Aurodeva Guerci

I spent part of my summer in a hermitage tucked in the woods of the Italian Apennine. I discovered it while on the road when a summer storm struck and I was forced to stop, reminding me who’s really in charge of the itinerary.

In it I found a library filled with the voices of great mystics, some of whom I knew all too well: Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, Rumì, Saint Augustine...They sat beside the Bible like old friends at a dinner table.

“This is no ordinary Christian hermitage,” I thought. I found out the women who once lived and prayed here, both now passed, were also no ordinary Christian hermits.

I was the lucky (and only) occupant during my stay. I chopped wood, cut grass, and tried to befriend Maria - a disagreeable firewood stove that refused to light.

On misty days sorrow would pay a visit, so I’d climb the mountain where the fog thinned and, like magic, so did my woes.
Here, burned into a piece of wood outside the sanctuary, a few words that may invite certainty in uncertain times.

"My life is a silence grasped by Eternal hands."
- Sri Aurobindo.

"Fear not, come forth. it is I."
- MC 6:50

We may discover, within us, a fear too great to overcome by our own strength.

For this, we are asked to turn to allies greater than us.

As remedy, my teacher would prescribe fire.

He asked his patients to gaze at a candle, uninterrupted, before sleep and ask:

Could it be that the fire before me, capable of destroying, claiming, and redeeming all in its path, also resides in me?

Could it be that, as it does with the forms of the natural world, so it may do with the contents of a fearful heart?

"Listen and listen well, O Arjuna; for a lamp sheltered by me from the winds of anger and fear, flickers not."

-BG: 6.19