The sent-out-ones gathered around Jesus and told him all about their good deeds and teachings. He instructed them, "Depart to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while." For many people were coming and going, and they had no break even to eat. So, they retreated in the boat to a deserted place to be alone.
Note: While this writing speaks to individuals "hiding," we can hide together. A person is fortunate to have another person or persons with whom she can enjoy solitude. Yet, we all need frequent individual retreat. Solitude with a group cannot replace the need for each of us to find respite from people and the bluster of modern, secular life, even the busy, mouthy hubbub of much institutional religious life, including worship in which one might enjoy little or no space without words, music, and noise filling the fruitful absence with human personality and performance.
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My mom had a place to hide. My brother built a little house off the ground and over the pasture. That got her some time away from my dad, who was not quiet like she. There, she had a little bed, a chair, an air conditioner, and a small table. She would go to her hiding place to pray and read her Bible. She kept a book with daily listings of persons she was praying for.
I like to hide, being quiet like my late mother. When children, we kids played a game called hide-n-seek. One hides, all seek to find the one. I like hiding where no one will seek me and may not even know where I am. In this hiding, my phone is off unless needed - I am inaccessible - in fact, my phone is rarely on, in or out of hiding.
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"To hide" comes from the Germanic "to cover, conceal." You can get too much exposure from the Sun. You need covering, shade. You can get too much exposure to people and noise. It would help if you covered yourself, to withdraw to shade.
Many, if not all, of us live in an overly exposed culture. Being overly exposed to noise and people is the norm in secular societies. If one is not over-exposed, she might be seen as odd, anti-social, or selfish. She might be seen as not a community person.
Yet, persons who are not "joiners" may be more truly joined to others than "joiners," bringing a quality of presence most do not into their interactions with others. So, being a person who leans toward solitude is not the equivalent of being anti-community. Being involved in gathering with others does not make one more a community person than those who practice solitude - one may be oft engaged with others and not be a community person at all. Simply put, there is an anti-rational bias against persons who prefer quiet and aloneness and join little.
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Hiding is essential to our well-being. Always being available, which is easy with modern technology, is unhealthy. Such availability distracts us from ourselves - we hide from ourselves in constant readiness to meet with and chat with in varied forms, spoken or unspoken. Never has a people been so accessible.
I live at an Inn. There, I have learned more about hiding, including how to hide. Due to the loudness, I usually go out daily to be alone. In the morning, after doing some housework and preparing the table for guests, I take my special chair, put it in my truck, and drive away. I do not tell anyone where I am going. I often go and sit outside a nearby Quaker Meetinghouse. There, I enjoy reading, meditating, and the sights and sounds of nature. I may sit by the river in the late afternoon or early evening. I park by the river, walk to a cafe, get a coffee drink, and return to sit, enjoying the sights and sounds.
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For us to give ourselves permission to hide is essential. We need to love ourselves enough to set such boundaries, even though others may think we are not as community-orientated, loving, or friendly for not being instantly and continuously available. We will be healthier for hiding. And by hiding our relationships will be enriched. We will have more to give of what matters most.
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I have often written about solitude, but hiding, for me, has a different connotation. Hiding tells me of the right and need to remove ourselves from others, including their sounds. For many, people sounds can be draining, while sounds of non-human nature can be vivifying and healing. Many people thrive on human sounds. They cannot seem to live without it. Hearing talk - that of themselves and others - seems to enthrall them. A spiritual being will not live a noisy, talky life but choose quiet and frequent interludes of solitude.
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Recently, a section on "Hiding," in David Whyte's Consolations, resonated strongly with me. I went back to select some of what he wrote. I found it best - I hope - to include the four paragraphs, for they each speak profoundly of the positive of hiding. They communicate benefits of hiding. Hence, I have included them below. Please read them slowly, thoughtfully, and consider how they apply to your life and spiritual practice.
Hiding is a way of staying alive. Hiding is a way of holding ourselves until we are ready to come into the light. Hiding is one of the brilliant and virtuoso practices of almost every part of the natural world: the protective quiet of an icy northern landscape, the held bud of a future summer rose, the snowbound internal pulse of the hibernating bear. Hiding is underestimated. We are hidden by life in our mother's womb until we grow and ready ourselves for our first appearance in the lighted world; to appear too early in that world is to find ourselves with the immediate necessity for outside intensive care.
Hiding done properly is the internal faithful promise for a proper future emergence, as embryos, as children or even as emerging adults in retreat from the names that have caught us and imprisoned us, often in ways where we have been too easily seen and too easily named.
We live in a time of the dissected soul, the immediate disclosure: our thoughts, imaginings and longings exposed to the light too much, too early and too often; our best qualities squeezed too soon into a world already awash with ideas that oppress our sense of self and our sense of others. What is real is almost always, to begin with, hidden, and does not want to be understood by the part of our mind that mistakenly thinks it knows what is happening. What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.
Hiding is an act of freedom from the misunderstanding of others, especially in the enclosing world of oppressive secret government and private entities, attempting to name us, to anticipate us, to leave us with no place to hide and grow in ways unmanaged by a creeping necessity for absolute naming, absolute tracking and absolute control. Hiding is a bid for independence - from others, from mistaken ideas we have about ourselves, from an oppressive and mistaken wish to keep us completely safe, completely ministered to, and therefore completely managed. Hiding is creative, necessary and beautifully subversive of outside interference and control. Hiding leaves life to itself, to become more of itself. Hiding is the radical independence necessary for our emergence into the light of a proper human future.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
