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Welcome to OneLife Ministries. This site is designed to lead you prayerfully into a heart experience of Divine Presence, Who is Love. While it focuses on Christian teaching, I hope persons of varied faiths will find inspiration here. Indeed, "God" can be whatever image helps us trust in the Sacred, by whatever means Grace touches us each. Please share this ministry with others, and please return soon. There is a new offering daily. And to be placed on the daily OneLife email list, to request notifications of new writings or submit prayer requests, write to briankwilcox@yahoo.com .
Blessings,
Brian Kenneth Wilcox MDiv, MFT, PhD
Interspiritual Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader,
Spiritual Counselor, and Chaplain.
Quote
We are addicted to company. Notice also the many ways we work to fill the space around us. We fear being alone. We fear solitude. It is this fear that reveals a desperate insecurity within ourselves. However, our attempts to fill our lives with company will never satisfy the true hunger of the heart-community with God.
I do not suggest that we do not need relationships with other people. On the contrary, we need more true relationships with other people. However, time is necessary if one is to develop a true friendship with God. This must be time spent in solitude.
What would happen if we embraced being alone in quiet as an opportunity to become aware of God's presence? We just might find the One thing that can fill the infinite emptiness in our hearts.
*www.watersedge.tv .
Scripture
5 And when he (or, it) comes, he will open the eyes of the blind
and unplug the ears of the deaf.
6 The lame will leap like a deer,
and those who cannot speak will sing for joy!
Springs will gush forth in the wilderness,
and streams will water the wasteland.
7 The parched ground will become a pool,
and springs of water will satisfy the thirsty land.
Marsh grass and reeds and rushes will flourish
where desert jackals once lived.
*Isaiah 35.5-7 (NLT)
Affirmation
I am bathed in the Presence of God. Thank You.
Spiritual Teaching
At a retreat event, busy and noisey, with much to do, I took a break. I wanted some alone time, some quiet. A retreatant came upon me by accident, and asked, and with concerned seriousness, "What is wrong? Why are you alone?"
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The following is the entry for the word history of “hermit,” as found in the Online Etymology Dictionary.
1130, from O.Fr. (h)eremite, from L.L. ermita, from Gk. eremites, lit. "person of the desert," from eremia "desert, solitude," from eremos "uninhabited." The hermit crab (1735) was so called for its solitary habits.
*Douglas Harper, 2001. See www.dictionaryreference.com .
The religious hermit has been seen as person who has chosen to live totally alone, as a devotion to the Sacred. Such hermits preceded the communal form of monasticism. This tradition is called “eremitic.” Early in the Christian era, the eremites literally went to the deserts of Palestine, Egypt, and Syria.
Yet, we each can have – and need to have – some hermit in us – and enjoy hermit-time. “Solitary habits” are good for us, and they are universally seen as essential to the spiritual life – at least, if a person wants to have a deeply evolving relationship with the Sacred, beyond consensual forms of religion or spirituality. Yet, many persons who aspire to a deep spirituality run from the “desert.” Even we who are vowed to it find ourselves seeking to escape it, at times, or often.
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What is the “desert” for the person seeking an in-depth, spiritual relationship with the Holy One? The “desert” is that desert within, not because it is barren of all, but for it being barren of attachments that keep from a fuller, healthier engagement with the Divine.
Why do we resist the “desert” - even while we want it? We do this for the desert-within is a death. This death is a detraction of things we cling to in trying to please others, keep a self-identity – the one we have identified with, and the one, or ones, given us by others -, worn-out religious practices and perceptions, resentments we hug close, …
Beyond this, often the expectations of others around us discourage us from the “desert.” Oddly, we live in a culture – and a religious one – that sees activity as the end-all. So, you may be surrounded by family, friends, spiritual companions, church members, co-workers … who are defined by everything but the “desert,” and so they do not see your love of habitual solitude as normal or healthy. Yet, many persons who would resist your practice of solitude, may see the habitual harried and hurried and noisy living as healthy. Yet, such a lifestyle can be as much escapist as a person going to live alone in a mountain cave.
So, each one of us needs to practice habitual solitude, even when we feel others may misunderstand, or we find it a "place" of felt-aridity and felt-absence. And the amount of solitude, in the sense of physical aloneness, will differ based on your choices and particular Path. Part of my vows include solitude, so, part of my Calling is more solitude than most persons feel called to. I do not need to expect the same degree from others.
Many factors decide how much of the “desert” you are to practice. You are to discern between you and God, and find peace at that. And if you honor a good measure of the “desert,” it will enrich your relationships, to the degree that is possible in your every relationship. Indeed, persons seeking a deeper spiritual life will be drawn to you, as they sense your Practice. Likewise, such will enrich your relationship with yourself - and, of course, with God.
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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, as long as we are empty and interested in nothing but God, we cannot be distracted. For our very poverty prevents us from being “pulled apart” (dis-tracted).
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.
*Thomas Merton. Thoughts in Solitude. “VII.”
Merton reminds us solitude is not merely or only being shut up in a place. Rather, the solitude of the heart is the empty openness to see the Divine everywhere, and receive the Sacred through the world around us - and return that Blessing to the world, again. This is the Reciprocity of Loving.
The desert within is that inner place, where all is dissolved in Quiet and Openness, and the blessings of intimacy with God grow up and bloom, giving frangrance to the world around. The desert becomes the ground for a Garden of Intimacies, and emptiness and fullness are wed in the Union of Grace. When we reenter the world outside, we can see the world more clearly, lovingly, and beautifully, even as we can take the love of the world outside our physical aloneness into the aloneness and enrich the Quietly Alone.
Responding
1. Consider exploring having Quiet Times at varied times in day and night hours, to nurture solitude and mindfulness. A longer time in the morning and the evening, balanced with two or three shorter times between, is workable for most persons? Recall, however, you may have to give up some of the time you are doing things like talking on the phone, watching television, blogging, reading the newspaper, ...
2. How much time do you sense you need to engage separate from others in practice of the outer manifestation of inner solitude? What is the relationship between inner and outer solitude? What do you see as benefits of a daily practice of habitual solitude? Do you see your relationships, generally, as supportive of such practice?
3. Do you have a spiritual community that supports your need of habitual alone time as part of an over-all spiritual Practice?
4. What are excuses you may use to avoid spiritual solitude? Be honest about this, but compassionate. What are reasons you may resists solitude as spiritual practice? How may you address that resistance and give yourself more time, and consistent time, alone engaging the Contact with the Sacred?
5. What are ways to practice spiritual solitude in contexts other than alone, in private?
6. How badly do you want a consistent practice of intentional solitude to enrich your life with God, with others, with the natural world, and with yourself? What are you willing to do to begin that today? What are the changes you need to make in your life to do this?
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*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian Kenneth Wilcox, SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life and with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis, with friends and under a vow of simplicity. Brian is an ecumenical-interspiritual leader, who chooses not to identify with any group, and renounces all titles of sacredness that some would apply to him, but seeks to be open to how Christ manifests in the diversity of Christian denominations and varied religious-spiritual traditions. He affirms that all spiritual paths lead ultimately back to Jesus Christ. He is Senior Chaplain for the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office, Punta Gorda, FL.
*Brian welcomes responses to his writings or submission of prayer requests at briankwilcox@yahoo.com . Also, Brian is on Facebook: search Brian Kenneth Wilcox.
*Contact the above email to book Brian for preaching, Spiritual Direction, retreats, workshops, animal blessing services, house blessings, or other spiritual requests. You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers.
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