It was a gorgeous Sunday morning in the Garden of the Gods. In Colorado Springs on business, I decided to attend God’s “church.” The sky was brilliant blue, the red sandstone monoliths blazed in the sun, the junipers were green and fragrant, and Pike’s Peak glimmered cool purple in the distance.
I sat quietly on a rock, drifting between prayer and just being, when my worship was interrupted by a sound. At first it was as distant as a bee’s buzz, but too quickly it wound its way on the hiking trail and was upon me. It was a human, on a cell phone, talking business, on Sunday morning, in the Garden of the Gods … for God’s sake!
Solitude. For those who seek it and are fortunate enough to find it, it’s hard to hold onto. And for those who don’t understand it and don’t desire it, well, they’re missing the joy of an intimate relationship with God.
God wants our attention, and not just in church. God doesn’t want us to be like Jesus just in our actions; he wants us to be like Jesus in our innermost spirit. He wants to share with us his true nature so we can understand our own true nature. That can’t happen when we spend every waking moment chasing worldly goals.
We need to turn our backs on our physical beings and tend to our spiritual beings by engaging in solitude. When Jesus had something important to teach his disciples, he took them away from the crowds and the ruckus of life. “When he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything” (Mark 4:34).
Likewise, Jesus wants to be alone with us. “Jesus cannot teach us anything until we quiet all our intellectual questions and get alone with him,” said writer and theologian Oswald Chambers.
Some people are afraid to be alone, or it makes them uncomfortable. Some won’t let themselves be still or quiet because they’ve bought the notion that being busy is virtuous. If there is a reason to fear solitude, it is that we may discover that separated from all our “stuff,” we are empty and without purpose. But until we are emptied of the trivial, we can’t be filled with the meaningful. Solitude allows this to happen.
“In the clarity of our isolation from people, things and activities, we come face to face with the true state of our being, i.e., spiritual poverty,” says Roman Catholic writer and editor Andrew Richards. “In the stark reality of our helplessness and our nothingness, we learn humility and the truth about ourselves and all our little projects to conquer and possess more and more created being. For those with a spiritual journey to make, solitude teaches perseverance and fortitude until our spirits are sufficiently detached to receive the inflowing of the wonderful joy of the divine spirit.”
Solitude is different from meditation. You don’t have to sit still. Men and women who commit to a solitary life in a religious order still put their hands to gardening, cooking, sewing, carpentry – tasks that are worthy of their effort but allow them to empty their minds so they can be filled with the Holy Spirit.
While meditation may be limited to 20 or 30 minutes, solitude can encompass hours, a full day, even longer. Solitude can be achieved during a day of gardening, on a long hike or bicycle outing, a camping trip, a solo road trip in the car, a day off from work spent alone at home. The point is to get away from the distractions and people we know and spend time alone with God. There may be people at the next campsite or on the hiking trail, but we don’t engage them.
Meditation can be a part of solitude, as can prayer and Bible study, but we also should spend time just listening for God’s voice.
While some people are called to a solitary life, for most of us solitude is a brief retreat from the people, work and activities that fill up our lives. It is a time to seek the presence and wisdom of God, and once found, return to our daily lives filled with the Holy Spirit.
Perhaps Irish singer/songwriter Van Morrison was describing such a retreat when he wrote about “going up the Castlereagh hills and the cregagh glens in summer, and coming back to Hyndford Street, feeling wondrous and all lit up inside with a sense of everlasting life.”