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2008-02-05 issue:

Turn up the quiet

What is solitude and why try it?

by Jan Johnson

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Being spiritual was the last thing on my mind when I began an arm-swinging aerobic walk on a lonely canyon road, cluttered with garbage and swathed in mud. Dodging gravel trucks and vulnerable to the heat, I found myself alone with God. God showed up in everything around me. The scattered tumbleweeds stood for the stumbling blocks of my life—annoyances with those I loved, fear of doing difficult things, yearnings for a problem-free life. I gathered these briars and hurled them off the cliff-like side of the road.

The mountains around me became symbols of God’s presence. I named the peaks for what I was hearing from God. The cradle-shaped ravine became “rest.” The pointed peak became “Don’t forget to love” when we moved through a church split. As I panted, chugged water and headed into the wind, those phrases became ways to live.

About that time I’d begun attending a monthly retreat day at a retreat center. But no matter how engaging the speaker was, I found myself skipping the sessions to scramble down to a creek to sit on a rock in the water. There I remained for the day. At that time I had such lofty opinions of the spiritual discipline of solitude that I didn’t think these walks and rock-sitting moments were heroic enough to count as solitude. But they did.

Getaways—hanging out with God: It’s odd to think that even though Jesus had such good community with God he still kept running off for solitude (Matthew 4:1-11; 14:13,23; 17:1-9; 26:36-46; Mark 6:31; Luke 5:16; 6:12). Why would Jesus take such time away from ministry? Perhaps he loved being alone with God—“I and the Father are one.”

Solitude is not just warm, fuzzy moments soaking your feet in a creek. You let go of all the work and people-related things that make you feel important—appointments, deadlines, telephone calls. Nobody asks for your opinion.

In solitude, we are not productive or useful. Neither is God “useful” to us. I tried to turn my early personal retreat days into a project, to manufacture revelations or tingly experiences. I counteracted that by making no schedule so that it became a God-led day of hanging out with God. Now my only rule is that I observe silence and solitude. I listen to what God leads me to do that day. Even now I find myself waiting for the solitude to feel rewarding, but it may not. Afterward, I realize I loved it. I am much like Jacob after he awakened from his angel-climbing ladder dream: “Surely the LORD is in this place— and I did not know it” (Genesis 28:16).

Enemies show up: Be prepared in solitude for committee members who live in your head to show up. These voices are our habits of thinking that arise from the parts of us yet to be healed. Mine include the following:

The Looking Good Kid works hard to be admired out of fear of not being good enough. If I think I hear God saying: “Be perfect. Get it right. Don’t make any mistakes—then I’ll be proud of you,” this is not God but the looking good kid.

The Rescuer thinks of ways to help others so they have to love me. As a result, busyness is next to godliness. If I think I hear God say, “Help people till it exhausts you. Make people happy,” that is not God but my rescuer sabotaging my solitude.

The Attitude Police Officer wants everything done right. It evaluates, criticizes and ruins my attempts to focus on God. It sabotages thoughts so that I always hear God correcting me.
On my canyon road walks, this last member often took over and rehearsed long hostile speeches to those with whom I disagreed, entrenching myself in reasons I was right. Then followed equally virulent diatribes against myself and despair over how my anger had taken over. It took several years to replace these thoughts with prayer for those who irritated me. Yet that was what I needed to do, and solitude trained my soul to love when I wanted to criticize.

Dismissing the voices of the committee members is best done gently. To be upset about failings does not help. That only affirms that my spirituality is about me, not God. I usher them to the door of my mind and give them no more airplay.

How solitude helps: Time alone retrains thought patterns and even one’s body.

Hearing God. The first step in hearing God is knowing who God is not—the voices of the “committee” or habitual poisonous thinking patterns. As we become acquainted with them and practiced in dismissing them, we make room for God.

Experiencing the companionship of God. In solitude you learn to “nourish in your heart the lively longing for God” (The Cloud of Unknowing). As we practice longer times of solitude, we learn to love soaking in what God says.

Letting go of busyness. As you free yourself from the burden of being important, you let go of hurry and busyness. You live more purposefully from a quiet center in life and are not distracted so easily. You enjoy leaving margins in life.

Teaching us how to be with others. Solitude is not a me-myself-and-I discipline but one that changes the way you interact with people. God turns our face toward others because we see them differently. We come away from solitude more fit to be with people: quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry. Because we slow down, we catch ourselves before we make slighting comments we regret later.

Solitude is a place of hearing God and letting go of all that is not God. Out of this transformed self, real ministry flows.

Jan Johnson is the author of When the Soul Listens, Enjoying the Presence of God and Spiritual Disciplines Bible Studies (www.janjohnson.org).

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