Most human beings are not made, ultimately, for solitude.
Yet a person's self-awareness benefits from regular retreats into solitariness - which is really a state of being free of burdens and responsibilities, when you may open up like a great hollow in a weathered rock, through which the wind pipes hitherto unheard tunes.
It can be frightening or strange to be thus 'free', strung through by unrecognised moments to your self as they come and go in terrible, relentless succession.
It is often fulfilling, even saving, to attend to the needs of others, to be distracted out of our inner emptiness by their calls for our help, strength, counsel. For, who are we, when we are not serving others?
God's company (though by many names He be known) is essential if one is to enjoy one's solitude and come away refreshed. Being in nature, whether actively or passively, uplifting music and reading, inspired creative work and craft, even chores - these are, when your solitude is tempered by God's presence (more commonly called love), all infused with holiness, filling a person's alone time like rain swells a stream.
Or simply attending to (meditating on) a beautiful scene or object, opening heart, eyes, ears, nostrils and skin pores, to breathe in the moment's undemandingness, will allow that out-breath that releases excess of individuated thoughts and feelings, returning you to sweet anonymity, your very own lightness of being, in the hammock of creation.
And yet, the following sonnet by John Keats, extolling solitude in nature, ends tellingly:
"The sweet converse of an innocent mind, / Whose words are images of thoughts refined, / Is my soul's pleasure" too. It is my experience that the most blissful state of grace on earth is when you can enjoy any of the holy activities I've mentioned, in the company not only of God, but also of your Beloved.
Despite having been advised, repeatedly, to 'stand in my own power' and 'be my own woman', it is my experience that I stand best, firstly, in God's power, that is to say, in the power of love; and, secondly, that I am (mostly) my favourite own woman tempered in the vicinity of my gentle Beloved's fragrance and breath, unimposing though they may, and must, be, as we each spin our separate strands on the mystery web of life.
No comments:
Post a Comment