Solitude

I like to be around people (nice people).  I like to meet friends for coffee.  Games night with friends.  Hiking (save blisters) with friends. Summer backyard BBQs with friends.  Road trips with friends.  Dinner outings with friends.  Travel trips with friends.  Movie nights with friends. (Family: love you and gladly insert "family" with "friends") . 

So, I enjoy socializing.  Give me a Myers-Briggs and I'll give you a Capital E.  Give me a temperament test and I'll show you Sparky Sanguine.  I can't remember what animal or color I am but let's go with a rather sociable dog and a rather sociable color (ironically, my wardrobe favors black...not goth-black from head to toe...really mostly black t-shirts and blue jeans....so I suppose I am a social black-&-blue).  

To be certain, I am not claiming to be super unique [in fact I believe that my E is increasingly more lowercase and I the 'ol spark isn't so Sparky).  I am sure the introductory list of "likes" is one that many people could say, "Yup, I enjoy those things too."  And there are others which tip the extrovert scales much quicker that I.  And people whose "batteries" require constant social time to be charged. 

Nonetheless, I traditionally lean toward people-time rather than solo-time.  In the past 5 years,  I have noticed/recognized, within me, an increased need for and desire for solo time.  Not only is it something I can appreciate and have become more comfortable with...it is something I have come to see is both healthy and desired.  It is a space that head (thinking) + heart (feeling) + hand (doing) find rest and renewal.

I recognize that life has seasons.  Busy times.  Schedules.  Demands.  It is not always easy or possible to carve out these really great times of solitude or retreat.  Maybe your thinking 5 minutes of silence & reprieve from the norm would qualify as solitude.  I get that it could look different for each person.  I am pushing for long walks in the woods or week-long personal retreats.  Just want to push the word/idea solitude out there and hope it can be present in a meaningful...life-giving way.

Right now I am staying with some friends and they just received the latest issue of Christianity Today.  This Sept. '08 issue features an interview with Richard Foster (of Spiritual Disciplines "fame"...plus a great cover featuring Mako Fujimura...see previous blog on Mako, July 8th).  Speaking of a life formed in the Spirit, Foster addresses a number of questions including the following which resonated with me and I wanted to share it here.

CT: "Evangelicals, among others, have been reading your book for 30 years.  What is the discipline that you think we need to be exploring more at this point?"

RF: "Solitude.  It is the most foundational of the disciplines of abstinence, the via negativa.  The evangelical passion for engagement with the world is good.  But as Thomas a Kempis says, the only person who's safe to travel is the person who's free to stay at home.  And Pascal said that we would solve the world's problems if we just learned to sit in our room alone.  Solitude is essential for the right engagement.

I so appreciate in Bonhoeffer's Life Together the chapter, "The Day Alone," and the next chapter, "The Day Together."  You can't be with people in a right way without being alone.  And of course, you can't be alone unless you've learned to be with people.  Solitude teaches us to live in the presence of God so that we can be with people is a way that helps them and does not manipulate them. 

Another thing we learn in solitude is to love the ways of God; we learn the cosmic patience of God.  There's the passage in Isaiah in which God says, "Your ways are not my ways," and goes on to describe how God's ways are like rain that comes down and waters the earth.  Rain comes down and just disappears, and then up comes life.  It's that type of patience.

In solitude, I learn to unhook myself from the compulsion to climb and push and shove.  When I was pastoring that little church, I'd go off from some solitude and worry about what was happening to people and how they're doing and whether they would get along without me.  And of course, the great fear is that they'll get along quite well without you!  But you learn that's okay.  And that God's in charge of that.  You learn that he's got the whole world in his hands."

I'm not sure what your "today"  or your "this week"  or your "this season of life" looks like.  Where you are "at" I hope that solitude can take a form in and around you that will be life-giving.