In My Solitude

All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone. - Blaise Pascal

I'm sure Pascal was engaging in a bit of hyperbole, but he is certainly on to something. Just try and sit in solitude and silence for 30 minutes, you will quickly find yourself trying to engage. You will grab your phone to check the time, your mind will be flooded with everything else that needs to be done. You will feel as if you are wasting precious time, and your mind will thrash about until you become sufficiently engaged. I heard a colleague say, "We have become human doings rather than human beings." How true.

But how might this reveal a person's source of misery? Well, to be able to sit in silence and solitude and enjoy it is to be at home with who you are, rather than what you do. It is to discover that life goes on without you just fine. It is to see yourself through a proper perspective and learn to accept what you see, and to do so with joy.

I have recently began practicing the discipline of solitude and silence. I was amazed with how difficult is was for me to simply sit still, and be. Almost immediately my mind started creating 'to do' lists. At once I felt what I was doing was useless. But as I persisted I made an amazing discovery. Everything is okay! I don't need to worry, or fuss, or anything like that. Everything is okay. 

I didn't discover that all was well in a strangely disenchanted way, but I discovered the presence of God in my moment of solitude. It's as if the forced withdrawal, and the quieting of all other voices (mostly my own) that call out to me allowed the calm unassuming voice of God to be heard. God will not shout at us, after all. He will not shuck and jive to get our attention.

So while solitude appears as loneliness, it is not. While silence appears to be a sound void, it is not. God is there, and God speaks.

It is this discovery that pulls a person back from the clutches of misery (I must do) into the satisfaction of God's love and care where we are invited to just be. What a relief to discovery that we do not have to manage everything. How comforting to know that we can rest, like children, in the reality that God will take care of "it" and us.

Drop thy still dews of quietness,

till all our strivings cease;

take from our souls the strain and stress,

and let our ordered lives confess 

the beauty of thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire

thy coolness and thy balm;

let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;

speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,

O still, small voice of calm!

- John Greenleaf Whittier