Jan XVII is a ‘school for Serving Hermits’. Part-time students are also welcome to contribute with heart, soul, strength and mind.
School for Serving Hermits
Jan XVII is a monastic school annex workshop for ‘Serving Hermits’ under development. Where you learn to – according to the Rule of Benedict – “renounce your own will”.
What do you get from that? According to the Rule, ‘the heart expands as you go’. But you could also say: ‘it thins the skin’.
You may not be aware of it, but when you start in this school you conditioned through and through. At the ready deftly to fend off even the smallest setback or disappointment. In what we call ‘ordinary life’, so many stimuli were coming at you, for the sake of self-defense, survival one coud say, you developed a thick skin. Once apprenticed to Jan XVII, you still have to deal with setbacks and disappointments. The serving aspect of your education brings them naturally to you. Fortunately. “Take away the tempations and no one will be saved,” said the Desert Fathers . But never are there that many that you could not digest them in your hermitage hours. You have ample time to allow and absorb the pain and grief they cause. To learn to touch your wounds with love.
By standing less and less in the way of the difficult thing that happens to you, you automatically become more available for the beautiful things that life offers you. Until eventually the taste of what you are experiencing becomes secondary. And in your attitude of availability, presence, and receptivity alone, you begin to experience the gateway to the unbelievably rich and joyful treasure your life, in essence, is.
Gap year
A thought that our founder already cherished: that young adults, among others, can spend a ‘gap year’ at this school.
Part-time participants
It is also hoped that a circle of part-time participants will form around the school. Women and men who regularly come to work and learn with the core group.
From transitium to transitia
Nowadays only Transitium ZeeVELD provides our school with practice material. But put more than two, three hermits at the most, too close together, and they are no longer hermits. Over time, an influx of serving hermits should therefore automatically lead to the establishment of more ‘transitia’.
More
You can read more about the vision, mission and strategy of Jan XVII here.
