Solitude or Multitude

A quote that appeared recently on the calendar that sits on my desk at work:

It is an error to isolate oneself from men...If God does not call one to solitude, one must live with God in the multitude, make him known there, and make him loved.

Raissa Maritain

More from Henri

Two more thoughts from Henri Nouwen...

The Ways to Self-knowledge

"Know yourself" is good advice. But to know ourselves doesn't mean to analyse ourselves. Sometimes we want to know ourselves as if we were machines that could be taken apart and put back together at will. At certain critical times in our lives it might be helpful to explore in some detail the events that led us to our crises, but we make a mistake when we think that we can ever completely understand ourselves and explain the full meaning of our lives to others.

Solitude, silence, and prayer are often the best ways to self-knowledge. Not because they offer solutions for the complexity of our lives but because they bring us in touch with our sacred center, where God dwells. That sacred center may not be analysed. It is the place of adoration, thanksgiving, and praise.

Sharing Our Solitude

A friend is more than a therapist or a confessor, even though a friend can sometimes heal us and offer us God's forgiveness.

A friend is that other person with whom we can share our solitude, our silence, and our prayer. A friend is that other person with whom we can look at a tree and say, "Isn't that beautiful," or sit on the beach and silently watch the sun disappear under the horizon. With a friend we don't have to say or do something special. With a friend we can be still and know that God is there with both of us.

Community and Solitude - Henri Nouwen

another challenging thought from Henri Nouwen...

Community Supported by Solitude

Solitude greeting solitude, that's what community is all about. Community is not the place where we are no longer alone but the place where we respect, protect, and reverently greet one another's aloneness. When we allow our aloneness to lead us into solitude, our solitude will enable us to rejoice in the solitude of others. Our solitude roots us in our own hearts. Instead of making us yearn for company that will offer us immediate satisfaction, solitude makes us claim our center and empowers us to call others to claim theirs. Our various solitudes are like strong, straight pillars that hold up the roof of our communal house. Thus, solitude always strengthens community.

Henri on Solitude (I relate to this one)

Henri Nouwen on solitude...

The Voice in the Garden of Solitude

Solitude is the garden for our hearts, which yearn for love. It is the place where our aloneness can bear fruit. It is the home for our restless bodies and anxious minds. Solitude, whether it is connected with a physical space or not, is essential for our spiritual lives. It is not an easy place to be, since we are so insecure and fearful that we are easily distracted by whatever promises immediate satisfaction. Solitude is not immediately satisfying, because in solitude we meet our demons, our addictions, our feelings of lust and anger, and our immense need for recognition and approval. But if we do not run away, we will meet there also the One who says, "Do not be afraid. I am with you, and I will guide you through the valley of darkness."

Let's keep returning to our solitude.

More Thought Nuggets from Henri

A few more thoughts from Henri Nouwen that have arrived in my inbox recently...

Be Yourself

Often we want to be somewhere other than where we are, or even to be someone other than who we are. We tend to compare ourselves constantly with others and wonder why we are not as rich, as intelligent, as simple, as generous, or as saintly as they are. Such comparisons make us feel guilty, ashamed, or jealous. It is very important to realize that our vocation is hidden in where we are and who we are. We are unique human beings, each with a call to realize in life what nobody else can, and to realize it in the concrete context of the here and now.

We will never find our vocations by trying to figure out whether we are better or worse than others. We are good enough to do what we are called to do. Be yourself!

Finding Solitude

All human beings are alone. No other person will completely feel like we do, think like we do, act like we do. Each of us is unique, and our aloneness is the other side of our uniqueness. The question is whether we let our aloneness become loneliness or whether we allow it to lead us into solitude. Loneliness is painful; solitude is peaceful. Loneliness makes us cling to others in desperation; solitude allows us to respect others in their uniqueness and create community.

Letting our aloneness grow into solitude and not into loneliness is a lifelong struggle. It requires conscious choices about whom to be with, what to study, how to pray, and when to ask for counsel. But wise choices will help us to find the solitude where our hearts can grow in love.

Creating Space to Dance Together

When we feel lonely we keep looking for a person or persons who can take our loneliness away. Our lonely hearts cry out, "Please hold me, touch me, speak to me, pay attention to me." But soon we discover that the person we expect to take our loneliness away cannot give us what we ask for. Often that person feels oppressed by our demands and runs away, leaving us in despair. As long as we approach another person from our loneliness, no mature human relationship can develop. Clinging to one another in loneliness is suffocating and eventually becomes destructive. For love to be possible we need the courage to create space between us and to trust that this space allows us to dance together.

Secrets

Have you ever visited the "PostSecret" blog? There's a link to it in my sidebar if you haven't...

People write their deepest secrets anonymously on a postcard and mail them in, and every Sunday, a stack of new secrets are posted for the world to share. Some are funny, some are crude, some are deeply disturbing... I saw one once, beautifully sketched tear drops, and all it said was "I miss innocence". I understood that sentiment...

I'm thinking about secrets tonight... Here are a few of mine...

I pretend to be a really deep-thinking person, but I actually like nothing quite so much as crashing in front of slightly trashy television in the evening, and refusing to have my brain engage. I spend so much time lost in thought that in the evenings I often want nothing more that to completely disengage from the world, and to laugh at whichever show that vastly separated from reality happens to be on that night... I know it's not really constructive, but I do it anyway...

I pretend to be really brave, and open to new things, but I'm usually faking it... I am afraid, and it affects my physical health... in the hours before heading out to something new, I am often sick to my stomach with anxiety and fear.

I have a strong need for control. I'm working on this, but a schedule and a sense of rhythm are really helpful for me. I also tend to be absentminded, and things that are important get missed.

To control, and to combat the absentmindedness, I use lists. I love lists. I derive great satisfaction and a strong sense of accomplishment from crossing something off of a list I've made. A grocery list, a list of all the errands I need to accomplish. I don't actually use a day planner - I make a list for the week because it has helped me establish a sense of rhythm. I put everything on that list - the people stuff, the home stuff, the church stuff, the personal stuff. Everything from "do the laundry" to "spend 1 hour at least 3 times reading and meditating" to "coffee with so and so" to "Bible study prep" to "stretching exercises". Sometimes, just because I like crossing things off, I'll put the really mundane on there - "shower" or "make a cup of tea".

Life has felt out of control these last few weeks... The Lord is doing new and deep things, but I feel like other important things have been missing in action, and I'm feeling the need to fall back into a rhythm. I've deliberately scheduled my calendar to be quite blank for this coming week. One tea date with a friend, and a trip to the mountains tomorrow. I feel like after a couple of really intense weeks once again, I need to time to breathe, to let my body and head catch up with my soul, to reconnect into a whole person again. I want to cook real food, not pre-prepared dinners because I have to be back out the door ten minutes after I walk in. I want to sit in a darkened room, and smell incense, and pray for an hour or two without feeling like I'm neglecting other things. I want to stretch, and breathe deeply, and not feel that I'm wasting twenty minutes I should be using on something else. So, this week, I'm setting out to rest, and to re-establish rhythm. When I finish writing this post, I'm going to make my list for the week. It's going to have things on it like "take a bubble bath", "journal for an hour", "read two chapters in a book I'm reading right now on art", "have tea with a friend", "mail gifts to various other friends", "send Rae a card so that it's waiting when she gets home from Europe", "breathe", "research graduate schools".

I'm all about my list being full of things that inspire me to pray this week, and that inspire me to step into things that make me feel alive. So yes, I'm excerting control, but I'm hoping it turns out in the best possible way!

Continuing yesterday's Henri Nouwen Theme

Two more bits from Henri Nouwen this morning, continuing the theme from yesterday...

Protecting Our Hiddenness

If indeed the spiritual life is essentially a hidden life, how do we protect this hiddenness in the midst of a very public life? The two most important ways to protect our hiddenness are solitude and poverty. Solitude allows us to be alone with God. There we experience that we belong not to people, not even to those who love us and care for us, but to God and God alone. Poverty is where we experience our own and other people's weakness, limitations, and need for support. To be poor is to be without success, without fame, and without power. But there God chooses to show us God's love.

Both solitude and poverty protect the hiddenness of our lives.

Clinging to God in Solitude

When we enter into solitude to be with God alone, we quickly discover how dependent we are. Without the many distractions of our daily lives, we feel anxious and tense. When nobody speaks to us, calls on us, or needs our help, we start feeling like nobodies. Then we begin wondering whether we are useful, valuable, and significant. Our tendency is to leave this fearful solitude quickly and get busy again to reassure ourselves that we are "somebodies." But that is a temptation, because what makes us somebodies is not other people's responses to us but God's eternal love for us.

To claim the truth of ourselves we have to cling to our God in solitude as to the One who makes us who we are.