Articles Archives - Try Solitude

When St. Anthony heard the word of Jesus, "Go and sell what you own and give to the poor...
then come and follow me," he took it as a call to escape from the compulsions of this world.

He moved away from his family, lived in poverty in a hut on the edge of his village, and occupied himself with manual
work and prayer. But soon he realized that more was required of him. He had to face his enemies-anger and
greed-head-on and let himself be totally transformed into a new being. His old, false self had to die and a new self had
to be born. For this Anthony withdrew into the complete solitude of the desert.

Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be
entangled in the illusions of the false self. Jesus himself entered into this furnace. There he was tempted with the
three compulsions of the world: to be relevant ("turn stones into loaves"), to be spectacular ("throw yourself down"),
and to be powerful ("I will give you all these kingdoms"). There he affirmed God as the only source of his identity ("You
must worship the Lord your God and serve him alone"). Solitude is the place of the great struggle and the great
encounter-the struggle against the compulsions of the false self, and the encounter with the loving God who offers
himself as the substance of the new self.

This might sound rather forbidding. It might even evoke images of medieval ascetically pursuits from which Luther and
Calvin have happily saved us. But once we have given these fantasies their due and let them wander off, we will see
that we are dealing here with that holy place where ministry and spirituality embrace each other. It is the place called
solitude.

In order to understand the meaning of solitude, we must first unmask the ways in which the idea of solitude has been
distorted by our world. We say to each other that we need some solitude in our lives. What we really are thinking of,
however, is a time and a place for ourselves in which we are not bothered by other people, can think our own
thoughts, express our own complaints, and do our own thing, whatever it may be. For us, solitude most often means
privacy. We have come to the dubious conviction that we all have a right to privacy. Solitude thus becomes like a
spiritual property for which we can compete on the free market of spiritual goods. But there is more. We also think of
solitude as a station where we can recharge our batteries, or as the corner of the boxing ring where our wounds are
oiled, our muscles massaged, and our courage restored by fitting slogans. In short, we think of solitude as a place
where we gather new strength to continue the ongoing competition in life.

But that is not the solitude of St. John the Baptist, of St. Anthony or St. Benedict, of Charles de Foucauld or the
brothers of Taizé. For them solitude is not a private therapeutic place. Rather, it is the place of conversion, the place
where the old self dies and the new self is born, the place where the emergence of the new man and the new woman
occurs.

How can we gain a clearer understanding of this transforming solitude? Let me try to describe in more detail the
struggle as well as the encounter that takes place in this solitude.

In solitude I get rid of my scaffolding: no friends to talk with, no telephone calls to make, no meetings to attend, no
music to entertain, no books to distract, just me-naked, vulnerable, weak, sinful, deprived, broken-nothing. It is this
nothingness that I have to face in my solitude, a nothingness so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my
friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth
something. But that is not all. As soon as I decide to stay in my solitude, confusing ideas, disturbing images, wild
fantasies, and weird associations jump about in my mind like monkeys in a banana tree. Anger and greed begin to
show their ugly faces. I give long, hostile speeches to my enemies and dream lustful dreams in which I am wealthy,
influential, and very attractive-or poor, ugly, and in need of immediate consolation. Thus I try again to run from the
dark abyss of my nothingness and restore my false self in all its vainglory.

The task is to persevere in my solitude, to stay in my cell until all my seductive visitors get tired of pounding on my
door and leave me alone. The "Isenheim Altar" painted by Grünewald shows with frightening realism the ugly faces of
the many demons who tempted Anthony in his solitude. The struggle is real because the danger is real. It is the
danger of living the whole of our life as one long defense against the reality of our condition, one restless effort to
convince us of our virtuousness. Yet Jesus "did not come to call the virtuous, but sinners" (Matthew 9:13).

That is the struggle. It is the struggle to die to the false self. But this struggle is far, far beyond our own strength.
Anyone who wants to fight his demons with his own weapons is a fool. The wisdom of the desert is that the
confrontation with our own frightening nothingness forces us to surrender ourselves totally and unconditionally to the
Lord Jesus Christ. Alone, we cannot face "the mystery of iniquity" with impunity. Only Christ can overcome the powers
of evil. Only in and through him can we survive the trials of our solitude. This is beautifully illustrated by Abba Elias,
who said: "An old man was living in a temple and the demons came to say to him, 'Leave this place which belongs to
us,' and the old man said, ‘No place belongs to you.’ Then they began to scatter his palm leaves about, one by one,
and the old man went on gathering them together with persistence.

A little later the devil took his hand and pulled him to the door. When the old man reached the door, he seized the
lintel with the other hand crying out, 'Jesus, save me.' Immediately the devil fled away. Then the old man began to
weep. Then the Lord said to him, 'Why are you weeping?' and the old man said, 'Because the devils have dared to
seize a man and treat him like this.' The Lord said to him, 'You had been careless. As soon as you turned to me again,
you see I was beside you.' This story shows that only in the context of the great encounter with Jesus Christ himself
can a real authentic struggle take place. The encounter with Christ does not take place before, after, or beyond the
struggle with our false self and its demons. No, it is precisely in the midst of this struggle that our Lord comes to us
and says, as he said to the old man in the story: "As soon as you turned to me again, you see I was beside you."

We enter into solitude first of all to meet our Lord and to be with him and him alone. Our primary task in solitude,
therefore, is not to pay undue attention to the many faces, which assail us, but to keep the eyes of our mind and
heart on him who is our divine savior. Only in the context of grace can we face our sin; only in the place of healing do
we dare to show our wounds; only with a single-minded attention to Christ can we give up our clinging fears and face
our own true nature. As we come to realize that it is not we who live, but Christ who lives in us, that he is our true
self, we can slowly let our compulsions melt away and begin to experience the freedom of the children of God. And
then we can look back with a smile and realize that we aren't even angry or greedy any more.

What does all of this mean for us in our daily life? Even when we are not called to the monastic life, or do not have
the physical constitution to survive the rigors of the desert, we are still responsible for our own solitude. Precisely
because our secular milieu offers us so few spiritual disciplines, we have to develop our own. We have, indeed, to
fashion our own desert where we can withdraw every day, shake off our compulsions, and dwell in the gentle healing
presence of our Lord. Without such a desert we will lose our own soul while preaching the gospel to others. But with
such a spiritual abode, we will become increasingly conformed to him in whose Name we minister.

The very first thing we need to do is set apart a time and a place to be with God and him alone. The concrete shape
of this discipline of solitude will be different for each person depending on individual character, ministerial task, and
milieu. But a real discipline never remains vague or general. It is as concrete and specific as daily life itself

When I visited Mother Teresa of Calcutta a few years ago and asked her how to live out my vocation as a priest, she
simply said: "Spend one hour a day in adoration of your Lord and never do anything you know is wrong, and you will be
all right." She might have said something else to a married person with young children and something else again to
someone who lives in a larger community.

But like all great disciples of Jesus, Mother Teresa affirmed again the truth that ministry can be fruitful only if it grows
out of a direct and intimate encounter with our Lord. Thus the opening words of St. John's first letter echo down
through history: "Something . . . we have heard, and we have seen with our own eyes; that we have watched and
touched with our hands: the Word, who is life-this is our subject" (1 John 1: 1).

Solitude is thus the place of purification and transformation, the place of the great struggle and the great encounter.
Solitude is not simply a means to an end. Solitude is its own end. It is the place where Christ remodels us in his own
image and frees us from the victimizing compulsions of the world. Solitude is the place of our salvation. Hence, it is
the place where we want to lead all that are seeking the light in this dark world.

St. Anthony spent twenty years in isolation. When he left it he took his solitude with him and shared it with all that
came to him. Those who saw him described him as balanced, gentle, and caring. He had become so Christlike, so
radiant with God's love, that his entire being was ministry.

Condensed from The Way of the Heart by Henri J.M. Nouwen © 1981 The Seabury Press, NY. See www.sfSpirit.com
for his last book, Sabbatical Journey, the diary of his final year, or Life of the Beloved, on living a life of spiritual
assurance in the midst of difficult life situations.