A Contemplative Moment: Loneliness

by

David Whyte

Loneliness

is

the doorway to unspoken and yet unspecified desire. 

In the bodily pain of aloneness is the first step to understanding how far we are from a real friendship, from a proper work or a long-sought love. Loneliness can be a prison, a place from which we look out at a world we cannot inhabit; loneliness can be a bodily ache and penance, but loneliness fully inhabited also becomes the voice that asks and calls for that great unknown someone or something we want to call our own.

Loneliness is the very state that births the courage to continue calling, and when fully lived can undergo its own beautiful reversal, becoming in its consummation the far horizon that answers back.

In the grand scale of things, loneliness is a privilege. Human beings may have the ability to feel aloneness as no other creature can, with a power magnified by intelligence and imagination. Animals may feel alone in an instinctual way, moving naturally and affectionately toward others of their kind, but human beings may be the only beings that can articulate, imagine, or call for a specific life they feel they might be missing.

Loneliness is the substrate and foundation of belonging, the gravitational field that draws us home, and in the beautiful essence of its isolation, the hand reaching out for togetherness. To allow ourselves to feel fully alone is to allow ourselves to understand the particular nature of our solitary incarnation; to make aloneness a friend is to apprentice ourselves to the foundation from which we make our invitation to others. To feel alone is to face the truth of our irremediable and unutterable singularity, but a singularity that can kiss, create a conversation, make a vow or forge a shared life. In the world or community, this essential singularity joins with others through vision, intellect, and ideas to make a society.

Loneliness is not a concept, it is the body constellating, attempting to become proximate and even just with other bodies, through physical touch, through conversation or the mediation of the intellect and the imagination.

Loneliness is the place from which we pay real attention to voices other than our own; being alone allows us to find the healing power of the other. The shortest line in the briefest e-mail can heal, embolden, welcome home and enliven the most isolated identity. Lonely human beings are lonely because they are made to belong. Loneliness is a single malt taste of the very essentiality that makes conscious belonging possible. The doorway is closer than we think. I am alone; therefore, I belong.

in

Consolations, the Solace, Nourishment, and Underlying Meaning

of Everyday Words. pp 99-101

Introduction: Linkage Between Holy Saturday and Existential Solitude?

[[Sister Laurel, you wrote, [[The ability to live resurrection life on the other side of the deep loss and anguished questions of Holy Saturday, and to do so for the sake of God and others, marks the authenticity of an eremitical vocation.]] I understand what you have written before about authentic eremitical vocations I think, but your reference to Holy Saturday surprises me. I figured you were not doing this just because of it being Lent and that it must have something to do with existential solitude, but I am just guessing. Could you explain your reference? Is your understanding of Holy Saturday linked to the experience of existential solitude? If so, I have never gotten this impression from homilies or reflections on the Triduum.]]

First, thanks for your comments and questions. I wasn't expecting such a question so soon so I can only give you something of a preliminary response, but your question is very fine and I did want to give you a little to think about until I can write more.

 Yes, I think the linkage between Holy Saturday and the experience of existential solitude is very significant. In order to approach that let me refer you first to an article I have posted here several times over the years as we move toward Holy Week and the Triduum. You can find it here: In Darkness We Wait in Hope. That piece speaks of the profound questions raised by the death of Jesus and the (potential and actual) loss of hope of the disciples who had trusted he was God's Messiah. It speaks of Holy Saturday as a day of loss and grief, but also one of nascent hope. It should point out, but does not, that it is also the day the disciples huddled hidden from the authorities, the meaningfulness and even the fact of their entire lives now thrown into doubt, and the brink of despair by the execution of the convicted criminal they thought was God's anointed.

As I recount some of that, I think you can hear the resonance it has with what I have written recently on existential solitude, the deep questions it involves, and the profound hunger for being and meaning it is associated with. What I wrote last week was:

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.

It was the experience of this hunger that opened me to a very much clarified understanding of my own existential solitude. Over the years, that solitude has been marked by an extended Holy Saturday experience. For instance, I remember once having a conversation with my director where I noted that the rhythm of my life never quite seemed to match the rhythms of the liturgical seasons and feasts. The Church was celebrating Easter and I was still living Holy Saturday, for instance! This was not a bad thing, but it was challenging, and I knew that I wanted to spend some time with the experience, studying, praying, meditating and writing about it. My director noted that it was likely that a lot of people in today's world experienced a similar challenge and that my own attention to this could benefit many. I believe she was correct; meanwhile, the explicit linkage between this extended experience of Holy Saturday and existential solitude per se only came full circle in what led to my writing the above-quoted paragraph last week.

The Triduum is a multi-layered, multi-faceted liturgy embodying and symbolizing many different moments and moods. Unfortunately, Holy Saturday and the loss, grief, bewilderment, liminality, and profound questions associated with the experience of Jesus' death seem to me not to be given sufficient time or space in our lives. We need time to question, to doubt, to wrestle with our own inadequate theologies, and to recognize this experience of deep struggle, questioning, grief, and even anguish-on-the-way-to-genuine-hope rooted in resurrection, and this time is something our world generally does not allow us. Existential solitude is a universal reality. Every person knows it to some extent, yet really experiencing it in all of its depth is not something even our ordinary liturgies and homilies encourage or allow. Holy Saturday, I think, is meant to provide us some of the time we need to experience this specific form of solitude. Too often, it is too quickly collapsed into Easter, or treated as a time to prepare the church building for Easter Sunday liturgies. Even the  Easter Vigil liturgy seems to me to be less vigil-like than we need.

Somehow, while it is critical to live in light of the resurrection, we seem to have forgotten that it is the certainty of Jesus' resurrection that truly allows and actually invites us to plumb the existential depths of need, hunger, emptiness, grief, betrayal, loss, doubt, potentialities, and so much more. Hermits retire to hermitages to undertake this perilous and ultimately promising journey. I think contemplatives in general do the same. The people who do the kind of inner work I have been engaged in for the past number of years have the tools and opportunity to do similarly. The Church, in her wisdom, gave us the Triduum, and especially Holy Saturday (from after the Passion on Good Friday) to spend time getting in touch with this reality in a privileged way. I am sure I will be writing more about this over the next three weeks as we approach Easter. For now, I hope this preliminary response is sufficient!

Followup Questions on Existential Solitude and Chronic Illness

[[Dear Sister, I was intrigued by what you wrote last week and yesterday about existential solitude. You haven't used that terminology before this, but I found it helpful in understanding why you insist physical solitude doesn't need to be absolute, while some self-described hermits insist that if a hermit lives with other hermits in a laura this can't be called solitude! You don't argue that the chronically ill make better hermits than others, but you do say they often live existential solitude more radically than the able-bodied. 

Would you suggest that chronic illness and personal woundedness predispose a person to being a better hermit? Too, I don't think I ever realized how profound and intense your own discernment of this vocation was. It helps me understand why you have written against stopgap vocations and those who use c 603 to achieve an agenda rather than answering a divine call to be a hermit. I can especially see what you mean when you speak of these vocations not being able to witness to those who really need their witness, the disabled, chronically ill and others who are isolated without a choice. Thanks for writing about this!]]

Thanks for writing and for your comments and questions. No, I wouldn't suggest that the chronically ill make better hermits because I don't think trading in that kind of comparison helps understand or evaluate eremitical life. Moreover, I'm not sure it is true in any case. However, persons with chronic illnesses, disabilities, early bereavement, histories of trauma, and personal woundedness from a variety of causes can certainly discover that their situations predispose them in an ongoing way to an awareness of existential solitude. Even so, as I also suggested yesterday, this is not something they necessarily reflect on or come to appreciate, much less build their lives around in terms of silence, solitude, prayer, vows, spiritual direction, etc. To be frank, existential solitude, while a source of great creativity and a condition of possibility everyone shares for a profoundly graced, even mystical relationship with God,  is still also a painful reality because of the state of estrangement in which we yet exist, and thus, is something most folks tend to evade and avoid for as long as possible. And in terms of society's needs for our active engagement with one another, this makes positive sense. 

On the other hand, those who do find their life circumstances predispose them to a radical awareness of existential solitude and who take this as an opportunity or actual invitation to embrace eremitical life, are apt to find that hermit life suits them very well and allows them to live a rich, full existence with God, where those contributing life circumstances (illness, etc.) are transcended in the unimagined fruitfulness of live lived for the sake of others. Still, others without the same or similar life circumstances could adapt to a desert situation in hermitage, and, with vows of the Evangelical Counsels, stability and/or conversatio morum,  stricter separation from the world, assiduous prayer and penance, the silence of solitude, and so forth, could find they were called to engage with existential solitude in an ongoing and consistently deepening way, and flourish in such an engagement.

I would argue that the typical environment of a hermitage, and the elements required by c 603, for example, produce a relative "desert" where an able-bodied person can more readily experience existential solitude. This can also prepare one for embracing the existential solitude that comes when illness, disability, and the other limitations and conditions associated with age strike. This is one reason eremitism is seen as a second half of life vocation; generally speaking, not only should one ordinarily live a more usual life as fully as one can with families, work and career, active contributions to society, etc, but conditions associated with a more radical experience of existential solitude ordinarily come later in the second half of life. (Remember Jung's comments here, though!) Unfortunately, what is also true is that many with chronic illnesses, disabilities, etc., will never be able to commit to engaging in a sustained or healthy way with existential solitude; for these persons, eremitical life will not be an option. 

The Importance of Authentic Eremitical Vocations:

I have always written here about the way stopgap vocations, part-time or otherwise inauthentic eremitic vocations fail to serve those who need the witness of genuine hermits. One article that summarized a lot of this writing is Whom Does it Hurt?  A friend and diocesan hermit in England wrote me with the hope that some of what I wrote recently would help do away with the cartoonish caricatures so many have of hermits.  With her I hope that this is the case! Especially, I hope that dioceses will see not only that the chronically ill and disabled can have religious vocations, but even more importantly, that some with vocations to solitary consecrated eremitical life live these lives because of a radical experience of existential solitude that can speak in an inspiring and even redemptive way to those suffering from and marginalized by many conditions that separate them from friends and the ordinary rhythms and activities of daily life. 

As I noted a number of years ago in an article in Review For Religious (@1986, cf Chronic Illness as Vocation) the Church does a relatively good job with ministry to the chronically ill and disabled, but it does not do well at all in allowing for or providing ministries of the chronically ill and disabled. And isn't that ironic in a church that considers itself the assembly of broken and alienated ("sinners") who are reconciled, healed, and redeemed by God in Christ? That article was on the idea of chronic illness or disability as a vocation to be ill within the Church and it raised the possibility that for some, eremitical life could be a specific instance of such a vocation. 

What seems clear to me, however, is that while one cannot deny the place of suffering in one's life, particularly in experiences that reprise Christ's own suffering and death, the emphasis of the hermit's ministry to others cannot be on the hermit's own suffering!! Neither can it be about theologically naive (not to say erring) protestations that God wills one's suffering or that hermit life is all about that! There is a very real danger that self-obsession and self-centeredness will replace the quest for self-awareness and self-knowledge in the chronically ill person who attempts to live as a hermit. (To be more accurate, this is always a danger, but I believe it can be even more so in the chronically ill and disabled, especially when allied with simplistic theologies of suffering and incarnation.) 

Instead, eremitical life is rooted in the paradox that the engagement with God at the level of our deep existential solitude leads to the new life of the resurrected Christ. It is that to which the authentic hermit life leads and witnesses, including and perhaps particularly so, in one who lives with chronic illness and disability. The ability to live resurrection life on the other side of the deep loss and anguished questions of Holy Saturday, and to do so for the sake of God and others, marks the authenticity of an eremitical vocation.

A Contemplative Moment: Interior or Existential Solitude

"Man the Solitary" from

Solitude in the Thought of Thomas Merton

by

Richard Anthony Cashen

Important as is the category of physical solitude, interior solitude, is more important, more fundamental than physical solitude. "There is no true solitude except interior solitude", Merton states bluntly. Physical solitude helps foster interior solitude, it is true, but it is interior solitude which gives physical solitude its validity. Without interior solitude, physical solitude might be a false or dangerous solitude, full of life denial and self-hatred, a flight from responsibility or spiteful separation from one's fellow man. . . .Solitude becomes for Merton, as Jean LeClercq has pointed out, the symbol of the 'absolute, ultimate and inexhaustible encounter with God and with humanity'. Merton's concept of interior solitude resembles the biblical concept of 'heart'. In fact, one of the finest summations of Merton's thought on interior solitude can be found in his own description of the scriptural 'heart'. One need only substitute the words interior solitude in place of 'heart':

heart (interior solitude) refers to the deepest psychological ground of one's personality, the inner sanctuary where self-awareness goes beyond analytical reflection and opens out into metaphysical and theological confrontation with the Abyss of the unknown yet present --- one who is 'more intimate to us than we are to ourselves'.

While physical solitude removes us from our fellow man, interior solitude unites us with him. It is communion with our fellow man on a much deeper level than the social fictions of life in a large city or a technological world allow. Physical solitude is not absolutely necessary for the process of interior solitude.

. . . a (person) becomes a solitary at the moment when, no matter what may be his external surroundings, he is suddenly aware of his own inalienable solitude and sees that he will never be anything but solitary. 

 

On Existential Solitude and Discerning my own Eremitical Vocation

[[I do have a question for you. I am trying to be respectful in how I word this. Chronic illness is an integral part of how you live your vocation. I got the impression not too long ago that you had struggled at one point about your vocation from one of our conversations. . . . What I am interested in knowing if you feel like sharing, is what helped you understand the difference between a call to the eremitic life as a vocation geared to you specifically, and a way of making lemonade out of lemons? The reason I ask is because I just have an overall impression from many of your posts... that there is a real emphasis on how this vocation really fits chronic illness and I wonder if people see it as a secondary thing, or the primary reason for seeking profession. . . . and yet there seems to be a liminality about it. . . that is, it is true that these factors are compatible with vocations and radically shape how it is lived, and yet [these factors] do not explain how a person identifies the vocation psychologically without a particular apostolate or chronic illness as being theirs. And perhaps this question makes no sense. . .]]

Thanks for your questions. They are important and point to a significant constellation of issues any hermit candidate and diocesan personnel along with mentors, spiritual directors, et al, will need to deal with in discerning a vocation to eremitical life when the candidate has a disability or chronic illness. Chronic illness certainly impacts the way I live my vocation; more importantly, though, I think it is a foundational part of my vocation per se. I say this because it has been chronic illness along with personal woundedness that confront me with existential solitude most sharply and have done so all through the years, even when I was much younger. Existential solitude is something every genuine hermit comes to know, but chronic illness, for instance, introduces us to this much earlier and, perhaps, in a more thoroughgoing way than is ordinarily the case. Karl Jung once wrote about this (if I am remembering correctly). He noted that some younger people have certain lived experiences that suit them to a solitary life, even though we ordinarily think of eremitical life as a second half of life vocation. I believe chronic illness, some disabilities, and some other difficult situations experienced in early life represent such experiences.

While I believe the eremitical vocation is primary and the chronic illness must be secondary in one's discernment of the vocation and admission to profession and consecration, I also believe that one's illness can serve one's vocation to eremitical life precisely because it puts the person in touch with the deepest solitude we human beings know and that eremitical life is lived in terms of, namely, existential solitude. This is the solitude that recognizes our fundamental aloneness and separation from others no matter how close we also become to them or how well we love them and they love us. Existential solitude recognizes a gap that cannot be bridged as well as the fact that this aloneness is overcome in and by God alone who is "closer to us than we are to ourselves." As I wrote recently, in our hunger for being and meaning (that is, for the fullness or abundance of meaningful life,) we hunger for God and often know God's powerful presence best only in the sharpening and deepening of that hunger. I associate existential solitude with this hunger and with the sharpening of this solitude with both chronic illness and the call to eremitism.

The chronically ill already know the kind of solitude a hermit is called to get in touch with over time, though it may not be something they reflect on or come to appreciate. Those who are able-bodied are (or at least are more likely to be) less in touch with this deep solitude. They will come to know it in the various natural ways any hermit comes to know it in time, but perhaps not as profoundly; moreover, they will not be as likely to structure their life in terms of vows, prayer, and spiritual direction, that allow them to get into greater and greater touch with it. Discerning a true eremitical vocation takes real time, whether one has a chronic illness or not, but my sense is that some persons with chronic illness (not all) are meant to live their existential solitude even more radically than most persons with chronic illness. I believe this is necessary for them to be whole and holy persons. It is also essential if they are to witness to others that this foundational solitude is constituted especially by one's relationship with God lived in space and time. These persons will have discovered an eremitical vocation. Does this also make lemonade out of lemons? Yes, but it is not primarily about that, and it must be distinguished from that.

You see, for those without this vocation (and even with it), there is the question of whether one is JUST trying to make lemonade out of lemons. First of all, God can use the eremitical vocation to make lemonade, but this must still be God's project, not one's own! Was I trying to justify living as a hermit by convincing myself this was actually God's call? For me, this was a nagging question, though, through the years, it was countered more often and more profoundly than not. It took time to reach the depths of my own woundedness and discover there a Divine call to eremitical solitude, not just a neat way of justifying things that isolated me from others, prevented the use of personal gifts, or gave me a relatively restful life. The vocation to eremitical solitude is a vocation to engage with God at the point of one's existential solitude.** Physical solitude, silence, and prayer are essential helps and means to this but so are privileged relationships, for example. Still, it is a commitment to existential solitude and all that implies that defines the vocation, not merely physical solitude.

The question of how I discovered this is somewhat different. It began with an insight into c 603 and its possible place in my own life. I looked at that canon (even reading the canon at all, I believe, was providential) and began to see that it was a way of answering every question and yearning I experienced for a way to live my religious vocation that not only made space for but made sense of chronic illness at the same time. This was very like the deep insight I had had upon first attending Mass before I became a Catholic. On that occasion, as I knelt watching others go to Communion, I had the sense about the Church that "here every need I have, whether emotional, psychological, spiritual, intellectual, aesthetic, social, theological, etc., can be met." I was about fifteen years old then. But of course, the insight is not enough. It must be tested and proven in one's living.

So (the short version of things!), I began living eremitic life. As part of this, especially after perpetual profession and consecration, I also worked hard with my director to heal personal woundedness. Each major piece of work we undertook, each root of woundedness we dealt with, led to healing that was associated with the felt risk that I would discover I had been mistaken and was not really called to eremitical life as a Divine vocation. And yet, through the years (now 40 of them), each piece of healing came with a reaffirmation that I was indeed called to this by God. (I can go into details about this ongoing discernment another time, but for now, it is enough to say the Church affirmed this, my director affirmed it, and the fruits of my life and this work affirmed it.) Generally, the truth was that authentic eremitical life 1) was the very thing that called for the work we were doing, 2) it gave me the courage, will, and strength to undertake this work and sustained me in it, and 3) it was what I felt called to live upon "completion" of the work. (I say "completion" here because while we came to a significant point of healing, the work would also continue in a new key.) In any case, eremitical life proved again and again that it was the very reality that allowed for any significant healing to be accomplished. While the call to eremitical life made dealing with personal woundedness imperative, it also made it possible and fruitful for others.

The need to wrestle with existential solitude and the deepest truth of my identity throughout all of that was similar in both eremitical life, chronic illness, and personal woundedness. Each of these posed the crucial and sometimes excruciating questions of being (existence) and meaning (meaningful life) --- though in different ways; each touched on or tapped into what Tillich calls being grasped by an ultimate (or unconditional) concern and the gift of faith. The trick was teasing these apart from one another because similarity is not identity. Eventually, with eremitical life as the context, goal, and gift that made all of this possible, we reached the depths of personal woundedness, and part of the healing there (once again, but now without any nagging questions whatsoever) included the affirmation and bone-deep sense that I am a hermit because God, through the mediation of God's Church, calls me to be one. It is, in other words, the call that allows me to achieve wholeness and holiness and be the person I was created to be.

You can clarify what you are asking if I have largely missed your point, and I am happy to clarify my initial response as well. This is not easy stuff to explain so I am grateful for the opportunity.

___________________________________

** Wherever I speak of eremitical life God is implicit in this term. Again, eremitical life is a life of personal engagement with God at the point of existential solitude.

The Silence of Solitude and the Distinction Between Physical Solitude and Existential Solitude

[[Dear Sister Laurel, You speak of the silence of solitude and of solitude as a form of penance; at the same time you have written about the need hermits have for relationships. Don't relationships mitigate the degree of solitude you are also embracing? Could you say more about the way this all works? I really like my solitude and could never consider it to be penitential! I would think you or any other hermit would be drawn to solitude as well, no? ]]

Many thanks for these questions and for your patience is awaiting a response! Let me draw some distinctions that are central to eremitical solitude. I tend to use the term eremitical solitude when I am speaking about the reality c 603 specifies as a central element of consecrated solitary eremitical life. I also distinguish between physical solitude, which has to do with being physically separated from others, and eremitical solitude, which includes physical solitude but is not exhausted by it and, especially, is not to be defined in terms of it alone. Instead, I experience eremitical solitude as an incredibly rich symbol with a number of dimensions and defining characteristics. At its heart, I think, is the experience of being irreducibly alone, not "belonging" to anyone or anything except God from whom, this side of death, we are at least somewhat alienated. I identify this dimension of eremitical solitude as existential solitude. This dimension of eremitical solitude does not change, that is, it does not matter whether we are with others or not; in terms of existential solitude, we are always essentially alone with God. 

Eremitical solitude allows one to experience existential solitude with a kind of sharpness and depth that many never experience until their last years when they are isolated by illness or age and bereavement, for instance. In fact, (we) hermits practice physical solitude precisely to sharpen our experience of existential solitude. Our prayer does this all the time. We learn to depend more and more profoundly on God and God alone, knowing that without God there is no real challenge or ability to grow truer, no genuine consolation, no personal strength, and no life, but especially no meaningful life. This sense of what it means to exist and for one's life to be meaningful only through the grace (i.e., the presence and power) of God is sharpened and honed to a razor edge within the hermitage. For consecrated hermits under c 603, even the fact that our vocation is ecclesial and that the Church has specifically called us to live this in her name does not really ease this existential solitude. Often these elements of our life (i.e., ecclesiality, living this life in the Church's name) along with our limited ministry to others, only sharpen it further. The same is true of most relationships.

It seems to me that when I speak of the need for friendships it must be recognized that these are a Divine grace that not only allows us to grow in our capacity for and ability to love but also helps make us aware of our existential solitude. They are an important way God is mediated to us! Yes, you could say they mitigate physical solitude, but existential solitude is a different matter. Friendships can ease our experience of this for a limited time, but inevitably, and ironically, they lead to a sharpened sense of existential solitude. You have heard the adage "One is never so alone as when one is in a crowd". We experience existential solitude as well when we know loss and grief with regard to those we have loved. Thus, while friendships allow us to share and grow in our capacity for love, they also cause us to run up against what I described above as our irreducible aloneness. This is the aloneness that occurs whenever we realize that what is deepest in us (our relationship with God and the eremitical vocation that stems from this) is not understood by even our best friends (unless, of course, they also happen to be contemplatives and even hermits). And even then, this is really more a matter of their experience resonating with our own, rather than the other person actually knowing our unique experience.

When you say that you could never consider solitude to be penitential it sounds to me like you are saying it would never be uncomfortable for you. When I think of penance (or asceticism), I think of anything that helps integrate, deepen, extend, or regularize my prayer. It is not necessarily uncomfortable any more than what are genuine consolations** are necessarily pleasant. My Rule says the following:

Prayer represents an openness and responsiveness to the personal and creative address of God which is rooted in and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Penance seems to me to be any activity or practice which assists in achieving, regularizing, integrating, deepening and extending, 1) this openness and responsiveness to God, 2) a correlative esteem for myself, and 3) for the rest of God's creation. While prayer corresponds in part to those deep moments of victory God achieves within me, and includes my grateful response, penance is that Christian and more extended form of festivity implicating the victory in the whole of life . . . . (Eph 1:4; Lumen Gentium 5, 48) from O'Neal, Sr. Laurel M, Canon 603 Eremitical Rule of Life, approved by Bishop Allen H. Vigneron, Diocese of Oakland, 02. September. 2007.)

The role of solitude (here I mean physical solitude since this is the only kind of solitude we can actually choose) is precisely something the hermit chooses in order to become a contemplative person of prayer. It is a discipline that helps us become open and responsive to the personal and creative address of God. At the same time, physical solitude makes keener the existential solitude that represents our deepest aloneness and also our most profound communion with God. This experience of physical solitude, then, can be immensely creative; at the same time, it can be incredibly difficult and even painful for us. In the Old and New Testaments, long-term solitude involving physical isolation from other people, is looked at with pity and even horror.*** And yet, it is a discipline we hermits embrace as a necessary element of eremitical life. 

When most folks speak of desiring solitude they are speaking of degrees of physical solitude that allow them respite from daily demands involving others and which give time and space to solitary, relaxing activities one doesn't ordinarily have time or space for. Hermits are speaking instead of a reality that throws them back upon their own existential solitude, and so, ultimately, upon their relationship with the ultimate and absolute Mystery we call God. This is at once awesome and terrible, what Rudolf Otto called "mysterium tremendum et fascinans" --- the mystery that at once repels and attracts!! (cf also, The Paradox of Faith: Loved into Ever Deepening Hunger for God)

I hope this is helpful. There are other distinctions I ordinarily make in speaking about solitude or "the silence of solitude", so I hope it is okay that I limited myself here. While this response might not be what you expected, it reflects what I am reflecting on personally these days. If you want to push me a bit further by asking clarifying questions, please do that!

______________________________________________________

** Consolations, in the Ignatian sense of the term are experiences that bring us closer to God, not simply experiences that feel good or are pleasant. Consolations can be difficult, even painful experiences while desolations are experiences that lead us away from God --- even if they feel pleasant in the process!

***Barbour, John D, The Value of Solitude, The Ethics and Spirituality of Aloneness in Autobiography, University of Virginia Press, 2004, p 12.

On Silence and Solitude in the Service of Intimacy with God

[[Sister, you write about hermits a lot. You don't take a vow of silence, do you? But why not if "the silence of solitude"is such an important element of c 603? At the same time why do you treat solitude as though it is not really about being alone?]]

Thanks for your questions. I think they are actually pretty common for non-hermits or for those whose notion of eremitical life is idealized. Similar questions could be asked about the other constitutive elements of the vocation including stricter separation from the world whenever "the world" is taken to mean anything outside the hermitage door. In each of these cases, solitude, the silence of solitude, and stricter separation from the world, what we find is that these terms are more nuanced than most people understand. None of them is absolute. By that I mean the eremitical life is not about absolute silence, absolute solitude, or absolute withdrawal from the world. Instead, these elements are real and substantial in a way that allows the vocation to be defined in terms of them, and at the same time, they are qualified by the needs of the hermit for growth, healing, and holiness as she moves toward maturity in her relationship with God and others in an ecclesial vocation.

So, for instance, no, I don't take a vow of silence nor do I hold myself to a Rule calling for absolute silence. I talk (to God and less frequently, to others), I sing, I listen to, compose (improvise), and play music, and all of this requires significant, but (obviously) not absolute silence. Silence is necessary to be a person of prayer because prayer is about listening and being available to God, and we are attentive and available to God so that God may recreate the world as he wills. That recreation begins with us and with the way God's love transforms us as human beings. Hermits cultivate silence for this purpose, not simply for itself alone. Moreover, silence can be external or internal; while both are important it is internal silence that is key in the hermit's life. The cultivation of inner silence and stillness is the aim of a life of stricter external silence. Whatever is happening externally leads us to the profound internal silence that allows for the song we are  to rise up within us and be "sung." 

What I am saying is that the hermit is silent and embraces silence to the extent it leads us to prayer and then, to union with God. The same is true of solitude. External solitude serves the hermit's life with God and her growth as a human being. One is alone with God for the sake of God's will and all that that Divine will desires and occasions. In some ways, there is also an inner solitude where the individual is at peace with themselves and with God. This solitude is about a harmonious relationship; one is truly oneself in this space, and one is oneself with God. It is the antithesis of isolation and when I write about it, I speak of it as the redemption of isolation. 

When c 603 speaks of the silence of solitude, most superficially it means the quiet that exists when one is not conversing with others or otherwise engaging with others, but at its deepest, it is an intimacy with God where God is allowed to be God and we are the human person God calls us to be. This silence of solitude is peaceful (though not painless!), profoundly energizing,  and marked by a sense of solidity and love in and through which one is truly oneself. It is therefore also about being profoundly in relationship with the whole of God's creation and the whole of God's People. When I write about the silence of solitude I also speak of it as involving the quieting of our existential anguish and pain. We can be screams of anguish and then be transformed through the love of God into a quiet and joyful song of praise. And of course, sometimes the anguish recurs and our personal song is transfigured into lament. This is still vastly different from simply being a scream of anguish! 

The bottom line in all of this is that when I speak of solitude it does mean being alone, but one is alone with God and, in varying degrees of intimacy, with all that is grounded in God. This is why I tend to usually say "eremitical solitude." There are a variety of forms of solitude; some are not healthy and most are not eremitical. The corollary is that when the hermit is not alone, but is with others, the inner silence and solitude of her relationship with God remains foundational. When a hermit has lived the silence of solitude for some time she does not need to be particularly concerned that contact with others, including occasional social functions, will destroy the silence of solitude that is so fundamental to who she is. 

Yes, of course, care is always necessary and is part of a vow of obedience, but the silence of solitude rooted in God's love is still the pedal tone of the hermit's life and it both calls her to be present to others and summons her back to the hermitage. The image I have in mind here is a Taize chant (cf., In God Alone) where woodwinds, etc., may improvise a kind of obligato above and around the chant and even occasionally sound a bit dissonant as the linkage to the chant becomes strained for the hearer, but these instruments and the line they play always find their way back to the chant of which they are always an exploration and elaboration.

Madman or Messiah: In Darkness We Wait in Hope (Reprise)

I admit that a pet peeve of mine associated with celebrating the Triduum in a parish setting is the inadequate way folks handle what should be periods of silence after Holy Thursday's Mass and reservation of the Eucharist and especially after the stations and celebration of Jesus' passion on Good Friday. After all, in the first instance, our joy is bittersweet and marked by the anticipation of Jesus' betrayal and passion, while in the second instance we have just marked the death of Jesus; yet, there is a significant period of grief and uncertainty that we call "Holy Saturday" still standing between Jesus' death and his resurrection. The Triduum is one long liturgical event that embraces different moods and salvific moments.

Silence is appropriate during these times; Easter is still distant. Allowing ourselves to live with something of the terrible disappointment and critical questions Jesus' disciples experienced as their entire world collapsed is a significant piece of coming to understand why we call today "Good" and tomorrow "Holy." It is important if we are to truly appreciate the meaning of this three-day liturgy we call Triduum; it is also a dimension of coming to genuine and deepening hope. I have often thought the Church could do better with its celebration of Holy Saturday, but spending some time waiting and reflecting on who we would be (not to mention who God would be!) had Jesus stayed good and dead is something Good Friday (essentially beginning after Holy Thursday Mass) and Holy Saturday (beginning the evening after the passion) call for.

In explaining the theology of the Cross, Paul once said, "Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more." During Holy Week, the Gospel readings focus us on the first part of Paul's statement. Sin has increased to an extraordinary extent, and the one people touted as the Son of God has been executed as a blasphemous, godforsaken criminal. Throughout this week, we watch the darkness and the threat to his life intensify and cast the whole of Jesus' life into question.

In the Gospel for Wednesday, we hear John's version of the story of Judas' betrayal of Jesus and the prediction of Peter's denials. For weeks before this, we had been hearing stories of a growing darkness and threat centered on the person of Jesus. Pharisees and Scribes were irritated and angry with Jesus at the facile way he broke Sabbath rules or his easy communion with and forgiveness of sinners. That he spoke with an authority the people recognized as new and surpassing theirs was also problematic. Family and disciples failed to understand him, thought him crazy, urged him to go to Jerusalem to work wonders and become famous.

Even his miracles were disquieting, not only because they increased the negative reaction of the religious leadership and the fear of the Romans as the darkness and threat continued to grow alongside them, but because Jesus himself seems to give us the sense that they are insufficient and lead to misunderstandings and distortions of who he is or what he is really about. "Be silent!" we often hear him say. "Tell no one about this!" he instructs in the face of the increasing threat to his life. Futile instructions, of course, and, as those healed proclaim the wonders of God's grace in their lives, the darkness and threat to Jesus grows; The night comes ever nearer and we know that if evil is to be defeated, it must occur on a much more profound level than even thousands of such miracles.

In the last two weeks of Lent, the readings give us the sense that the last nine months of Jesus' life and active ministry were punctuated by retreat to a variety of safe houses as the priestly aristocracy actively looked for ways to kill him. He attended festivals in secret, and the threat of stoning recurred again and again. Yet, inexplicably, "He slipped away," we are told, or "They were unable to find an opening." The darkness is held at bay, barely. It is held in check by the love of the people surrounding Jesus. Barely. And in the last safe house on the eve of Passover as darkness closes in on every side, Jesus celebrated a final Eucharist with his friends and disciples. He washed their feet and reclined at table with them like free men did. And yet, profoundly troubled, Jesus spoke of his impending betrayal by Judas. None of the disciples, not even the beloved disciple, understood what was happening. There is one last chance for Judas to change his mind as Jesus hands him a morsel of bread in friendship and love. God's covenant faithfulness is maintained.

But Satan enters Judas' heart and a friend of Jesus becomes his accuser --- the meaning of the term Satan here --- and the darkness enters this last safe house of light and friendship, faith and fellowship. It was night, John says. It was night. Judas' heart is the opening needed for the threatening darkness to engulf this place and Jesus as well. The prediction of Peter's denials tells us this "night" will get darker, colder, and emptier yet.  But in John's story, when everything is at its darkest and lowest, Jesus exclaims in a kind of victory cry: [[ Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in him!]] Here, as darkness envelopes everything, Jesus exults that authentic human being is revealed, made known and made real in space and time. Here, in the midst of the deepening "Night," God too is revealed and made fully known and real in space and time. It is either the cry of a messiah who will overcome evil right at its heart --- or it is the cry of a madman who cannot recognize or admit the victory of evil as it swallows him up. Amid these days of death and vigil, we do not really know which. At the end of these three days, this Holy Triduum, we will see the answer.

On the Friday we call "Good," the darkness intensified. During the night Jesus was arrested and "tried" by the Sanhedrin with the help of false witnesses, desertion by his disciples, and Judas' betrayal. Today, he was brought before the Romans, tried, found innocent, flogged in an attempt at political appeasement, and then handed over anyway by a fearful, self-absorbed leader whose greater concern was for his own position to those who would kill him. There was betrayal -- of consciences, of friendships, of discipleship, and covenantal bonds on every side but God's. The night continued to deepen, and the threat could not be greater.  Jesus was crucified and eventually cried out his experience of abandonment even by God. He descended into the ultimate godlessness, loneliness, and powerlessness we call hell. The darkness became almost total. It is difficult for us to see anything else. That is where Good Friday and Holy Saturday leave us.

And the single question these events raises haunts the night and our own minds and hearts: namely, messiah or madman? Is Jesus simply another idealistic but mistaken person crushed by the cold, emptiness, and darkness of evil --- good and wondrous though his own works were? (cf Gospel for last Friday: John 10:31-42.) Is this darkness and emptiness the whole of the reality in which we live? Was Jesus' preaching of the reality of God's reign and his trust in God in vain? Is the God he proclaimed, the God in whom we also trust, incapable of redeeming failure, sin, and death --- even to the point of absolute lostness? Does he consign sinners to these without real hope because God's justice differs from his mercy? The questions associated with Jesus' death on the Cross multiply, and we Christians wait in the darkness today and tomorrow. We fast and pray and try to hold onto hope that the one we called messiah, teacher, friend, Beloved, brother, and Lord, was not simply deluded --- or worse --- and that we Christians are not, as Paul puts the matter, the greatest fools, the most pitiable of all.

We have seen sin increase to immeasurable degrees; though we do not see how it is possible, we would like to think that Paul was right and that grace will abound all the more. But on the Friday we call "good" and on the Saturday we call "holy" we wait. Bereft, but hopeful, we wait.

Developing the Heart of a Hermit

[[Hi Sister, when you write about having the heart of a hermit and moving from isolation to solitude do you mean that someone comes to this through some form of trauma or serious personal wounding and alienation? Is this necessary? Can a person who has never been hurt or broken develop the "heart of a hermit"?]]

Hi and thanks for your questions. When I think of someone with the heart of a hermit I am thinking of someone who has entered a desert, been stripped and emptied in all the ways a desert does, and learned to depend upon God for her very life as well as for the meaning of that life. When I speak of God I mean what the Christian creeds mean, what the NT means and who Jesus reveals, but I also mean being dependent on the One Tillich called the "Ground of Being and Meaning", namely a transcendent ground which both surpasses and comprehends our own emptiness and incapacities and is the source and guarantor of life and meaning.

When I speak of a desert I mean the literal wilder-nesses we know as deserts (the Thebaid, Scetes, Mojave, Sonoran, Sahara, etc), but I also mean any extended situation which demands  or forces a person to plumb the depths of their own personal resources --- courage, intelligence, creativity, sense of security, personal  gifts and talents, sense of self, faith, hope, love, etc --- all the things we need to negotiate the world fruitfully and independently. In such a situation, which may certainly include childhood traumatic situations, a person brings all they have and know to the situation and over time are emptied or reach the limit of these resources. At the same time one can, and hopefully will, experience a sense of empowerment one knows comes from beyond themselves, sometimes radically so. When this happens such a person continues to live with a fresh courage and sense of meaning and hope. They embrace their own weakness honestly as they humbly and gratefully accept the life which is received as complete gift in such situations.

All kinds of situations result in "desert experiences." Chronic illness, bereavement, negligent and abusive family life, bullying, losses of employment and residence, abandonment, divorce, war, imprisonment, insecure identity (orphans, etc), serious poverty, and many others may be classified this way. Typically such experiences distance, separate, and even alienate us from others (e.g., ties with civil society, our normal circle of friends and the rhythms of life we are so used to are disrupted and sometimes lost entirely); too they throw us back upon other resources, and eventually require experiences of transcendence --- the discovery of or tapping into new and greater resources which bring us beyond the place of radical emptiness and  helplessness to one of consolation and communion. The ultimate (and only ultimately sufficient) source of transcendence is God and it is the experience of this originating and sustaining One who is Love in Act that transforms our isolation into the communion we know as solitude.

Thus, my tendency is to answer your question about the possibility of developing the heart of a hermit without experiences of loss, trauma, or brokenness in the negative. These experiences open us to the Transcendent and, in some unique ways, are necessary for this. Remember that sinfulness itself is an experience of estrangement and brokenness so this too would qualify if one underwent a period of formation where one met one's own sinfulness in a sufficiently radical way. Remember too that the hermit vocation is generally seen as a "second half of life" vocation; the need that one experiences this crucial combination of radical brokenness and similar transcendence and healing is very likely part of the reason behind this bit of common wisdom.

In any case, the heart of a hermit is created when a person living a desert experience also learns to open themselves to God and to live in dependence on God in a more or less solitary context. One need not become a hermit to have the heart of a hermit and not all those with such hearts become hermits in a formal, much less a canonical way. In the book Journeys into Emptiness (cf.,illustration above), the Zen Buddhist Master Dogen, Roman Catholic Monk Thomas Merton, and Depth Psychologist Carl Jung all developed such hearts. Only one lived as a hermit --- though both Dogen and Merton were monks.

As I understand and use the term these are the hearts of persons irrevocably marked by the experience and threat of emptiness as well as by the healing (or relative wholeness) achieved in solitary experiences of transcendence and who are now not only loving individuals but are persons who are comfortable and  (often immensely) creative in solitude. They are persons who have experienced in a radical way and even can be said to have "become" the question of meaning and found in the Transcendent the only Answer which truly completes and transforms them. In a Farewell to Arms, Hemingway said it this way, [[The World breaks everyone and then some become strong in the broken places.]] The Apostle Paul said it this way (when applied to human beings generally), "My grace is sufficient for you, my power is perfected in weakness."

Hermit hearts are created when, in a radical experience of weakness, need, yearning, and even profound doubt that will mark her for the rest of her life,  she is also transfigured by an experience of God's abiding presence. A recognition of the nature of the hermit's heart is what drives my insistence that the Silence of Solitude is the goal and gift (charism) of eremitical life; it is also the basis for the claim that there must be an experience of redemption at the heart of the discernment, profession, and consecration of any canonical hermit. While she in no way denies the importance of others who can and do mediate this same presence in our world, the hermit gives herself to the One who alone can make her whole and holy. She seeks and seeks to witness to the One who has already "found" her in the wilderness and found her in a way that reveals the truth that "God alone is enough" for us.

Questions on Solitude: Both a Universal and a Rare Vocation?

[[Dear Sister, you write about eremitical solitude being a rare vocation. yet you also said that it is the most universal of vocations. So which is it? How is it that human beings can be such social animals and yet you can talk about solitude as a universal call. It sounds confused to me.]]

Three Main Forms of Solitude:

Thanks for your questions. The answer to your, "Which is it?" is not either/or but, as with so many things in Christianity, both/and. Part of what seems confusing is the use of the term solitude. It has a variety of meanings and these can especially differ if one is using it to speak of solitude in a world where the Christian God is real. Three main meanings in particular are important here. I therefore refer in a lot of posts here to physical solitude, existential solitude, and eremitical solitude. In the statement you are referring to I said that solitude itself was the most universal of vocations but it is the call to eremitical solitude which is very rare.

"Solitude" can first of all be used to speak of physical solitude, the state of being physically alone. I think this is often the meaning most folks attribute to the word. A hermit, who distances herself from so much sometimes called "the world" of people and events is certainly usually alone in this sense, but so are many others.

Secondly, "solitude" can be used to speak of the individual' s relationship to the world and its creator in the more existential sense; that is, it can point to the fact that we are each and all of us ultimately alone in this life and isolated from all others despite there being many people in our lives. Theologians speak of one aspect of solitude in this sense as the result of human sinfulness and therefore, as a result of estrangement or alienation from our deepest selves, from God, and so too from others. However, another, more positive side of it is our call to grow as individuals; especially in community we are not spared this call to individuation, this call to stand as integral and independent human beings. Still this existential solitude can be painful for it highlights both our most fundamental potential and deficiency.

Each of us knows this kind of solitude which is most intense when, for instance, we have acted wrongly, we are misunderstood, have been betrayed, feel alone or separate in a crowd, or simply have something too deep, or wonderful, or simply too difficult to share with anyone else; we know it especially when we consider death and the inevitability of dying alone. Even those we love profoundly and by whom we are are loved in the same way cannot entirely relieve us of either the challenge or the burden of this kind of solitude. In fact, the paradox of this kind of solitude --- whether as a call to individuation or as the burden of separateness --- is that it is often set in most vivid relief when we are with and are loved by others. In other words, this form of solitude is both most challenging and most painful because we are made for communion with others but are ultimately separated from them.

There is a third sense however which both includes these first two forms and mitigates the ultimacy of the second meaning. It is the notion of solitude which witnesses to the fact that we are not truly (or ultimately) alone because we are made for and in fact most essentially ARE a relationship with a God who is part of us and will never forget or abandon us. While one part of the paradox of eremitical life is that we are each ultimately alone with this God and called upon to live our lives in light of this foundational "transcendental" of our existence, the other is that this ultimate communion for which we are made is the reason for our community with others. Others, as well as our solitary prayer, mediate the love of God to us and in various ways introduce us to this ultimate form of communion.

Hermits especially, embrace a life of  physical solitude which sharpens our existential solitude so that we may live a contemplative life in the eremitical solitude of conscious communion with our God; the hermit knows this form of solitude as one which encompasses, but also transcends, and finally makes an ultimate sense of the first two senses of the term solitude. Because the hermit knows union with the God who grounds the existence of all creation, she also exists in communion with all those others in some incomplete or proleptic sense. When I have written about this before I have spoken of it as a solitude which redeems isolation and which provides hope to others that their own isolation can be transformed and transfigured, and so forth.

Communion is always implied by solitude and vice versa in human relatedness:

I would ask that you notice in each of these forms of solitude the reality of community exists at least implicitly --- even if it is present as an inescapable longing and potentialilty in loneliness. Similarly, in each experience of community that we know this side of death, there is also separateness we often call "solitude." Both poles are present in every experience of relatedness or unrelatedness we know. (Communion without solitude dissolves into a loss of identity; solitude without communion is isolation. Both are inhuman.) In physical solitude community exists as something from which we are separated for whatever reason. In existential solitude community is something we yearn for, something the memory or promise of which inspires and strengthens us in our aloneness, something to which we look forward to achieving or returning to, etc. The point is that in all human relatedness community exists even in its relative absence just as while in community we stand in a kind of solitude as individuals nonetheless.

Vocations accent either side of the paradox of human solitude/communion:

The Church has a number of vocations each of which highlights a side of our call to community (as you say, our social nature) and our solitary nature as well. Marriage and most forms of Religious life point primarily to the importance of community in coming to human wholeness. Each, however also witness to the fact that ultimately it is the human relationship with God which is of deepest significance. In marriage it is the case that each person is meant to bring the other to union with God; each person mediates the Love of God to the other in ways which allow them to come to human fullness and fruitfulness together. (This is why sexual intercourse is the ultimate symbol of marital love and is open to procreation.) In religious life community exists only to the extent that each Sister or Brother is faithful to prayer and all of the other things required by a solitary relationship with God. Moreover, community empowers faithfulness to this solitary relationship. The Church herself is this kind of reality of course. She is not simply a group of people brought together in some sort of club because of similar interests. She is Church only to the extent each of her members fulfills his or her own vocation to life with God just as she is Church only to the extent she empowers and inspires this. In each of these realities community and solitude exist but the accent in each is on community.

In vocations to eremitical solitude the focus is different. It is on the solitary side of the equation. Most human beings are called to achieve human individuation and wholeness in communion with God through community with others. While hermits have already achieved an essential individuation before becoming (or even seeking to become) hermits (they could not embrace such a vocation otherwise) their growth in human wholeness and holiness occurs in eremitical solitude --- a solitude lived in communion with God for the sake of others. Very few human beings are called to achieve human wholeness and holiness in this way. Even so, they remind all persons of 1) their existential solitude, 2) the foundational communion with God which grounds and completes all human existence, 3) the place of community in even the most solitary of lives, and 4) the possibility of the redemption and reconciliation by and to God of even the most marked isolation or estrangement. At bottom then, this will always be a rare vocation and certainly always much rarer than vocations to marriage and community life.

While this answer may be longer than you expected, it is still quite a simplified presentation of the nature of solitude and especially of eremitical solitude. I hope you find it helpful in answering your question.