Entreaty for a tempered solitude

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.

Alive and beautiful: Table Love now

"I effectively have std.8," he says, explaining, "I did std. 9 and 10 in one year, but it was a kind of a jippo matric. But it made me strong. I learned to stand on my own feet."
They're sitting on a bench in the winter sun shining its warmth equitably on them both.
"Well, I've two Masters degrees," she replies, "one of them with distinction, and - as precious as what they taught me is - I've never kept within the academy what I learned. University was never the place for me, I was never at home there. Even now I'm still muddling my way through life against all expectations. Formal education doesn't necessarily teach you how to survive."
"When I had my company," he says, "people with high education sometimes spoke to me, terrified of starting their own business. I used to say to them they should look around. How many people have they seen with their own eyes? Millions. How many of those people did they actually see dying or dead from starvation? None. I've never seen one. So start your own business, have the courage to do so. Do what you have passion for."
She takes out her notebook and pen. Sitting beside him, she is not with him, but with the bird of prey perched a little way from them, and the wintry horizon.
"You're so impatient!" she exclaims at one point, ducking the poem she is slowly composing away from his inquisitive eye.
Finally she is done.
"I've got my poem in my head," he says eagerly, "but I don't have a pen and paper."
"My book is full," she retorts, "and I didn't bring a new one."
He takes and opens her book on the back cover.
"There's a space," he says, and thinks, and speaks, and she writes down his words.
When he is done, he says,
"Let's hear yours now?"
She reads aloud the lines jostled by crossings out, arrows, insertions, revisions.
"That's awesome," he observes. "Same bird, same place and time, but completely different views."
"Yes," she agrees, "My father sometimes said what makes us all equal is our capacity to do harm, but it's the differences between us that make the world alive and beautiful."