On Solitude

Over the course of this Summer I've been striving to immerse myself in more spiritual disciplines. One of the wonderfully humbling things about practicing spiritual disciplines is that they immediately show you how poorly you practice them!

One of the books I picked up to help challenge me along this path was "The Way of the Heart" by Henri Nouwen. Nouwen asserts that in order to be an effective minister of the Gospel in today's culture we need to habitually practice the disciplines of solitude, silence, and prayer.

Today I'll provide you some of his insights on the spiritual discipline of solitude.

Are you the kind of person who longs for times of solitude or dreads it?

"Just look for a moment at our daily routine. In general we are very

busy people. We have many meetings to attend, many visits to make, many services to lead. Our calendars are filled with appointments, our days and weeks filled with engagements, and our years filled with plans and projects. There is seldom a period in which we do not know what to do, and we move through life in such a distracted way that we do not even take the time and rest to wonder if any of the things we think, say, or do are worth thinking, saying, or doing. We simply go along with the many 'musts' and 'oughts' that have been handed on to us, and we live with them as if they were authentic translations of the Gospel of our Lord" (Way of the Heart, 12).

Have you ever felt like this?

Have you ever wondered if the things you are thinking/saying/doing are worth thinking/saying/doing?

Nouwen says that solitude is the place where transformation happens. Of course there are numerous Biblical examples of this: Israel in the wilderness, Elijah fleeing into the wilderness, John the Baptist baptizing in the wilderness, Jesus being tempted in the wilderness, etc.

Nouwen says that as long as we remain (at least mentally/spiritually, if not physically) in our culture we will remain victims of our culture. And so there is a need (at least mentally/spiritually, if not physically) to flee into solitude were we can allow God to strip away all that needs to be removed in our lives.

"Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self. Jesus himself entered into this furnace ... Solitude is the place of the great struggle and the great encounter -- the struggle against the compulsions of the false self, and the encounter with the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self" (15-16).

However, Nouwen challenges us to make sure that our times and places of solitude don't become places/times of selfishness: "... solitude is not a private therapeutic place. Rather, it is the place of conversion, the place where the old self dies and the new self is born, the place where the emergence of the new man and the new woman occurs" (17).

And he reminds us that the purpose of solitude is NOT escapism. The purpose of solitude is not to flee the world forever; after all, our mandate as Christians is to engage the world. Rather, our times of solitude allow God to shape and form us and provide us with a perspective conducive to ministry: compassion.

"Here we reach the point where ministry and spirituality touch each other. It is compassion. Compassion is the fruit of solitude and the basis of all ministry. The purification and transformation that take place in solitude manifest themselves in compassion... It is in solitude that compassionate solidarity grows... What becomes visible is that solitude molds self-righteous people into gentle, caring, forgiving persons who are so deeply convinced of their own sinfulness and so fully aware of God's even greater mercy that their life itself becomes ministry" (24, 25, 27).

What role has/does solitude play in your life?

Do you agree with his perspective on Solitude?

What other scriptures can you think of that connect with the spiritual discipline of solitude?