Solitude
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Solitude
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Solitude is the place where we can reach the profound bond that is deeper than the emergency bonds of fear and anger. Although fear and anger can indeed drive us together, they cannot give rise to a common witness. In solitude we can come to the realization that we are not driven together but brought together. In solitude we come to know our fellow human beings not as partners who can satisfy our deepest needs, but as brothers and sisters with whom we are called to give visibility to God’s all-embracing love. In solitude we discover that community is not a common ideology, but a response to a common call. In solitude we indeed realize that community is not made but given.
Solitude, then, is not private time in contrast to time together, nor a time to restore our tired minds. Solitude is very different from a time-out from community life. Solitude is the ground from which community grows. When we pray alone, study, read, write, or simply spend quiet time away from the places where we interact with each other directly, we enter into a deeper intimacy with each other. It is a fallacy to think that we grow closer to each other only when we talk, play, or work together. Much growth certainly occurs in such human interactions, but these interactions derive their fruit from solitude, because in solitude our intimacy with each other is deepened. In solitude we discover each other in a way that physical presence makes difficult if not impossible. There we recognize a bond with each other that does not depend on words, gestures, or actions, a bond much deeper than our own efforts can create.
If we base our life together on our physical proximity, on our ability to spend time together, speak with each other, eat together, and worship together, community life quickly starts fluctuating according to moods, personal attractiveness, and mutual compatibility, and thus will become very demanding and tiring. Solitude is essential for community life because there we begin to discover a unity that is prior to all unifying actions. In solitude we become aware that we were together before we came together and that community life is not a creation of our will but an obedient response to the reality of our being united. Whenever we enter into solitude, we witness to a love that transcends our interpersonal communications and proclaims that we love each other because we have been loved first (1 John 4:19). Solitude keeps us in touch with the sustaining love from which community draws its strength. It sets us free from the compulsions of fear and anger and allows us to be in the midst of an anxious and violent world as a sign of hope and a source of courage. In short, solitude creates that free community that makes bystanders say, “See how they love each other.”
This view of solitude as the fertile ground of community has very practical implications. It means that time for silence, individual study, personal prayer, and meditation must be seen to be as important to all the members of the community as acting together, working together, playing together, and worshiping together.
I am deeply convinced that gentleness, tenderness, peacefulness, and the inner freedom to move closer to one another, or to withdraw from one another, are nurtured in solitude. Without solitude we begin to cling to each other; we begin to worry about what we think and feel about each other; we quickly become suspicious of one another or irritated with each other; and we begin, often in unconscious ways, to scrutinize each other with a tiring hypersensitivity. Without solitude shallow conflicts easily grow deep and cause painful wounds. Then “talking things out” can become a burdensome obligation and daily life becomes so self-conscious that long-term living together is virtually impossible. . . .
With solitude, however, we learn to depend on God, by whom we are called together in love, in whom we can rest, and through whom we can enjoy and trust one another even when our ability to express ourselves to each other is limited. With solitude we are protected against the harmful effects of mutual suspicions, and our words and actions can become joyful expressions of an already existing trust rather than a subtle way of asking for proof of trustworthiness. With solitude we can experience each other as different manifestations of a love that transcends all of us. ◆
W hat is the relationship between togetherness and solitude in community life, between our need to being alone with God and our need for fellowship in him?
We are not almighty; our strength and power are limited. One writer speaks about the breathing of the soul, the breathing in and the breathing out of the inner person. He uses the expression “the creative pause.”
Living together with others means receiving and giving. In every encounter between people there is giving and taking, breathing in and breathing out. We cannot be in the presence of others without giving something. Nor can a childlike, reverent person be in the company of others without receiving something from them.
This reverence and gratefulness in which we give and take are signs of true community. Community is impossible for those who think they are only giving. The opposite is also true – people who try to convince themselves that they only receive and have nothing to give render themselves unfit for community. The secret that makes us all brothers and sisters is that we both give and receive service. We not only live with one another but also from one another. And if the body of Christ receives the Spirit in all its members and the whole body is of one soul, then all members serve one another. No one can do without the other. Each one lives for the others, and all live together for the one united body. That is the secret of life in community.
But we are weak human beings; we cannot constantly give and take, breathe in and out. This is where the creative pause comes in. We cannot live without it. The day is spent in a rhythm of wakefulness and sleep, and the life of the soul needs creative quiet, an inner resting point, a gathering of our innermost thoughts before God in solitude. To be sure, a believing heart is never completely alone; God is always close. That is why common silence is of such importance.
. . . The secret of common silence between souls is the secret of the creative pause, a silence in which we are attentive to what God is accomplishing in us. That is why there can never be total solitude for us, for people who believe and love. But we do need silence, a time when we neither take nor give but rest close to the source of life.
If our community life is so bustling with activity that we have too little time for sleep and for this creative pause, then our spiritual life is in great danger. A soul requires quiet – God created it that way. Without quiet we feel exhausted and burned-out, and an unnecessary crisis follows. We are spiritually unfruitful when we are deprived of the creative pause. We are incapable of a constant love when we do not know moments of quiet. Such moments are essential in human relationships. We must not forget this. We are not fanatics about community, saying we should never be alone. That would be inhuman and ungodly. We know we are weak people, and sin follows hard on the heels of overstrained nerves. . . .
Instead, we need to ask God for the right rhythm – the rhythm that allows us to draw strength in quiet; new strength to love, to give, and to receive. We must never seek solitude just because living together with so many people is a strain on our nerves. Such loneliness would be unbearable after having once known the gift of voluntary community. We should watch out when the temptation to get away from it all comes over us. It is a signal for us to turn once more to God so that we can love again. For a short time we should enter the lonely cave of solitude so that we can return to people with renewed love – a love poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
Let us also sometimes be silent together. Then both will be given to us – the creative pause, in which God speaks to the heart of each one, and the awareness that in our common silence he speaks to the hearts of all who are united here. ◆