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This is really a great group, one of the authentic examples of people trying to live the life of the poor among the poor, as Jesus originally lived, giving up all worldly goods as much as possible, and serving the people where needed. It is a very hard life, and in places like Iraq now, extremely dangerous.
The original order of this group was the Little Brothers of Jesus, started around World War I by Charles de Foucauld, and it is an interesting story, I think. Charles de Foucauld was rich and spoiled, and with a life that seemed to be going nowhere was eventually sent by the family to a military academy and from there became a soldier for France. After returning from that, tempermentally unsuited to it, de Foucauld really began to think about God, and the truth of things, and started to pray, "My God, if you exist, show yourself to me." This then became the meaning and direction of the rest of de Foucauld's life. Everything felt unsuitable and wrong, though--the Trappist monastery was too easy a life, and felt too much in the world, and away from God reached by prayer. It was at this point that the ideas that would become the Little Brothers of Jesus began to take shape. A very hard, working existence, lived in the desert, devoted to prayer and seeking God for real, connected to the Catholic Church but socially lived apart, alone, and seeking recognition and followers as an Order. Although I am not a Catholic, this way appealed to me, and I used to have a book by Charles de Foucauld--journal entries, letters, aphorisms, etc.--and may still have somewhere, on this Christian hermit's life, but very scary and impossible for most people to live. The Order never went anywhere, never developed, there were no joiners, and this too seemed to be a total failure for de Foucauld.
Finally, during World War I, de Foucauld was shot while living in the Algerian desert, and died. This is where the mystery begins: within about 20 years of Charles de Foucauld's death, de Foucauld's writings began to be read and followed, and several Little Brothers/Little Sisters of Jesus sprang up, and still exist to this day. Very few because the life is so hard, and there have always been many more Sisters than Brothers, trying to live the world-renouncing poverty of the original Christians.
Few people will join a thing like this--it is a fearful thing living in a desert alone, and much of the time spent in this Order is actually away from the group, and praying, facing God, alone. There was a really great BBC documentary series from the '70s on religious seekers called "The Long Search," with Ronald Eyre, and the Catholic episode had a large part devoted to this interesting group. One quote from a priest on the dangers and necessities of spending time alone in the desert, was, "The desert is a space in your head; it's something you carry around with you. It's the hard place where you meet yourself, and where you go searching for God." This gave a clue as to how I could pursue my own way of this life, where I am.
Eventually, if you seek God, you will have to go off alone and "leave this world," with nothing to hang on to, questioning the world as if from one step removed, but you can do it all from anywhere, as the Spirit is everywhere. The flock you lovingly tend to as a shepard in the field can be your little dogs or goldfish as well as anything else, your hermit's cave the privacy of your own home. You have to start from where you are, and sometimes you stay where you are, too, but learning the meaning of these other ways--and the desert where you search for God can be a space in your head.
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