Solitude: discovery and acceptance of our uniqueness

Laurence Freeman, from Web of silence : letters to meditators, Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd, London, 1996

One of the best Christian descriptions of solitude is a passage from St Aelred of Rievaulx’s Spiritual Friendship. In it he describes an experience he had ‘the day before yesterday’ while walking around the cloister. He was watching his fellow monks when the consciousness struck him that there was ‘none there whom I did not love and by whom I did not feel myself loved. I was filled with a joy that soared beyond the pleasures of this world. I felt my spirit pass out into all and their affection flow back into me.. .’ Where there is love, there is God.

Aelred’s description of the transforming ecstasy of human love opening us to God goes to the heart of the Christian gospel. It explains why marriage and the home are in no way less of a spiritual path than monasticism or the cloister. But why should this be a description of solitude? We can see it was an experience that arose from solitude by the way he describes the sense of unique individuality he felt in that moment of agape: ‘I was gazing on them as one might admire in paradise the leaves and flowers and fruit of every individual tree.

Solitude is no more to be identified with isolation or with-drawal than asceticism is to be confused with pain and repression. Solitude is essentially the discovery and acceptance of our uniqueness. It is therefore, as John Main insisted, the necessary basis for all relationship. As long as we relate from what in us is still stereotyped or standardised by convention, our human relationships cannot reach the depth of divine love.

Physical withdrawal, in differing degrees, is necessary for – everyone, at times. To practise meditation morning and evening may well be the recommended daily dose of solitude for many people. But its purpose is not to escape from human beings. Solitude rescues us from the unconscious assimilation in the crowd of humanity, the mob, which absorbs and destroys our uniqueness. St Benedict describes the Lord ‘seeking his own workman in the multitude of people’ and calling ‘Who is the one who wants life and longs to see good days?’ The person who replies ‘I am the one’ has begun the pilgrimage from the egotistical mentality of the crowd into the spiritual consciousness of the community of men and women who can love each other because they know they are loved.

The Dark Night of the Soul — St John of the Cross (16th century)

In that happy night,
In secret, seen of none,
Seeing nought myself,
Without other light or guide
Save that which in my heart was burning.