Posted on by Kurt Bodling

Jesus prayed in solitude

Note:
Wanting to be like Jesus also means wanting to spend time in solitude and prayer. There’s a place for action, but only after contemplative sitting. The latter needs to be a priority.

Quote:
“Solitude and prayer-time alone were important to Jesus. Why is it, I wonder, that we seem more ready to follow Jesus into service than into solitude? Especially before important decisions were to be made, the Bible shows that Jesus took time to be alone with his Father and to reflect before deciding to move to another locale for ministry, before choosing the disciples, before embracing the cross.” (p. 96)

Source: Sager, Allan H. Gospel Centered Spirituality: An Introduction to our Spiritual Journey. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1990.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

solitude is to silence as community is to speech

Note:
Not only does Bonhoeffer tie silence and solitude together, but he also connects silence to speech. About solitude and community, remember, he said you can’t safely have one without the other; so here he would say ‘Let him who cannot be silent beware of speech. Let him who is not speaking beware of being silent.’

Quote:
“The mark of solitude is silence, as speech is the mark of community. Silence and speech have the same inner correspondence and difference as do solitude and community. One does not exist without the other. Right speech comes out of silence, and right silence comes out of speech.”

Source: Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1954, page 78. (original German pub in 1939)

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

beware of solitude or community

Note: The tension between solitude and community is real and deep. What isn’t necessarily clear to me, though it apparently was to Bonhoeffer, is whether one needs to be in both at the same time. He would say yes, writing here in present tense. In my life I’ve maybe spent much more time in community while yearning for solitude. So I tend to say that I’ve put in my time in community and now can finally be in solitude; and that my life overall has both. Alternatively, I will say that I am in community with the Church writ large over space and time, and that I don’t need to have them physically in my face to experience their community. Anyway here is a famous line from Bonhoeffer on the topic.

Quote:
“Each by itself has profound pitfalls and perils. One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation, and despair. Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.”

Source: Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1954, page 78. (original German pub in 1939)

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

adjusting to silence and solitude

Note:
It can take some time to adjust to being in solitude and silence, just as this writer describes the adjustment period a backpacker or camper needs to break away from the tyranny of the hectic city life. This adjustment period really could argue against taking short silent retreats, only a weekend long or so. It will probably take that long just to settle down and start to empty all the accumulated noise out of your head.

Quote:
“The thoughts that run in people’s heads about being late for work and what to have for dinner and what’s on TV that night, those go away in about four days to two weeks of being in the wilderness,” Douglas said. “Then you develop a more intuitive and emotional communication in your head. You eat when you’re hungry, sleep when you’re tired, and you’re mindful of weather changes.”

Source: The Bangor Daily News, 10 April 2013, an article titled “‘Hermit’ burglar compound littered with batteries, ‘tons and tons’ of propane tanks.” I no longer have the author’s name, but the person quoted here was Michael Douglas, adult programs director at Maine Primitive Skills School based in Augusta, Maine.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

stresses of silent retreats

Note:
A little longer quote for today: Some people hunger for silence and solitude, at least in theory. The Franciscan monastery in Washington, DC offers an opportunity to try it out a day at a time in a small purpose-built hermitage in 4 wooded acres on their city property. It doesn’t always play out as hoped. This gives one some things to think about if you find yourself imagining how great it would be to ‘get away from it all’ for a while. The source profiles 2 women who did short personal silent retreats, and summarizes their difficulties. Some extracts follow:

Quote:
“What do we complain about more these days than the tyranny of constant stimulation? Our attempts to tune out the outside world — the occasional radio-less drive to work, the concerted decision to leave the phone at home for a few hours — are often ineffectual. It has come to this: True solitude is such a rarity in our modern lives that we have to buy it — or, in this case, rent it for $70 a night.

“But it turns out solitude isn’t that simple. Although participation in silent retreats is on the rise, many of those preparing to spend time at the hermitage said they were so unaccustomed to unstructured time alone that they made to-do lists — then feared they were doing “solitude” wrong and scrapped them.

“What is silence? The absence of noise? Achieving inner peace? Knowing yourself? Being able to hover above your own thoughts and observe them without judgment? Halting the constant hunger for accomplishment in a society absorbed with getting ahead in measurable ways, with doing rather than being?

“Silence isn’t the end; it’s the means, experts say. And its absence from our culture isn’t a small thing.

“The challenges posed by silence are well-known to those who study and teach it. Some retreats encourage people to train — to refrain from checking their BlackBerrys for a few hours at a time before coming, for example. Others ease people into silence over a couple of days instead of all at once.”

Source: Boorstein, Michelle. “Silent retreats’ rising popularity poses a challenge: How to handle the quiet.” Washington Post 12 December 2012

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

signs of the times, the end times

“We live in the time of no room, which is the time of the end. The time when everyone is obsessed with lack of time, lack of space, with saving time, conquering space, projecting into time and space the anguish produced within them by the technological furies of size, volume, quantity, speed, number, price, power, and acceleration. ….

“As the end approaches, there is no room for nature. The cities crowd it off the face of the earth.

“As the end approaches, there is no room for quiet. There is no room for solitude. There is no room for thought. There is no room for attention, for the awareness of our state.

“In the time of the end, there is no room for man.” (pp. 280-281)

Merton, Thomas. “The Time of the End Is the Time of No Room.” (1965) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), pages 280-281.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

requirements for clear thinking

“Where there is no critical perspective, no detached observation, no time to ask the pertinent questions, how can one avoid being deluded and confused? Someone has to try to keep his head clear of static and preserve the interior solitude and silence that are essential for independent thought.”

Merton, Thomas. “Events and Pseudo-Events Letter to a Southern Churchman.” (1966) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), page 300.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

working from and into solitude

“But I know what I have discovered: that the kind of work I once feared most because I thought it would interfere with ‘solitude’ is, in fact, the only true path to solitude. One must be in some sense a hermit before the care of souls can serve to lead one further into the desert. But once God has called you to 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.”

Merton, Thomas. The Sign of Jonas. (San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 1981), pages 333-334. Entry written 29 November 1951.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

inner spiritual poverty

“You, too, can become a mendicant for the Lord. Open your heart and hands to God. Pray in silence and then enter the cloister of the world without expectations and let God provide you with your thoughts, words, and right actions. When you live from your inner hermit, God will fill you with a spiritual abundance beyond anything that you ever dreamed possible.”

Talbot, John Michael. The World is My Cloister: Living From the Hermit Within. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010), pages 80-81.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

the Bible in solitude

“The Psalms are the true garden of the solitary and the Scriptures are his Paradise. They reveal their secrets to him because, in his extreme poverty and humility, he has nothing else to live by except their fruits. For the true solitary the reading of Scripture ceases to be an ‘exercise’ among other exercises, a means of ‘cultivating’ the intellect or ‘the spiritual life’ or ‘appreciating the liturgy.’ To those who read Scripture in an academic or aesthetic or merely devotional way the Bible indeed offers pleasant refreshment and profitable thoughts. But to learn the inner secrets of the Scriptures we must make them our true daily bread, find God in them when we are in greatest need–and usually when we can find Him nowhere else and have nowhere else to look!”

Merton, Thomas. Thoughts in Solitude. (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1958 ; pbk ed 1999), pp. 126-127.