Solo

Book of the Week: Out of Solitude, Henri Nouwen, 1974

Song of the Week: When Wind Meets Fire, Elevation Worship, 2024

I’m writing from a coffee shop in Savannah, Georgia called Perc, one of the best in town for whatever my opinion’s worth. I do this once or twice a year - I’ll get out of town for a few days as a sort of personal retreat. I read a lot, pray a lot, and enjoy an excuse to spend big on local food and drinks (I’m on vacation, after all). This usually happens over what Knoxville schools call Fall Break, basically spring break in the fall - many of the families we work with are out of town making it a good week to take a breather before finishing out the fall semester. I’ve been doing this for a few years now and a pattern has emerged: when people ask me what my plans are for fall break and I tell them I’m taking an out of town retreat, the response is almost unanimous: “Alone?”

I sheepishly explain that, yes, I’m going alone, by choice. I’ll exchange my right to filibuster about normalizing solo travel (or even going out to eat by your lonesome, it can actually be a fulfilling experience) with some thoughts on solitude. One of my readings for this week is Out of Solitude (1974), by Henri Nouwen. It’s a small book, more of a collection of sermons or talks, you could read it in an hour. Today, I’d like to lay a groundwork for solitude that will, at the very best, be convincing enough to entice you to add this rhythm into your year; or at the very least, show you I haven’t lost all my marbles. 

Let me begin by throwing a water bucket on a fire that I can already see smoldering in your mind: “you must be an introvert” no; at least, not fully. I don’t put too much stock in personality tests, it’ll be a cold day in hell when I let the complexities of my brain be boxed in by a quiz. I’ve adopted the mentality that those types of tests “aren’t true, but they are helpful.” Anyway, on the most in-depth test I’ve taken (several hours, followed by a meeting with a licensed professional to pour over my results), I landed in the middle - an ambivert, as it were. I need alone time, and I need people time; too much of one makes me tired, and too much of the other makes me sad. What’s my point? I had a friend in college who was so extroverted (actually afraid of being alone, but that’s a different blog post) they couldn’t walk to the cafeteria by themselves. If you read “solo” and thought yeah baby, that’s my jam, awesome. If you read it and thought there’s no way, first of all, start small - 10 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour or two if that’s what you need to begin with, maybe an afternoon, and see where it goes, but don’t let the fear of being alone hold you back from the gold mine of solitude.

What does solitude look like? To dig in this mine, the solitude needs to be unplugged. I like to put my phone on Do Not Disturb while I travel or as I engage in solitude in my day to day. A few important people in my life get through the DND (my boss, my mom, and my landlord) but other than that, I try to stay off my phone. We’re going for no distractions here - to find the fertile soil of solitude, we need to come face to face with our fears and worries, our doubts and questions, our joys and our propensities for optimism or pessimism. You thought going out to eat alone was scary? Haha. Our world is organized around the desire to minimize (or numb) discomfort. School got you stressed? Doom scroll reels. Election season bringing on the classic every four year existential dread? Binge watch The Office. Don’t want to think about that hard relationship, have you tried weed? Alcohol? Casual sex? The distractions of this world will ultimately lead you places you do not want to go, and make promises that they can’t deliver. One of the problems with discerning an effective alternative to the distractions of the world is that our problems are real and the feelings that come with them are heavy. School matters, elections change the world, hard relationships change lives, but distractions merely delay the work, stunt our spiritual growth, and leave us feeling disassociated in the face of challenges - all of which are opportunities to draw close to God. What we need is the practice of solitude - that grounds us and allows us to work without the pressures of the world bearing down on us, a place where we can be honest and fully ourselves, and our motives and worries are fully rolled out.

When we engage in solitude, a number of things happen. One, we’re reminded of the power of togetherness. Nouwen says “somewhere we know that without a lonely place our lives are in danger…without silence, words lose their meaning…without listening, speaking no longer heals…without distance, closeness cannot cure” (Nouwen, p. 18). No matter what our Myers Briggs test letters are, we need both togetherness and loneliness. There’s sweetness in both. 

Second, we’re laid bare from our achievements. In this competitive world, the temptation to identify with our successes (or even failures) is pervasive. How do you get into the college you want to go to? Tell them about all the stuff you did in high school. How do you land the job you want? Do more things and be really good at them. How do you land the girlfriend/boyfriend you really want? Be exceptional, or at least better than the alternatives (everyone else). There is nothing wrong with excellence, working hard brings honor to the Lord, but hard work and accomplishment need be tapered with this reminder: “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (James 4:14, ESV). As we sit in solitude, the trophies on the wall rust and the future is brought into perspective, “we become aware that our worth is not the same as our usefulness…and as a community of faith we remind one another constantly that we form a fellowship of the weak, transparent to him who speaks to us in the lonely places of our existence and says: Do not be afraid, you are accepted” (Nouwen, p26, 28).

Third, we learn to care before we cure. As our wins and losses fall away and we come face to face with our common weakness, we begin to practice presence with those around us in a new way. Simply put, we learn Jesus’ way of entering into people’s pain before doing something about it. Nouwen puts it like this: “Still, when we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a tender and gentle hand.” As our egos are lifted before the Lord, and our insecurities melt away, we receive humility only He can give, that enables us to be his hands and feet in the lives of those around us.

Lastly, we learn the discipline of patience and the value of unshakeable hope. The root of the word patience is “patior” in latin, which translates to “suffer, or endure.” I won’t pretend solitude is easy - as I contended earlier, one of the reasons alone-ness scares us is the idea that we have to come face to face with our ugliness, but still, it is in the furnace that gold is formed to beauty. Solitude changes the questions in our head from “why did this happen to me?” to “what does God have for me in this?” It forces us to sit down and decide exactly where our ultimate hope is. Sure we can hope and dream for things in this world, even good things (marriage, having children, safety, stability) but it’s in the solitude, when we feel the anxieties of losing those things, that we find our idols. It’s there that we find a balance; between believing God can do a new and better thing in our lives, better than we could imagine, but then also holding that with open hands, and finding the promise of eternity with the Lord to be enough. Ultimately he is coming back, and the troubles of this world will be made right. Tests will be done, relationships will be restored, and the tears will be wiped away.

We end our thoughts on solitude by asking a question you’ve definitely never heard before: What Would Jesus Do? After a long and demanding day of healing and teaching, Jesus rose “very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed” (Mark 1:35). It was in the frequent solitude where Jesus cried out to the Father before his persecution (Matthew 26:39), where we found rest and restoration after long work days (Luke 5:15), where he mourned loss (Matthew 14:13) and where he prayed for you, and for me. Good enough for Jesus, good enough for me. When we’re alone, we have nowhere to go with our hearts but to God, the one who can handle it all, and turn our mourning to dancing, our fears to hopes, and prepare us to care for and love those around us in a way only He could.