EMBRACING SOLITUDE
May 3, 2010
I
will lead you into solitude and there I will speak to your
heart.
The poet and essayist W. H. Auden was insistent on the
irreducibility of our solitude: “in the last analysis we live
our lives alone. Alone we choose, alone we are responsible.”
He bemoaned the fact that “so many people try to forget their
aloneness, and break their heads and hearts against it.” Being
utterly alone is surely a fearsome thing; great reserves of
energy may be expended in the service of keeping the experience
at bay. Emily Dickinson may have had dreaded aloneness in mind
when she described the solitude of space, sea or even death as
“society” compared to the “polar privacy” of solitary inwardness:
There is a solitude of space
A solitude of sea
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be
Compared with that profounder site
That polar privacy
A soul admitted to itself –
Finite infinity.
Initially, the call to solitude may be feared and
resisted. We don’t want to let go of what we’re involved in.
Often enough that holds true with regard to valued activities,
including our desire for time to pray and meditate, read and
reflect. Saying no to all of the things that demand our
attention is an act of detachment that may be surprisingly
difficult to enact. Little wonder that the larger detachments
involving relationships, professional commitments and hopes for
the future evoke so much inner turmoil and fears of
abandonment. However much we may crave silence and solitude,
their presence creates space for the appearance of anxious
apprehensions, if not panic. Father Adrian van Kaam noted that
our discipleship, our following the Lord, entails bearing
our solitude: It is difficult to follow Him because it is
difficult to bear the solitude of our original calling in
Christ.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau began his Reveries of a Solitary
Walker with these words: “So now I am alone in the world,
with no brother, neighbor or friend, nor any company left me but
my own.” There is a hint of social banishment and even of
paranoia in Rousseau’s opening remarks. But there is something
else: there is the enormous pleasure he received in being able
during the last two years of his life to celebrate solitude as
an occasion to reflect personally on the beneficial aspects of
his life. Rousseau’s walking exercises resulted in the ten
chapters (walks) he took during this period:
I am devoting my last days to studying
myself and preparing the account which I shall shortly have to
render. Let me give
myself over entirely to the pleasure of conversing with my soul,
since this is the only pleasure that cannot be taken from me. .
. . The free hours
of my daily walks have often been filled with delightful
contemplations which I am sorry to have forgotten.
Such reflections as I have in future I shall preserve in
writing; every time I read them they will recall my original
pleasure.
His book ends with a short chapter expressing gratitude
for a five-year period from his youth in which he was truly
happy and fulfilled.
Madeleine Delbręl, an extraordinary woman who lived in
France in the first half of the twentieth century, desired
solitude but may not have had the extended time for solitude
that graced the latter period of Rousseau’s life. Unusually
spiritually awakened, she discovered the key to enjoying the
“particles” of solitary time that come our way in the course of
an ordinary day and life. She invites us to open our souls to
the small solitudes of the day, from the first moment we wake up
in the morning:
For our tiny solitudes are as immense,
as exultant, as holy, as all the world’s deserts, because they
are filled with the same God, the God who makes solitude holy.
She evokes the solitude that might be painful for us but
which deepens our hearts:
loved ones who have to leave though
we’d like them to stay; friends that we wait for but who never
show up; things that we want to say, but no one is listening;
the strangeness of our heart while we’re among people.
Delbręl reminds us that in a certain way, all is
solitude. Yet, if we are open to what is offered, “the wells of
solitude scattered throughout the day . . . give us the living
water overflowing in them.”
We may start
out feeling alone in solitude. We may resist the break with the
familiar activity and scenery of life. But the actual
experience — the taste of solitude — often leaves us hungry for
more. Being in touch with our own depths, with the uniqueness
of our given life experience, with the “company” of cherished
memories cultivated by formative remembrance, and with the sense
that we are not alone after all — we find communion in
solitude. In Invitation to Solitude and Silence, Ruth
Haley Barton recommends solitude as the means of sharing
experience with God in the moment, as our life is
unfolding here and now
When we stop the music of our life to enter into solitude,
we sit down right where we are at that moment, and that’s where
we meet God. We meet God in our present delight or our present
sadness. . . . No matter where we are on any given day . . . .
we sit right down where we are and allow ourselves to be there
with him.
Ultimately, solitude is the bridge to communion, and we
should bear in mind what Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in Life
Together:
Let him/her who cannot be alone beware of community.
Let him/her who is not in community beware of being alone.
