Solitude Sunday, July 19, 2015 I finally got myself out of Lowville! In the year 2000, I graduated from high school and I was anxious to get out of here. I went to college in Pennsylvania and enjoyed knowing that there was more than small town America. After graduation from college, I wanted more. Six years in Los Angeles was followed by several in San Francisco and a year-long stint in Brooklyn. I was on the move, man. During that time I met my wife, I got married, completed too many years of graduate school, and had a child. After I wrote my dissertation, I published. I attended conferences, chaired a student State Psychological organization, and taught. I was on the move and I was checking accomplishments off my list. However, I don t know that I was all that content. In fact, I was quite anxious. I was nervous. I was nervous still when I moved back to Lowville last summer. My need to escape a small town was trumped by our desire to provide contact with extended family to our daughter. Relocations did not seem to have a major impact on how I felt though. As meditation psychologist Jon Kabat-Zinn entitled one of his first publications: Wherever You Go, There You Are. 1
Returning to Lowville last summer, I still wanted to keep moving and was still anxious. I worried a lot about my new job. Would I perform well at my job? Would I make enough money to support my family? Would I enjoy living where I so passionately wanted to escape as a teenager? These are natural worries but being on the move for so many years gave me the feeling that I was spinning in circles and I began to worry that I would spin out of control. One of my close friends works for a major airlines and recently taught me about spin control. God forbid we ever have to think about this other than metaphorically - but the basic concept goes something like this: when a plane stalls or worse, plummets into a flat spin, the pilot will try anything he or she can to change the situation. That is, without time to properly diagnosis the problem, the pilot attempts to simply change the problem by throwing a switch or two. He just tries anything. Then the pilot can quickly assess the problem with an additional element and who knows - maybe that switch levels the plane out again. Either way, the point is that it s better than tightening your seat belt and hoping for the best. So, Spin Control involves just acting - just trying anything. 2
I wasn t quite spinning out of control yet but I was ready to try anything to find peace. I was growing weary of my anxiety and I began to have anticipatory anxiety about my anxiety. Anyone who has been through this knows what I m talking about. So, my spin control, my willingness to try anything, lead to meditation. I had known about buddhism and the practice of mindfulness meditation for a long time as it was introduced to me during my training as a psychologist. The eastern practice is being well incorporated into our Western psychological studies in order to help relieve all sorts of emotional and physical ailments. However, I had never applied the practice until life started to feel like it was moving a bit too fast. And, like many things in life, obtaining facts about an experience is quite different than having the experience. We usually benefit from the experience more than from receiving second-hand knowledge of it. Now, meditation is a practice most often associated with Buddhist traditions though it has not been lost within our Christian tradition. As I tried to understand how an Eastern philosophy could be useful to my Western and Christian sensibilities, I discovered that no leap in tradition, tenets, or beliefs was at all necessary. Meditative practice has existed within Christendom since approximately the 12th Century. That s longer than protestantism. It s in our spiritual roots. 3
There are distinctions made between Eastern and Western, Buddhist and Christian forms, but the distinctions, I found, were quite minute. The definition of Christian meditation overlaps with our definition of prayer but neither of these practices are relevant without the practice of solitude. So, today, I ve elected to discuss solitude because it is a theme that is often misunderstood but has profound connection to our Biblical roots. So, if you ll join me, let s depart together to reflect on solitude. The meaning of Solitude Solitude is a purposeful state of seclusion. That is, it includes contact with no individual for the exact purpose of being alone. Solitude is not working alone at an office desk and it is not eating alone. These are activities simply done alone. Solitude is not isolation. Solitude is not secluding one s self so that one can plan their next vacation or shuffle through different solutions to a problem at work. And solitude is not talking on the phone or texting alone. It is not working out alone. It isn t watching tv by yourself and it isn t commuting alone to work. Solitude is choosing to be by yourself without outside influence, contact, or noise. At no point does Jesus tell us to seek solitude. But like any good teacher, Jesus doesn t just tell us, but He shows us. 4
Christ sought solitude. Not just in our Scripture reading from Mark, but all four of the gospels tell us that Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed (Luke 5:16). The Bible tells us that he went to pray in solitude or was directed to do so. Now, I can t tell you what Jesus private time looked like. But let s ponder; What did Jesus time of solitude look like? Did Jesus prayers include requests for health and safety? Did he beg for personal mercy or for his disciples to be relieved of suffering? Did he request healing? In our teachings of Scripture it is clear that Jesus public prayers often did include these sentiments but I have a hard time believing that this is how Christ spent his time alone. When I read Scripture, I don t hear the words of someone deeply invested in soliciting God s help but rather, I read a Jesus who was seeking connection with God. He prayed privately and he frequently sought solitude to remain connected with God. And isn t prayer more than private requests? The Catholic author and leader, Dr. Ralph Martin says Prayer is, at root, simply paying attention to God. I tend to align myself with this definition of prayer. Prayer is paying attention to who God is in the way that God chooses to reveal herself. Prayer does not require the right words but simply enough space - prayer, or connection with God, 5
requires solitude. Or, if you will, individual prayer, or connection with God, is solitude. Prayer is not about the right words but about present listening. I d like to share my personal experience of solitude. My most profound experiences of God during my prayerful solitude came when I was shown my limitations as a human. In solitude, I began to gain glimpses of the raw truth regarding my ability to control. I began to recognize that I don t just lack control over major life events but my lack of control is expansive. I began to experience what a spiritual leader once said to me, We do not breath, we are being breathed. This is fact, isn t it? My heart beat and lungs expand. My neurological and electric involuntary firings of my nervous system are entirely out of my control. They started in utero without any doing of my own. My very basic life supporting system is, quite literally, outside of my control. Involuntary. And there is another level to the message of being breathed, isn t there? If I am not doing the breathing, than who or what is? Solitude, I have found, provides the experience talked about in Proverbs 3:5: Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. This isn t a decree to stop thinking, this is a call to recognize what already is; we are not in control, we are dependent, we are interconnected, we are breathed. 6
Solitude is Really About Relationships Sunday, July 19, 2015 Paul Tillich says One hour of solitude may bring us closer to those we love than many hours of communication. There are a couple of common themes that I have learned from my intimate work with people. One of them is that if we cannot be ok with ourselves than we cannot be ok with others. Our ability to treat others as we would have them treat us, to follow the golden rule, depends on whether we know how we want to be treated and whether we are willing to allow others to treat us as we desire. Many human beings largely struggle to know what type of treatment they deserve from others. But it also seems that such understanding can be found in solitude. Without solitude, without gaining confidence in one s ability to endure the initial tensions of being alone, one becomes deathly afraid that solitude will turn into isolation. That, like an adolescent home on a Saturday night, we will feel left out. FOMO, or the Fear Of Missing Out is a recently studied psychological construct that includes the pervasive apprehension that others are having rewarding experiences without us. We fear being alone - me and you both. And I would be remiss if I did not mention that Facebook is not an adequate solution to this human problem. 7
So, we avoid solitude in order to avoid feeling isolated but what we actually give up is our ability to connect healthily with others. Without acceptance in solitude, we begin to give up our power in relationships in order to meet the needs of others. Our fear of isolation leads to desperate attempts to keep others near. We begin acting in ways that are harmful to ourselves, to others, or our relationships in a desperate attempt to stay connected. We manipulate, we lie, we give up our dignity all in the service of keeping others from leaving us in isolation. Solitude can help this. Solitude teaches us to sustain separation from others - whether that separation is the result of a minor quarrel or a major divorce. Ironically, learning that we can be ok by ourselves, as God created us, exponentially increases our capacity for healthy relationships with others. Just as God used solitude to train Jesus for his ministry, God uses solitude to train us to be relational, social creatures. In solitude we learn compassion as our interconnectivity and dependence becomes central in solitude. I, me, my, mine slips away as we are revealed out lack of control. Our dependence on family and community, our dependence on oxygen and food, our dependence on God to give us life for just one more minute. We do not breathe, we are breathed. In Solitude we learn that we are never alone and have never been alone. We are a part of something larger 8
and acknowledgement of what is larger than the individual relieves us of the responsibility of being something different than we are. You don t have to be different, you just have to be. This is grace. So, as you may suspect, solitude has not solved all my problems. It is not a cure-all. But considering that it was simply an effort to keep me from crashing, I have been pleasantly surprised at how it has leveled the aircraft. Solitude is not something I always want to seek but I do it anyway. That s all that s required of me. Jesus repetitively went alone to meditate, to simply exist, to be with God, and to become the leader that He was and is. It seems that the more He entered into Solitude the more powerful a minister He became. My life is still full of responsibility, pressures, and tasks and I m confident that hardships are ahead, but since I started seeking solitude, for some reason life just doesn t feel as chaotic. The same worries are there but my relationship to them has changed. And when life does feel out of control, I more quickly land on the conclusion that I never had control in the first place and can let go of the erroneous thought that I need do anything more than continue to seek solitude. Not 9
my will but yours be done. Do not lean on my understanding, but yours. I am being breathed. 10