On Solitude


This has been a lonely season for me.

I would describe my station in the spiritual journey as a desert, or the wilderness, if you prefer. Don't be alarmed for me; this is a familiar (and deeply sacred) place.  If you've been reading this blog at all, you'll know that I love the desert for its beauty, peace, and tranquility. Not only does the desert remind me of my patria, New Mexico, but it encourages me to look to God when all else seems hopeless and all life seems distant.

 I am reading an excellent book by that great master of spiritual formation, Henri J.M. Nouwen (1932-1996), called Reaching Out. In it, he explains how loneliness is one pole of a spectrum of the spiritual journey. The other pole, which God draws us towards, is solitude. He quotes that great master of solitude, the Trappist Monk Thomas Merton (1915-1968).

I hope you find this helpful if you, like me, struggle to allow God to draw you away from yourself, into himself, and into the deeper consciousness of solitude.
Once God has called you into solitude, everything you touch leads you further into solitude. Everything that affects you builds you into a hermit, as long as you do not insist on doing the work yourself and building your own kind of hermitage. What is my new desert? The name of it is compassion. It is the only desert that shall flourish like the lily. It shall become a pool, it shall bud forth and blossom and rejoice with joy. It is in this desert of compassion that the thirsty land turns into springs of water, that the poor possess all things.
--Thomas Merton, quoted in Nouwen, H.J.M. Reaching Out. Fount, 1975.

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