Solitude that isn't Loneliness

I’m vacationing this week. Stay-cationing, if that’s a word. Having “cottage days” as a few people suggested when I told them my plan.

So I’m not really writing this week; I just popped on for a few minutes to share some thoughts from Henry Nouwen that I read this week.

“The word solitude can be misleading.it suggests being along by yourself in an isolated places. When we think about solitaries, our mind easily evokes images of monks or hermits who live in remote places secluded from the noise of the busy world… But the solitude that really counts is the solitude of heart; it is an inner quality or attitude that does not depend on physical isolation… The man or woman who has developed this solitude of heart is no longer pulled apart by the most divergent stimuli of the surrounding world but is able to perceive and understand this world from a quiet inner center…

“Without the solitude of heart, the intimacy of friendship, marriage and community life cannot be creative. Without the solitude of heart, our relationships with others easily become needy and greedy, sticky and clinging, dependent and sentimental, exploitative and parasitic, because without the solitude of heart we cannot experience the others as different from ourselves but only as people who can be used for the fulfillment of our won, often hidden, needs.

“The mystery of love is that it protects and respects the aloneness of the other and creates the free space where he can convert his loneliness into a solitude that can be shared. In this solitude we can strengthen each other by mutual respect, by careful consideration of each other’s individuality, by an obedient distance from each other’s privacy and by a reverent understanding of the sacredness of the human heart. In this solitude we encourage each other to enter into the silence of our innermost being and discover there the voice that calls us beyond the limits of human togetherness to a new communion. In this solitude we can slowly become aware of a presence of him who embraces friends and lovers and offers us the freedom to love each other, because he loved us first (see 1 John 4:19).”[1]

[1] Henri J.M. Nouwen, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life. 25-30.