Converting Loneliness into Solitude

These words of Henri Nouwen's are so powerful of themselves that I think they need no commentary of mine:

In discussing [solitude and the need for it], three words are important: aloneness, loneliness, and solitude.  You and I and all people are alone.  Aloneness is a natural fact.  No one else in the world is like me: I am unique.  No one else feels and experiences the world the way I do: I am alone.

Now, how do I deal with my aloneness?  Many people deal with it through loneliness.  That means you experience your aloneness as a wound, as something that hurts you, makes you miserable.  It makes you cry out, "Is there anyone who can help me?"  Loneliness is one of the greatest sources of suffering today.  It is the disease of our time.

But, as Christians, we are called to convert our loneliness into solitude.  We are called to experience our aloneness not as a wound but as a gift—as God's gift—so that in our aloneness we might discover how deeply we are loved by God.

It is precisely where we are most alone, most unique, most ourselves, that God is closest to us.  That is where we experience God as the divine, loving Father, who knows us better than we know ourselves.

Solitude is the way in which we grow into the realization that where we are most alone, we are most loved by God.  It is a quality of heart, an inner quality that helps us to accept our aloneness lovingly, as a gift from God.

In that place our activities become activities done for the other.  If we accept our aloneness as a gift from God, and convert it into deep solitude, then out of that solitude we can reach out to other people.  We can come together in community, because we don't cling to one another out of loneliness.  We don't use or manipulate one another.  Rather, we bow to one another's solitude.  We recognize one another as people who are called by the same God.

If I find God in my solitude, and you find God in your solitude, then the same God calls us together, and we can become friends.  We can form a community, we can sustain a marriage, we can be together without destroying each other by clinging to each other.

-from "A Quality of Heart"

That Secret, Lonely Place

A life without a lonely place, that is, a life without a quiet center, easily becomes destructive.  When we cling to the results of our actions as our only way of self-identification, then we become possessive and defensive and tend to look at our fellow human beings more as enemies to be kept at a distance than as friends with whom we share the gifts of life.

In solitude we can slowly unmask the illusion of our possessiveness and discover in the center of our own self that we are not what we can conquer, but what is given to us.  In solitude we can listen to the voice of the One who spoke to us before we could speak a word, who healed us before we could make any gesture to help, who set us free long before we could free others, and who loved us long before we could give love to anyone.  It is in solitude that we discover that being is more important than having, and that we are worth more than the results of our efforts.  In solitude we discover that our life is not a possession to be defended, but a gift to be shared.  It's there we recognize that the healing words we speak are not just our own, but are given to us; that the love we can express is part of a greater love; and that the new life we bring forth is not a property to cling to, but a gift to be received.

-Out of Solitude, by Henri Nouwen

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Nouwen's words on prayer are so powerful and I find his reflections on loneliness as it relates to prayer all the more piercing.  For truly loneliness does divide us, making us feel as if the whole world is against us, as if we must fight against a tide that never turns, and as if there is no loyal friend to stand beside us.

Yet instead of clinging to that feeling of loneliness, if we can turn it instead into solitude, we will encounter the healing love of God.  We then can learn to love ourselves that we may in turn love others.

In that solitude, in that radiant peace of God filling the depths of our being, we can slowly learn to trust Him, for only when we trust Him can we begin to abandon ourselves to Him and His working within us, just as only when we trust others do we open our hearts to them.  When we know that He is God and loves us more than we love ourselves, then not only shall we be able to trust Him wholly, but we shall rejoice in that love.  We shall know that we are made great because He has become small and come to us.

Set Boundaries to Your Love

When people show you their boundaries ("I can't do this for you"), you feel rejected.  You cannot accept the fact that others are unable to do for you all that you expect from them.  You desire boundless love, boundless care, boundless giving.

Part of your struggle is to set boundaries to your own love—something you have never done.  You give whatever people ask of you, and when they ask for more, you give more, until you find yourself exhausted, used, and manipulated.  Only when you are able to set your own boundaries will you be able to acknowledge, respect, and even be grateful for the boundaries of others.

In the presence of the people you love, your needs grow and grow, until those people are so overwhelmed by your needs that they are practically forced to leave you for your own survival.

The great task is to claim yourself for yourself, so that you can contain your needs within the boundaries of your self and hold them in the presence of those you love.  True mutuality in love requires people who possess themselves and who can give to each other while holding on to their own identities.  So, in order to give more effectively and to be more self-contained with your needs, you must learn to set boundaries to your love.

The Inner Voice of Love by Henri Nouwen

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Thus the paradox of love.  These words of Nouwen's seem so contrary to the idea of love as a total self-giving that Christ demonstrated.  Must we truly love less in order to love more?

On a Pilgrimage

Praying means, above all, to be accepting toward God who is always new, always different.  For God is a deeply moving God whose heart is greater than ours.  The open acceptance of prayer in the face of an ever-new God makes us free.  In prayer, we are constantly on the way, on a pilgrimage.  On our way, we meet more and more people who show us something about the God whom we seek.  We will never know for sure if we have reached God.  But we do know that God will always be new and that there is no reason to fear.

-With Open Hands

As I was struggling with prayer, trying to find time for it amidst the busyness of life on the road and demands upon my time and energies, I felt more and more that I did not even know what prayer was.  Then, like a light from the heavens, came a little book specifically on prayer.

The quotation above comes from that book, which was a gathering of various quotations from Henri Nouwen on prayer.  Always his words speak so deeply to my heart, reflecting the truth like a prism bending light into the depths of my being.  He is quickly becoming a steady spiritual guide for my earthly pilgrimage.

In that quotation, the words that strike my heart most deeply are these: We will never know for sure if we have reached God.  What a powerful and almost chilling statement.  Must we truly let go even of certain knowledge of reaching God?  Now that is abandonment indeed.

Yet that is often what troubles me: that I cannot know what is God and what myself, or what even may be the devil masquerading as an angel of light.  How can I go toward Someone when I do not even know I am headed in the right direction?  It feels too much like risking opening my heart to a stranger or merely to a phantasm of my own creation.  Either I must build up some comfortable idea of this God I worship or else find Him a perfect stranger, like Psyche who had never seen even the face of Cupid.

If we, like she, prompted by her sisters, try to see our Lord, to force Him to conform to our own will, perhaps we will find that He too vanishes in the darkness.  Perhaps instead we must remain in the darkness, with no candle, receiving His love and giving ourselves wholly even when He seems strange and unknowable.