Solitude
When we think of solitude usually the first association one thinks of is an ascetic monk alone in nature detached from society. Though it often does include these descriptions we know one does not to be physically alone to feel loneliness. We can feel alone in a large crowd or a group of people. I know this first hand living in London for a couple years. You could be completely surrounded by hundreds of people on the underground in a café or square and feel heightened awareness of one’s isolation. One might imagine a typical example loneliness is a lonely widow at home alone when in fact the young guy at the bar looking to meet someone with a drink in hand surrounded by hundreds of strangers is just as alone.
Christian solitude is not being alone its being with God minus distractions. In fact, it’s the opposite of loneliness for it can be better to be alone than in the wrong company. When one silences the noise we can discover one’s true authentic self. For this reason philosophers have associated solitude with authenticity. Leonardo Da Vinci said when we are alone we are a whole self and a half self with others. The reason being in groups of people we accommodate to model conform our behavior to preserve the status quo.
When we are alone we are without a filter. We think out loud with oneself exactly as we think and feel about situations or people since we are not concerned about its reception the interpretation or consequences. Also the reason the online world has ‘trolls’ people who bully others since there is no real life consequences since they can hide in cowardice of anonymity. In person we act in conscious awareness of how we appear in the eyes of another to whom we must account for our speech and behavior.
Alone we are in dialogue as self in conversation with God through prayer and meditation. Their can be varying degrees and qualities of solitude and some question if we are alone with books really counts for solitude since we are conversing with other minds and certainly being on the phone would not count either and fall under the category of engaging with others. In the Christian meditation we are seeking personal communion with Jesus Christ. Since last week we touched on the spiritual disciplines of meditation one activity in solitude. Today I’ll look at the importance of solitude and silence before we look at community.
Mozart said of music the spaces of silence in between are as important as the notes. Silence and speech, aloneness and community are necessary dual correspondence. Dietrich Bonhoeffer tells us ‘right speech comes out of silence and right silence comes out of speech.’ It is said the first time St. Francis of Assisi and St. Dominic two spiritual giants of the middle ages whose spiritual orders last nearly one thousand years spent the first half an hour in silence before speaking to each other. It is no coincidence Christ’s ministry is precipitated by 40 days of solitude in the wilderness of prayer and fasting before.
In solitude one experiences silence and listen’s for God’s voice as Elijah did in turning away from the loud noise distractions of the world. In being silent before God we learn to be effective listeners for one another. We all know what it is like to talk to someone who you can tell already has what they are going to say in their read rather than actively listening to what you are currently saying and maybe we have been this person. Silence is not about dumbness just as idle chatter is not about intimate fellowship.
‘There is a time to keep silence and a time to speak’ (Ecclesiastes 3:7). When we learn to hold our tongue we open space for God’s transformative word in our lives and make space for the other. How we relate to people is how we relate to God. For how can we love God who we have not seen if we cannot love our brother whom we have seen’ states the apostle John.
To be still and know that he is God is to hold our tongue from attempting to control a situation or escape awkwardness. Silence puts one in a posture of trust, humility and dependence upon God. If we listen we can follow through to the consequence of fitting speech. It is not an accident we have two ears and one mouth. We would be wiser if we listen twice as much as we speak.
James 1:19 states, ‘Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.’ In every instance of scripture silence precedes speech. Meister Eckart went on to say, ‘Silence is God’s first language.’ A doctor cannot give a diagnosis without listening to the patient’s symptoms, as a judge cannot make a verdict without listening to the testimonies of witnesses and neither a teacher be effective without learning what the student’s know to teach them what they do not know.
The first time I was introduced to solitude was when I was 18 in a Bible as literature at a public high school. It was taught in a secular skeptical approach. The teacher would draw out the contradictions of the Bible point out the flaws that got one to question the veracity of scripture rather than take in conclusions as being spoon fed. One had to work out deliberately think through the content for oneself. One exercise I will never forget the teacher told us to go out into a place of nature for four hours without a cell phone, no electronics cd players Ipods only a notebook and just listen. I decided to get a ladder go out onto my parent’s roof where it was quiet and there were no distractions. For the first two to three hours my mind went round in its usual carousel of thoughts it was a struggle to be still for several hours. In the last hour I hit a breaking point passed my struggle impatience learned to admire my surroundings, became content and read nature as analogy of truth. I saw the land cast in shadow and darkness while the ocean in the distance reflected the golden horizon on the sea of glass. Seeing the contrast of the defaced environment in darkness opposed to a glowing ideal beauty of untainted nature. Became a revelation a larger interest of research into the philosophy of nature mankind’s relationship to the environment and a reach for recovering authentic experience.
I am in no way an expert at this. In fact I tried this again this last week in Big Sur and had not as fruitful experience. I went down to the beach at the far end with a journal and a Bible. I had a few insights wrote a few things I was grateful for and some goals. I did not come away with a spiritual ecstasy or profound enlightenment. It was quite the opposite. Instead it provided an opportunity to rise above comfortable habits tame the impulse for leisure, stimulus and entertainment. The cost of which reminded me, ‘why do they call it a fast when it goes by so slow?’
Time in solitude involves meditation on scripture, prayer and intercession. An illuminating point was once made by the late Tim Keller Pastor in New York who pointed out when the Apostle Paul prayed for the early church communities he never prayed for a change of their circumstances rather that they would grow and abound in the love of Christ. Tolstoy stated, ‘Most want to change humanity but it never occurs for one to change themselves’. It seems scripture is advocating prayer transforms the person praying to become one with God’s will.
God is not a vending machine handing out whimsical wishes or a genie in a bottle. God leads humanity to pray in accordance with his Word. I’ve been disappointed many times praying for the Green Bay packers to make that last touch down in the fourth quarter to find out it seems God does not take sides in football. The scripture says ‘if you pray in accordance to my will it will be done for you, so that the Father is glorified in the Son (John 14:13). God’s will for our prayer life to overcome temptation, to be filled with His love and compassion for people to forgive our enemies and be made into the likeness and image of God. Our prayer will be heard because it’s a response to God’s word the promise in alignment with God’s purpose for our life.
Warning: in attempt of solitude you may encounter what church mystics have called ‘the dark night of the soul’. This is not something dangerous or scary it is an experience necessary though patient and difficult process of maturing in our faith. Richard foster compares this to a surgery to be welcomed a necessary pain that will promise health and well-being. A dark night of the soul is a sense of aloneness, dryness feeling lost the emotional life gives bumps spiritual ecstasies are stripped away. This is the school of spiritual hard knox. If one point in trying silence meditation and Solitude we might be tempted to think this is not working were on the wrong track on the contrary we are in good company, St John of the Cross writes,