A Simplified Life: A Contemporary Hermit's Experience of Solitude and Silence Paperback – July 30, 2010

The cover photo here is completely misleading - a quiet lake or swamp or something? No - Verena Schiller went to go live in a shack near the churning ocean of the Welsh coast, with a view of a huge rock Island called Bardsey, which has been a place for contemplatives and hermits for hundreds of years. Schiler became a hermit after being an Anglican nun in community for many years. She records her personal experiences and a history of the land she lived on, and of hermits and contemplatives in Britain. She also writes about what it's like to leave her little house when she's too elderly to stay there on her own anymore (she moves to a house in town, but is able to continue to live by herself with neighbors and doctors close by). A lovely, interesting narrative.

‘To someone in a busy life, this book on the hermitical lifestyle speaks volumes. It is a story of a life lived remotely and completely in isolation. This remarkable book reveals a simplified lifestyle lived by a Christian lady, who shares her remarkable wisdom which is life-changing and provokes a personal response.’Pax…..Robert <°))><.

And when you have slowed downor are fairly certain that you have...try simply sitting still...not reading... not watching tv...not even counting your breath...mindfullyThen for fellowship In the Experiencepick up A Simplified Life... read a few paragraphsperhaps a page... pauseand wait...if you find it a page turner --- perhapsit is a call to the life described.

The writing is spectacular and compelling. The story helped me to realize how much life is complicated when we don't know how to simplify and make it a life style unlike any one else.

Very interesting look at the Welsh and Irish history - not as much on the actual hermit life.

I'm re-reading this book a year after first reading it. I needed time for it to "settle". It sits cleanly on the mind, like the landscape. This is no accident, because it comes from the pen of a woman who became part of the landscape on the Welsh coast, to pray for the world and to encounter God. While Verena Schiller describes her daily life, her location, the weather, the history of monasticism on the headland, the natural beauty, this is interesting, but not as much so as the voice that speaks it. This voice is like a reed that offers no resistance to the wind which passes through it. This is arresting and unusual in our ego-driven times. Take a break for peace and read this book.

Interested in spiritual journeys of any kind so bought this book. In the forward the author stresses how this book is more about a spiritual journey than a or any God. Unfortunately I did not find this to be the case. Verena Schiller is clearly a devoutly religious person and this I found to be something of a hindrance. Schiller spends far too much time looking for God. Her God. More and more people are discovering that religion has very little to offer the truly spiritual. Less God, more humanity.

What to say about this little book that brings the large/small, wild/calm, silent/noisy world of a hermit nun on a welsh headland pondering God and being pondered by Him into your head and heart?Sr. Verena Schiller leaves her convent, with the blessing of her Sisters, to seek God in solitary fashion, living on the Llyn Peninsula over looking the Holy Island of Bardsey in North Wales. Passion, place, history and the wild excess of God's creation interweave in this account of her 25 years apart. More than an autobiography, more than a book of spiritual thoughts, more than a history of solitary seekers of God and their place and development in the Celtic world, this book does not accept categorisation well. I would label it a "sharing" more than anything else and I would thank Sr Verena for doing so.If you were looking for chronological account of the dramatic, harsh yet romantic life of the nun on the headland you have chosen the wrong book. Silence and seclusion alters the hold of chronos. Anchoring to a place God calls you too, moving more deeply into Him as he calls, juddering and reeling in unfamiliar silence, navigating calms and calamities being brought to new prayer feeling His light touch in wind and waves. If this is what you seek you have the right book, I think.All of this is "shared" in her own style, suffused with her own personality (how else could you write a book like this?). Poetry, history, learning, acute observation of herself and God in His wild landscape and a realists grasp of her own fragility and need make of this book a melody of God.

Very meditative. As I know the landscape she is writing about, it was an extra special book for me.And I learned quite a few thing about my own locality.Highly recommended.

This book isn't at all what I expected. I was hoping for a truly personal account of a contemplative life but what I got instead was a history lesson. I found little to like about this book as I found it very impersonal and the writers account of living in solitude very sterile and devoid of emotion.