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.