By Ian Crooks
As Australians come out of lockdown and life returns to normal, there is a temptation to resume all our pre-COVID activity and social engagement. But we should not be in too much of a rush to escape solitude, as it can be a source of great blessing and spiritual growth.
When I go bush walking, I go on my own, not because I don’t like other people’s company, but because I need the space away from the stimulation and/or the distractions of even my closest and most intimate relationship with my wife!
For the first half hour or so of walking my mind is abuzz, full of the concerns of family, work and politics. But after a while I realise I haven’t been thinking at all, I’ve just been walking, my only concern being the next step. That next step becomes, in the words of Charles de Foucauld, who lived as a hermit in the Sahara Desert, “the sacrament of the present moment”.
In his book Meditations of a Hermit, De Foucauld also declares that:
“If there is no inner life, however great may be the zeal, the high intention, the hard work, no fruit will come forth ... one can only give that which one has. It is in solitude, in that lonely life with God, in profound recollection of soul, in forgetfulness of all created things, that God gives himself to the soul that thus gives itself whole and entire to him.”
Whilst we are social beings we nevertheless benefit from being apart from others. Such a practice fosters an awareness of our unique identity – of who we are before God. And our unique identity as a child of God, beloved by God, is not dependent upon our status, our position, or our roles in society or the church.
Stepping away on a regular basis from such roles and their often demanding expectations will help us put them into a much wider perspective. It will help us to be clearer as to who we really are. We will come to a better understanding and acceptance of our giftedness as well as our limitations: we will be more likely to hear the murmuring of God, calling us by name.
A former Dean of Westminster Abbey, the late Michael Mayne, says in his remarkable book Pray, Love, Remember that he would often just sit in the vast space of the Abbey, in silence and solitude at the end of the day, when the last of the visitors had gone and the doors had been shut. Surrounded by the relics, memorials and the memories of six centuries of Christian witness and sacrificial living, he would just rest for a time in the one constant reality that has spanned the centuries of human striving – God’s faithful and steadfast love.
As author and a former head of the Dominican Order, Timothy Radcliffe, says, solitude “is taking time to loiter with God ... to rest in his presence, to refuse the busyness of the world”. A life that is entirely consumed by frenetic activity destroys us, he says.
Solitude provides us with the opportunity to discover that we have an interior life, a consciousness of our own uniqueness and giftedness that no-one else is graced with. This interior life within is what we might call ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’.
At the end of the 19th century, Quaker George MacDonald said:
“Never teach a child that he/she is a body who has a soul. Rather teach the child that he/she is a soul who happens to have a body.”
And the soul is the source, the ground of our being, the bedrock of our humanity.
Ian is a retired Anglican priest living in Australia. He is an Oblate of the Benedictine Abbey at Jamberoo in NSW, and took his vows as a hermit 10 years ago. He has led Retreats and Quiet Days for over 30 years and for 10 years was a Retreat and Seminar leader for the Wellspring Centre in Melbourne. This article is based on a talk he gave at the Lenten Retreat of the Victorian branch of the World Community for Christian Meditation – Australia, in March 2021.