Solitude

Gregg’s Reflection

We bought land surrounded by National Forest, with views of the Continental Divide, Rocky Mountain National Park, and two Fourteeners a few months after we sold the business In 1999. We finished our off grid log home in 2002. For nearly 20 years, we spent Spring and Fall in Atlanta (the most beautiful times there) and Summer and Winter in Colorado.

In Atlanta, we lived in a 100 year old walkable neighborhood in the midst of the city. For a decade, I served on staff at City Church Eastside. Genie left her teaching job to become a Volunteer Docent and Animal Handler at Zoo Atlanta. So, we would spend three months in frenetic activity in the City, and then three months in solitude on top of a mountain.

As we looked 4000 feet down at Boulder, we could see the cars moving like ants, and airplanes landing at Denver Airport, 35 miles away. It quickly became apparent how much of the frenetic activity of the city lost its allure when looked upon from above. These months of solitude helped ground me, helped me create a rhythm of life, formative practices that sustained me in the City.

In 2019, we pruned away our life in Atlanta and moved full time to the cabin in Colorado. Most of the content on this blog came from my contemplative readings that are part of my daily spiritual practice. In the early days out here, my extroverted self would start to go crazy if we went too long without company, And my introverted wife would start to go crazy if we had company too long. Over the years, I have become quite comfortable with long periods of solitude and silence.

My spiritual journey out of the shallows into the depths grew out of my time in the wilderness, being awed by the beauty of God’s creation. My relationship with Genie also deepened as the Spirit softened my heart and opened me to kindness and compassion. So, wade into solitude, and swim towards the deep end as you contemplate this passage.

Journaling Prompts

Why does solitude make us more aware of the indwelling Holy Spirit’s sustaining presence? Why is it easier to hear God’s still, small voice in solitude? What can we do to nurture solitude in the midst of our daily lives?

Scripture

It is good to await the salvation of God in silence. The solitary one will sit down and keep silent, because he will lift himself above himself.

Lamentations 3:26, 28

I will lead you into solitude and there I shall speak to your heart.

Hosea 2:14

Solitude in Luke:

Jesus would withdraw to deserted places and pray. 5:16

At daybreak he departed and went into a deserted place. 4:42

He went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God. (He prayed all night before calling the disciples). 6:12

RENOVARE Bible Notes on John 8:29

Through intentional withdrawal into silence and solitude we process and assimilate what God is doing in our lives.

RENOVARE Bible notes on Galatians 1:17

Ancient Writings

It is possible to be a solitary in one’s mind while living in a crowd, and it is possible for one who is solitary to live in the crowd of his own thoughts.

Amma Syncletica, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Trans Benedicta Ward, p. 234

Almost all the greater and more profound secrets were revealed to God’s friends when they were alone and not in the midst of milling crowds. These same friends sought out solitude when they wanted to meditate more deeply on something.

Carthusian Customs, Bernard McGinn, Essential Writings of Christian Mystics, p. 132

Modern Writing

In every man lies a zone of solitude 

That no human intimacy can fill:

And there God encounters us.

Brother Roger of Taize, Celtic Daily Prayer, p. 452

In one hour of quiet prayer the soul will often make more progress than in days of company with others. It is in the desert that the eye gets the clearest, simplest view of eternal certainties; it is in his presence alone, it is then that the soul gathers in wondrous refreshment and power and energy. In nearness to God we get our vessels so filled with blessing, that, when we come forth, we can not contain it to ourselves but must pour it out wherever we go.

Horatius Bonar, Celtic Daily Prayer, p. 315-316

How can people act and speak as if solitude were a matter of no importance to the interior life? Only those who have never experienced real solitude can glibly declare that it “makes no difference” and that only solitude of the heart matters! One solitude must lead to another! The truest solitude is not something outside of you; it is an abyss opening up in the center of your own soul.

Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation, p. 80

Society depends for its existence on the personal solitude of its members. When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. No amount of technological progress will cure the hatred that eats away the vitals of materialistic society like a spiritual cancer.

The only cure is, and must always be, spiritual. There is not much use talking to men about God and love if they are not able to listen. The ears with which one hears the message of the Gospel are hidden in man's heart, and these ears do not hear anything unless they are favored with a certain interior solitude and silence. 

Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude, from the Preface

Love and solitude are the one ground of true maturity and freedom.

Thomas Merton, A Year with Thomas Merton, p. 107

It is in deep solitude and silence that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brother and sister.

Thomas Merton

The speech of God is silence. His Word is solitude.

Thomas Merton, A Year with Thomas Merton, p. 4

Solitude is necessary for spiritual freedom. There is no true solitude except interior solitude.

Thomas Merton

Once God has called you into solitude, everything you touch leads you further into solitude. Everything that affects you builds you into a hermit.

Thomas Merton, The Signs of Jonas, p. 323

At least allow the lonely one to meet his emptiness and come to terms with it: for it is really his destiny and his joy.  Too many people are ready to draw him back at any price from what they conceive to be the edge of the abyss.  True, it is an abyss: but they do not realize that he who is called to solitude is called to walk across the air of the abyss without danger, because, after all, the abyss is only himself.

Man’s loneliness is, in fact, the loneliness of God.  That is why it is such a great thing for a man to discover his solitude and learn to live in it.  For there he finds that he and God are one: that God is alone as he himself is alone.  That God wills to be alone in him.

Thomas Merton, Disputed Questions, Philosophy of Solitude 

In solitude we discover that our life is not a possession to be defended, but a gift to be shared. It’s there we recognize that the healing words we speak are not just our own, but are given to us; that the love we can express is part of a greater love; and the new life we bring forth is not a property to cling to, but a gift to be received.

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 4/24/20

Hear the Voice that Calls You the Beloved

Solitude is listening to the voice that calls you the Beloved. It is being alone with the One who says, “You are my Beloved, I want to be with you. Don’t go running around, don’t start to prove to everybody that you’re beloved. You are already beloved.” That is what God says to us. Solitude is the place where we go in order to hear the truth about ourselves.

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 3/30/23

Every time we enter into solitude we withdraw from our windy, earthquaking, fiery lives and open ourselves to the great encounter. The first thing we often discover in solitude is our own restlessness, our drivenness, and compulsiveness, But when we persevere with the help of a gentle discipline, we slowly come to hear the still, small voice and to feel the gentle breeze, and so come to know the Lord of our heart, soul, and mind, the Lord who makes us see who we really are.

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 3/17/24

To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of our loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude.

Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out, p. 34

Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude, we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self. Jesus Himself entered into this furnace. There he affirmed God as the only source of his identity. Solitude is the place of great struggle and the great encounter—the struggle with the compulsions of the false self, and the encounter with the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self.

Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart, p. 16

Solitude is a place of conversion, the place where the old self dies and the new self is born, the place where the emergence of the person occurs.

Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart, p. 17

Our primary task in solitude is to keep the eyes of our mind and heart on him who is our Divine Savior. Only in the context of grace can we face our sin; only in the place of healing do we dare show our wounds; only with a single minded attention to Christ can we give up our clinging fears and face our own true nature.

As we come to realize it is not we who live, but Christ who lives in us, that he is our true self, we can slowly let our compulsions melt away and begin to experience the freedom of the children of God. We have, indeed, to fashion our own desert where we can withdraw every day, shake off our compulsions, and dwell in the healing presence of our Lord. Without such a Desert we will lose our own soul while preaching the gospel to others.

Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart, p. 20-21

Solitude molds self-righteous people into gentle, caring, forgiving persons who are so deeply convinced of their own sinfulness and so fully aware of God’s even greater mercy that their life itself becomes ministry.

Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart, p. 27

We enter solitude in which we also lose all loneliness.

Wendell Berry

In solitude we learn slowly to live face-to-face with a Presence that asks nothing of us but presence in return. When we become present to Presence, we experience the genuine birth of the soul.

Richard Rohr, On the Threshold of Transformation, p. 175

The simplest spiritual discipline is some degree of solitude and silence. To be with our own thoughts and feelings is probably the most courageous act most of us will do. Besides, we invariably feel bored with ourselves and all our loneliness comes to the surface.

We won’t have the courage to go into that terrifying place without love to protect us and lead us, without the light and love of God overriding our own self-doubt. Such silence is the most spacious and empowering technique of all, yet it’s not a technique at all.

Richard Rohr, Yes, and Daily Meditations p. 32

To think differently, we need distance from the herd. We need separation from its praise and blame. That’s why solitude is so important.

Brian McLaren