Solitude greeting solitude, that's what community is all about. Community is not the place where we are no longer alone but the place where we respect, protect, and reverently greet one another's aloneness. When we allow our aloneness to lead us into solitude, our solitude will enable us to rejoice in the solitude of others. Our solitude roots us in our own hearts. Instead of making us yearn for company that will offer us immediate satisfaction, solitude makes us claim our center and empowers us to call others to claim theirs. Our various solitudes are like strong, straight pillars that hold up the roof of our communal house. Thus, solitude always strengthens community.
(With thanks to the Henri Nouwen Society)
There are some who are suspicious of the call to the solitary life. I believe a few religious communities still suffer from this blind spot, and certainly many socially-minded evangelicals are very nervous of the idea. I think what is at stake very often is a fear that solitaries are solipsistic, inward-looking self-improvers, with little real care for God's people, or for those who have not yet found him. They are seen as hiding themselves away, not caring for society and its struggles, or for the dominical mandate to "make disciples of all nations..." (Matthew 28.19)
Nouwen's words provide the antidote to this way of thinking: "Solitude always strengthens community." In their life of prayer, in their preparedness to give themselves, and their hopes, ambitions and desires, up to the Lord for the sake of their sisters and brothers, for the sake of all creation, solitaries bless community, church, the world and all its creatures with their life of prayer.
3 comments:
I firmly believe it is the steadfastness of the prayer of solitudes and contemplatives that keeps much evil at bay in our parishes and communities.
I also believe their choice of location is totally Spirit-led, going where the need is great.
I have struggled a bit with accepting my own tendency toward solitude, but I am beginning to decide that it's something to embrace. We are not all the same, we can't all be the big doers in the word.
"solitaries bless community, church, the world and all its creatures with their life of prayer": amen.
In our last formation meeting for our postulants, this subject came up, around the topic of those first and second order men and women who get up in the middle of the night to pray for the whole world I found it very moving, and proof that the contemplative life, full of solitude and silence and God, is not a rejection of God's people and their needs; on the contrary.
There will always be people who want and need to be part of the active apostolate in the world; fewer are those 'hidden ones.' But the hidden ones are necessary.
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