On the Relation Between Physical and Existential Solitude

[[Dear Sister, I think I understand the place of physical solitude in assisting someone to encounter and journey to the depths of existential solitude. You seem to take a more flexible view on the requirement for absolute physical solitude than some hermits do. If physical solitude is so helpful in this, then why would you allow a hermit to ease it? Wouldn't that be an obstacle to going to the depths you have been talking about?]]

Great question and timely because I was thinking about doing just such a post! Thank you!! The interesting thing about existential solitude is that while physical solitude is critically important in helping us get in touch with this, being with other people in some instances can be similarly helpful. You remember I used the image of being more alone in a crowd than we are when we are by ourselves? This is an instance of being with others as a situation that also puts us in touch with our existential solitude. Remember that existential solitude is defined as that solitude that is intrinsic to being a human being. We are born alone, live alone, and die alone in this existential sense. There is always going to be a gap between ourselves and any other person. No one really knows our hearts or minds completely. We are always, at least partly, unknown and unknowable to others, as they are to us. That creates a sense of existential loneliness or solitude that only God overcomes.

In conversations with other hermits, we have spoken of this sense. It turns up for us most poignantly, I think, because each of us have very few people with whom we can discuss our lives with the expectation that they will understand what we are and why we do what we do. I have said before that usually folks think of hermits in some stereotypical way, probably because it is easier than having some huge cipher or question mark hovering over the word "hermit". Others narrow down the way they understand this vocation to "prayer warrior" --- a phrase I detest, not because I don't pray or because I don't, in fact, do significant battle with the demons of this world and my own heart, but because it is reductionistic, too belligerent, and contrary to the essence of this call. People in my parish are comfortable thinking of me as a religious, even a contemplative --- though here we are beginning to move close to being more than a bridge too far for them! Hermit is definitely beyond the usual bounds of understanding.

On the other hand, we hermits have each other, and it is incredibly important that we do. Existential solitude can be very painful; to have others who are on the same journey, who know what you are feeling and how important it is, is incredibly critical to living this vocation well. What I find is that my time with those who haven't a clue about what I live or why often sharpens my sense of existential solitude, while my time with my Sisters in c 603, or my Director, my spiritual director, and a handful of others, encourage and accompany me in my journey even though it is one I must still make alone with God. I believe that for established hermits (less so for beginners), the time hermits spend with others will not detract from the journey into their inmost depths that they are called to. These times can actually sharpen, intensify, or otherwise enhance the journey, though in different ways, depending on the relationship.

Physical solitude is absolutely critical, not only for getting in touch with one's existential solitude, but for learning to become aware of the deep hunger and thirst we have for wholeness, and thus, too, for God. However, sometimes physical solitude, when combined with the anguish or even the more tolerable pain of existential solitude, needs to be eased if we are to remain fully committed to the journey to the depths of ourselves, where we meet God and our truest self at the same time. The eremitical vocation requires physical solitude, but it is not primarily about physical solitude, nor does it exist for the sake of physical solitude. Similarly, the hiddenness of eremitical life is not about external hiddenness, anonymity, etc., though it may benefit from these. Instead, it is about the hidden journey to the very heart of our being. This journey continues in one way or another, whether I am with others or not, and it is hidden from everyone, even those whose place in my life makes them a privileged sharer in this journey. Granted, I try to share what the journey involves, to whatever extent is appropriate, but it remains essentially hidden, just as it remains essentially solitary.

The paradox of Faith: Being Loved into an Ever-Deepening Hunger for God

[[Sister Laurel, thanks for your posts on "being full of oneself" and dealing with that. I was thinking about what you have said about being loving and allowing ourselves to be loved as the way to deal with the problem of being full of ourselves. I appreciated the focus you gave to paradox in what you wrote. . . . . I agree there is a paradox involved in the fact that trying to empty ourselves really leads to a greater focus on ourselves. I am thinking that one particular instance of this is when someone begins to focus on their own imperfections and proclaims themselves as sinners! . . . It is paradoxical that when some religious people begin to speak publicly about their sin or overall sinfulness, they become more and more full of themselves, more and more in need of the love of God that is the only thing that can save anyone at all from themselves.  . . . Do you understand what I am saying here? I think it really calls for all of the things you wrote about recently, and particularly, spiritual direction.]]

Thanks for writing and especially for specifying as you do the problem of proclaiming one's sinfulness and the way this tends to lead to even greater "being full of oneself"!! I agree completely and think you have said this very well. Your comments lead me first of all to consider the way the Catholic Church handles personal sin. We do that in secret and in absolute confidence. Yes, we confess to others because we really do need to say it out loud and within the church community, not least to see it clearly ourselves, but we do not shout it from the rooftops or reveal it publicly. 

Doing this is not only not ordinarily helpful, but, as you note, it can all too easily become a form of being full of and even a proclamation of self! Even in public liturgies, though we confess many times that we are sinners and need the mercy of God, the focus is never on public confession of our sin; instead, it is on God's love and welcome of the sinner as well as on the commonality of our identities as sinners with other sinners. Our sins themselves, however, are a private matter and, generally speaking, we keep this private except with our spiritual director, or perhaps a therapist or really good friend. There is a certain degree of discretion required to be reverent in this matter. To do otherwise risks very real self-aggrandizement in regard to our relationship with God and self.

The same thing happens with the intimate moments we have with God in prayer, for instance. Our prayer is also a private matter and the NT says as much, [[When you pray, go into your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.]] The question this raises is an important one, namely, do we want a relationship with God, or do we want to be known as someone who claims to have or wants to be known as having a relationship with God? One of these is worthy of us (and of God), and one of these is not. This part of the situation is not paradoxical. What is paradoxical is that the more one speaks of unusual or special prayer experiences, particularly when these are made to represent the ordinary way God comes to one, the less credible they become as instances of communication with the real God and the more they, at least apparently, reflect an overactive ego. After all, when God is trivialized in this way we neglect the fact that we are dealing with Mystery itself. Even if this is not true and one simply has a poor sense of boundaries, it is theologically unsound and pastorally ill-advised.

Again, though, I believe that the answer to the problem of ego and "being full of oneself" whenever we are speaking of loving God is to keep in mind the most basic paradox. We love God best and most truly when we allow God to love us. To love another is to want for them and to act in ways that allow them to be themselves as fully and truly as possible. With God who is Love (or, better, Love-in-act), for us to act in this way must mean that we allow God to love us as fully and truly as possible (which itself is dependent on God empowering us to do so). To speak of our loving God becomes quite difficult otherwise, and it would put the focus back on ourselves. This is why Tillich's definition of faith, for example, is so brilliant and sufficient. (Faith is "the state of being grasped by that which is an ultimate (or unconditional) concern" ("Glaube ist das Ergriffensein von dem vas uns unbedingt Angeht") It is both paradoxical and focuses attention entirely on God and what God does. Even the term "ultimate (or unconditional) concern" (unbedingt Angeht) has to do with what we experience in light of being made for and grasped by God and God's promises --- for these really are our truest needs or "concerns" only because we are made for them by God.

Faith is a profoundly paradoxical reality; it is most really our own only to the extent it is God's "being and doing" within us.  I began struggling with this as an undergraduate theology student. At that time, in the midst of a discussion on grace, faith, and works, I asked if it wasn't the case that faith was a work. The professor explained the situation and concluded by saying that perhaps faith was the one "work" that was not our work at all. He did not go any further than that but left me with a puzzle I would need to figure out ( as I have said elsewhere, he was a very fine teacher!). About a year later, he introduced me to Paul Tillich's Systematic Theology and his Dynamics of Faith. I finally began to understand how faith could be defined in terms of God's work in us and the trap of treating faith as something we did. Instead, faith is the state that results when we are grasped or taken hold of by God's Self and promises. God, quite literally "knows us" and we in turn become the very imprint or image of God's knowing us --- the very thing we were made to be. 

Likewise, this produces within us a hunger for more. We desire or yearn to be united with God and thus, more fully and completely known by God (and also by others). Whenever we continue to allow ourselves to hunger in this way, and especially whenever we embrace whatever allows God to increase our hunger for Himself, we are acting in a way that is 1) contrary to egoism, 2) is inspired by God and 3) is the very form of suffering that Jesus plumbed the depths of himself in his life, passion, and death.

For me, this is the deepest paradox of our existence, namely, that often we know God best in our hunger and it is in the sharpening of our hunger that we know we have been drawn closer to God by Godself. As a hermit, I am coming to know that on this side of death, the greatest consolation we can know is not so much that we are filled by God, but rather, that our hunger for God is developed, sharpened, and deepened. This profound hunger, however, can also be extremely painful since God is not only the ground and source of being, but of all meaning as well. To yearn for being and meaning and all these imply and require can lead us to the very brink of despair unless and until we realize that, paradoxically, this agonizing hunger for God is itself the deepest sign of God's presence and love we can know, entirely unadulterated as it is by egoism. Jesus' cry of abandonment, especially in the presence of so much other suffering, is at once the measure of his greatest hunger and a sign of God's undoubted love echoing within him.