I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
A bore is someone who takes away my solitude and does not give me companionship in return.
*Henry David Thoreau
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The Master is on his hands and knees, looking over the ground outside the house. His disciples arrive. They ask, "Teacher, what are you looking for?" "The keys to the house." "Do you remember where you last had them?" they asked. "Yes, in the house?" "Then, why are you looking out here?" "Because it's brighter out here."
Stop. Listen. What do you hear?
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Two memories from when I began exploring Silence and Solitude...
1) This was 1995, and I was an Assistant Professor of Religion. I was invited to a student retreat away from campus. At that event, all being busy and noisy, I walked off alone for a respite. I wanted alone time, quiet. A student, a dear young woman who meant well, came upon me by accident and asked, with grave concern, "What is wrong? Why are you alone?" I got irritated ~ now, I would see it as simply someone expressing kindness.
This encounter was an early event that alerted me to how solitude, as chosen aloneness, can be easily seen ~ and oft is ~ as a sign something is wrong. I came to see how socialized my culture is to see the 'normal' persons as those liking, even needing, to be with others almost always, if not all the time.
People speak of others who enjoy solitude as loners. Why? Why such a term implying suspicion or, at least, oddity? Why is the intoleration of being alone with oneself, without distraction, seen as healthy, while one who enjoys such solitude is viewed as somewhat weird if not antisocial?
2) About a year before the above encounter, I began attending a little Episcopal church for Sunday worship. The priest, Ron, and I became friends. He gave me a key to the sanctuary for solitude, meditation, and devotional practice. I would spend hours there first in the morning before going to teach at the college. The daily ritual included a coffee, procured each time from the same store on the way, to drink during spiritual reading.
One memory that often comes to me is finding myself under the altar once when the organist entered and practiced the upcoming Sunday music. He had no idea anyone was hidden there, but I was stuck under the altar; if I came out, it might shock him. I relaxed and continued the alone time in meditation, hidden away. I had decided hiding under the altar would be an excellent place to meditate in case someone came in.
Such was a zealous, likely to some fanatical, early exploration into solitude. I relish the memory as a sign of a commitment to a way of life. Later, I was vowed to a life of solitude. I do not hide under altars anymore. Still, hiding as the experience of intentional solitude is a spiritual practice essential to my ~ anyone ~ living a contemplative life.
I cherish time with others; I cherish time without them. I can take the desert with me anywhere, but it took many years to be able to do that.
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The late Thomas Merton, famed Christian contemplative and an inspiration for my journey of silence and solitude, wrote in Thoughts in Solitude:
When I am liberated by silence, when I am no longer involved in the measurement of life, but in the living of it, I can discover a form of prayer in which there is effectively, no distraction. My whole life becomes prayer. The world of silence in which I am immersed contributes to my prayer.
The unity, which is the poverty in solitude, draws together all the wounds of the soul and closes them. As long as we remain poor and empty and interested in nothing but God, we cannot be distracted. For our very poverty prevents us from being "pulled apart."
Let me seek, then, the gift of silence, and poverty, and solitude, where everything I touch is turned into prayer: where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is all in all.
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Merton reminds us the practice of solitude is not merely being shut up apart from others. The solitude of the heart is the empty yet fecund openness to see the Sacred everywhere and receive the Sacred through the world around us, returning the Blessing to the world in Loving Presence and Compassionate Action. Even our apartness becomes a place for loving the world. We do not abide there by ourselves; hence, aloneness is not equivalent to being where no one else is. True aloneness means, most profoundly, not being alone.
The desert within, that empty openness teeming with vibrant life, is the Inner Sanctum where all is dissolved in Quiet and Intimacy. This desert blooms much beauty, giving freely fragrance through simple and unmediated being. When we reenter the world outside, we can see the world more clearly, kindly, and beautifully.
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Now, as to solitude developed over time, becoming a continuous experience even amid others... the solitude is uninterrupted and undisturbed ~ I have written on that elsewhere at length within these writings. Suffice it to say that does not happen for one who does not begin with an intentional setting aside of regular time to practice solitude in communion with the Sacred, a time from the flow of events most persons think life is.
If we cannot be intimate with ourselves, how can we enjoy intimacy with anyone? While we flee loneliness without intimacy with self, our engagement with others lacks the closeness we truly, deeply yearn for: we are shaped to thrive off a nonemotional closeness able to integrate emotion. In this resort to a lesser togetherness, something is always lacking, even if we have become insensitive to that silenced aspiration. This is the outcome of this fleeing into shallow sharings: to become insensitive to the intimacy we once felt a profound, even painful, longing for. Interestingly, it can be the person who is always engaging with others who is the one hiding from closeness.
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*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2024. Permission is given to use photographs and writings with credit given to the copyright owner.
*Brian's book is An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love. The book is a collection of poems Brian wrote based on wisdom traditions, predominantly Christian, Buddhist, and Sufi, with extensive notes on the poetry's teachings and imagery.
