, but often I need to ground myself in biblical meditation, on other sorts of imagery and in the discipline of the psalms or other texts. [p. 276]

Sara Maitland, A Book of Silence (London: Granta, 2008)

 

Time suddenly stops and I am simultaneously inwardly present and completely distant. All at once, a brief moment can seem like an eternity. [p. 96]

It is at such moments that

The world is shut out for a moment, and an inner peace and silence takes over [p. 97].

Erling Kagge, Silence in the Age of Noise, trans. Becky L. Crook  (London: Viking, 2017)

 

The anchoress plays the part of Mary of Bethany who sat ‘stone-still’ at the feet of Jesus, neither moving nor speaking. Her part is ‘stillness and peace from all the noise of the world’ [AW 8.7, p. 156].

The word stillness is also found earlier in texts about withdrawal: St Aidan withdrew to Farne Island ‘for the sake of stillness and secret prayer’, in the Old English version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History; and the same term is used in Bede’s account of the death of Caedmon: his life ended peacefully ‘with stillness’‘With stillness’ could also mean a quiet way of saying prayers or reciting psalms. The word stillness is used in a similar way in the fourteenth century by our old friend Walter Hilton: through contemplation comes stillness and peace in conscience.

This is an inner silence, a silence within us that can be enhanced by the sounds of the natural world.

Cate Gunn, ‘Þis Seli Stilðe’: Silence and Stillness in the Anchorhold. Lessons for the Modern World’, in Women and Devotional Literature in the Middle Ages: Giving Voice to Silence, ed. by Cate Gunn, Liz Herbert McAvoy & Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2023)

After two or three hours of prayer your mind is saturated in peace and the richness of the liturgy. The dawn is breaking outside the cold windows. If it is warm, the birds are already beginning to sing. [p. 450]

Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain (New York, 1948)

To see a  World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.

[William Blake]