In solitude, you are not merely alone, but have deliberately separated yourself from others. We do something called theory of mind where we imagine what others are thinking. In silence, one ceases the consumption of any human-created input, and this includes not only audible stimuli, but the reading of the written word as well — an act that, though quiet, still involves “listening” to the text. Do people in today’s world find it difficult to find “quiet time?” What are things that can either hinder or encourage this type of quality time? Silence and solitude remain firmly planted in the “Wouldn’t it be nice if…” category. Ten years from now? Or a quiet spot in a park or your backyard may work well. Society, to merit its name, must be made up not of numbers, or mechanical units, but of persons. Instead of getting out of bed as soon as your alarm goes off, or immediately checking your phone upon waking, lie there for a few minutes in silence; you’ll often receive very potent insights at this time. Without taking the necessary time to let your spiritual self recover, you risk the possibility of a spiritual injury such as burnout, depression, or a complete collapse of your inner world that leaves you feeling hopeless and alone. Like silence, stillness is twofold: pausing physical movement and cultivating internal stillness. Discipleship, Spiritual Growth, and Christian Living, Silence is the way to make solitude a reality.– Henry Nouwen, Language has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone, and the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.— Paul Tillich. If man is constantly exiled from his own home, locked out of his own spiritual solitude, he ceases to be a true person. . Is silence and solitude a regular part of your discipleship to Jesus? Solitude, by definition, is time that is set apart for God and God alone and that is where true spiritual leadership comes from. The result is a feeling of loneliness. What do you want to have accomplished one year from now? First, consider doing the kind of quarterly retreat Foster suggests: “Four times a year withdraw for three to four hours for the purpose of reorienting your life goals. Fortunately, this obstacle is in many ways the easiest to deal with and overcome, as its basis is simply rooted in misconceptions about what these disciplines really require. The Goal of Silence/Solitude . Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. What do your thoughts turn to in your few quiet moments alone? Silence and solitude can seem out of reach to the average man — the exclusive purview of the kind of religious ascetics and hermetic philosophers just mentioned, or a luxury that can be indulged only by those leaders who face choices freighted with heavy meaning and high stakes. If yes, what does that look like in your life rhythm? Janelle Hale “By the end of this semester you will spend two hours in silence and solitude for this class.” These were the first words I heard from my professor, Dr. Lanker, in my Discipleship and Evangelism class. Silence is easier to define than solitude. This respite allows us to re-orient our priorities, re-direct our compass — re-commit to a greater purpose that may have gotten lost in the little details of daily life. This public vetting of our private pondering is crucial, for as Koch observes, “Profound visions arrive in solitude—but so do grand delusions.” The crowd may find weaknesses in our ideas, which we then return to solitude to address. It can be hard to justify pulling back — there’s never a shortage of to-dos to accomplish or people who urgently need our help. There are games and computers and the internet. We all want to feel like people understand us. Search. “Solitude is, most ultimately, simply an experiential world in which other people are absent” — and it matters not whether they are removed by physical bounds, or simply in the way we choose to apply our mental focus. There are more magazines, newspapers and books than we could ever read. “We require such a solitude as shall hold us to its revelations when we are in the street and in palaces.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson. Though hordes of people in need of healing followed Jesus around, and he knew his ministry would be short, still he often “went off to a solitary place” and “withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” Brief respites spent in silence and solitude recharged him to face yet another day of selfless service. Jesus invited His disciples to share times of solitude (group solitude) with Him. His time was not entirely quiet, but it does appear to have often been alone. . We just bring our naked self to the Lord to be with him. How Do You Get More Solitude and Silence in the Busy Modern World? Practice. Crowds, or the lack of them, have little to do with this inward attentiveness.”. Excited? (Note: The point of this question is honest conversation, not guilt or shame. Sit in your closet for five to ten minutes before you go to bed. solitude, silence and listening. . Emerson exalted in this reciprocal dynamic: “The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society.”. . One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation, and despair.”, Society and solitude each represent one half of a cyclic process; each state checks and propels the other in what Henri Nouwen calls a “dynamic unity.” As Koch puts it, “in a variety of different ways, the virtues of solitude find their completion in encounter.”. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; as we’ll discuss below, engagement with others provides an important balance to solitude. Attention becomes fragmented; you can’t make it very far into your own world when interruptions keep dragging you out. The producers of reality television programs report that the “stars” of these shows often become depressed after they stop filming. There’s no one to give you a literal or digital thumbs up. We spurn solitude because it feels unforgivably unproductive, yet it creates the grease that keep the productive wheels of our lives turning. No demands, once I had emerged from that flood of sleep, were made upon my nervous energy: there were no automatic drains, such as conversation at meals, small talk, catching trains, or the hundred anxious trivialities that poison everyday life.”. This need to furnish explanation and existential evidence is symptomatic of a craving for others’ approval, and a lack of confidence in the value and reality of your soul apart from any external validation. When was the last time you found yourself in a space of simple solitude and silence, much less intentionally carved out time to cultivate these practices as disciplines? READING: Mark 1:35. But people have always felt both gratitude and resentment for this obligation. Silence and solitude can seem out of reach to the average man — the exclusive purview of the kind of religious ascetics and hermetic philosophers just mentioned, or a luxury that can be indulged only by those leaders who face choices freighted with heavy meaning and high stakes. Posted on April 5, 2017 by Saint Joseph's College Online Theology Faculty. There are more magazines, newspapers and books than we could ever read. We need to be able to let down our defenses and re-establish a self apart from its response to others — to experience a state in which our thoughts and behaviors are purely active, rather than reactive. The heart of the class is the daily assignments. We need to break away from the crowd now and again, and find rest from orienting our thoughts and behaviors in reference to other people. . While we may think of solitude in terms of meditating in an ashram or studying in a monastic cell, is not the man running a trail or splitting wood alone both solitary and active? Every nook and cranny of your life is filled with messages about what you should do, think, be. Richard Foster makes the point this way in Celebration of Discipline: “Solitude is more a state of mind and heart than it is a place. Do you think Jesus was strengthened by his time on the mountain? These include the discipline of silence, of course, but others as well: Silent solitude is also a fruitful time in which to make decisions, especially those with significant consequences. He felt depressed and oppressed by the quiet and isolation of the abbey, experiencing “a feeling of loneliness and flatness that always accompanies the transition from urban excess to a life of rustic solitude”: “only by living for a while in a monastery can one quite grasp its staggering difference from the ordinary life that we lead. Solitude remains a need whether one lives in a situation of luxury and noise, or deprivation and quiet. Follow along with each part of this practice. . Apparently, His personal communion with His Father was so important that He prioritized it. We must be proactive, but also defensive: at any time someone may insult, embarrass, confuse, or manipulate us, and we must keep our guard up against these potential attacks. People, sounds and things are … There are monks that live in the company of others, but still live very solitary lives. So one can be lonely in solitude, but feeling lonely is not necessarily the same thing as experiencing solitude. . You open your safe and find ashes.”, “How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude! How does the idea of silence and solitude make you feel? Facing and embracing boredom through the practices of solitude and silence is a vital way in which to train the soul. There are games and computers and the internet. If no, why not? The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of a college is as solitary as a dervish in the desert.” Or as the Chinese saying puts it: “Greatest hermit in crowded street.”. We have to cease believing that they’re true. In our fast-paced society and our continuously-loud distractions, our eyes, ears, bodies, minds, hearts, and souls need margin. Often, you don’t need to even change your schedule at all, but simply alter and enhance a few habits you’re already doing, with these guidelines in mind: With those guidelines in mind, here are some fruitful places to find solitude and silence in your everyday life: There are also ways to specifically practice the discipline of silence, that can, but don’t necessarily need to involve solitude: Once you start looking for them, there all kinds of possibilities for silence and solitude in spare moments that only necessitate small changes in your routine. You can also prepare for the twists of fate in your path by reaffirming your commitment to maintaining a Stoic mindset — rehearsing to yourself the fact that there’s no use in reacting emotionally to things you can’t change, and that you must focus only on that which lies within your control. Is silence and solitude a regular part of your discipleship to Jesus? The Abbey was at first a graveyard; the outer world seemed afterwards, by contrast, an inferno of noise and vulgarity. But while silence may not be strictly necessary for solitude, the two are very closely connected. To fully experience the latter does require the presence of the former, and we will thus largely be talking about silence and solitude as an inseparable pair. These are often practiced together as silent time alone with God, they can also be used independently. One of the foundational goals of silence and solitude is to get to the place where we know who we are in God. Excited? But is it not possible to withdraw inwardly even in the midst of a crowd? Physical isolation, stillness, and silence may all work to enhance solitude, but they’re not required for its existence. . There may be all kinds of life-changing promptings percolating in your soul right now, and you’ll never even know they exist if you don’t walk away from the crowd and find a quiet space apart. Discipleship SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE By Donald S. Whitney Lesson 9 Silence and Solitude “Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear.” Philippians 2:12b (NLT) A Ministry of Rockpointe Church . If you don’t, you may be eager to flip on the background noise to keep from ever confronting him. This is where transformation takes place. Second, look for simple ways to incorporate pockets of solitude and silence into your daily routine. In solitude we foster a bond with others that the closeness of physical intimacy actually stymies in some ways. [For example, prayer, reading Scripture, worship, silence, solitude, and so on.] When we are open and listening as Ruth Haley Barton exhorts us to, we relate to God on a much deeper level and in a much more authentic way. This solitude prepared him for the arduous mission ahead. We can further define solitude on the basis of intentionality. There are several reasons we so tenaciously cling to noise like this, and ignore the persistent, but easily drowned-out call of silence and solitude: Given its acute absence of distractions, noise, and stimuli, silent solitude can be experienced as awfully boring. In the thick of this constant din, it can be difficult to hear the voice of God and to identify your own voice. This personal quietude finally extends not only to the consumption/production of words and sound, but to a whole way of being, well described by Ohiyesa (Charles Eastman), a Sioux tribesman: “Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit. There are more magazines, newspapers and books than we could ever read. Enjoy the silence and aloneness before you launch into the noise and stress of your shiftOn your lunch break, leave your phone at the office, and go eat in a quiet spot in a park. Warriors cannot perform at their best if they’re constantly engaged in the heat of the conflict; fatigue sets in, bad decisions are made, and the fighting force falls apart. “It is all very well to insist that man is a “social animal”—the fact is obvious enough. As soon as you wake up, you check your phone and turn on music or the radio. So serving was a path of discipleship as I died to self and learned to live for others. If you’re like most people, your life is probably filled with noise (audible and otherwise) from morning ‘til night. This is probably the most common reason people give for not setting apart time for solitude and silence. As Army Lt. It’s self-referential processing, literally creating a coherent sense of ourselves. If no, why not? Such is the excitement your mom gets if your picture shows up in the local paper; she knew you existed, and were wonderful, but now here is public affirmation of this truth! Don’t feel like these brief interludes of solitude and silence aren’t real or “authentic” enough. Stay late at your office or do it at home or find a quiet corner in a public library. If a leader does not have that in place, he or she may be leading but it probably isn’t spiritual leadership. Solitude and silence is an opportunity to focus on your Intimacy with Jesus, to unhook from your daily responsibilities and the people you interact with, in order to attend to the Lord alone. A sermon intended to Biblically support and encourage the much neglected discipline of Silence and Solitude. What accounts for the timeless, seemingly universal appeal of quiet seclusion? They feel the allure of these disciplines, but don’t act on them. After work it’s another music or podcast-filled commute to a noise-filled gym, and then home to converse with your family, scroll through your phone, and watch Netflix. Taken all together, we can therefore define solitude this way: the intentional withdrawal from social engagement. When that inner voice is not heard, when man cannot attain to the spiritual peace that comes from being perfectly at one with his true self, his life is always miserable and exhausting. Be still. In the hush of silent solitude, you find the space needed for undistracted and thus fruitful reflection; you can finally focus on picking up on sacred signals and listening to their urgent broadcasts. But while a retreat may cost time in the short-term, it allows you to perform more effectively and carry on with more endurance in the long-term. Though it needn’t be as long, we can similarly benefit from taking a retreat of silent solitude when we know we’ll soon be facing a physical, mental, emotional, and/or spiritual challenge. Find God first in the community, then He will lead you to solitude.” —Thomas Merton, “It is easy, in the world, to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy, in solitude, to live after your own; but the great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson. Stillness. Your perspective may feel opaque, like a jar of muddy water that’s been shaken up. 1 Lesson 9 SILENCE/SOLITUDE SILENCE/SOLITUDE (This Lesson Adapted from Donald Whitney’s Spiritual Disciplines For The … We feel a deep need to maintain our reputation, to cultivate our image, to justify ourselves. Whether alone or among people, we always carry with us a portable sanctuary of the heart.” —Richard Foster. Scripture: Psalms 46:10. . What is God saying to you in these passages? Though, as we’ll see, silence is strongly connected to solitude, if it’s possible to beat an internal retreat in the company of others, it’s possible to be solitary in the presence of noise as well. This can easily be done in one evening. SOLITUDE + SILENCE : JESUS AND THE LONELY PLACE Speaker: Darren Rouanzoin Date: 02-11-2018 — THE GARDEN CHURCH "in Long Beach as in it is in Heaven." That which we typically keep at bay with noise, makes itself known. In solitude, we discover new insights; in society, we have the pleasure of expanding on them in conversation with friends. 03/24/19 Practical Discipleship: Silence and Solitude. We need to rotate into silence and solitude to maintain our morale, emotional balance, and ability to continue the fight. Even when you’re not actively attending to it, you may put the radio/television on in the background, to sort of keep you company. And personal leadership comes through solitude.”, “One hour of thoughtful solitude may nerve the heart for days of conflict — girding up its armor to meet the most insidious foe.” —Percival. It’s the closest most of us get to a monastic cell each day. People will thus do most anything to alleviate it (even giving themselves painful electric shocks). We let go of the need of expressing our opinions. They are also arguably the most intriguing and compelling of the spiritual disciplines, and yet also seem the hardest to come by in our crowded, noisy, modern world. What Are the Purposes of the Spiritual Disciplines of Solitude and Silence? Silence and solitude are disciplines that aid us in the battle for spiritual-mindedness. “It is not speaking that breaks our silence, but the anxiety to be heard.” —Thomas Merton. Physical isolation? Though the transition to silence and solitude when entering the monastery had been hard, Fermor reported that “the unwinding process, after I had left, was ten times worse. And, far from being the privilege of the few, seeking these states is a responsibility of us all. Sometimes people will withdraw from their normal surroundings when searching for a quiet place. We have much to learn here. As Fermor acclimated to his silent, solitary surroundings, he discovered he’d been living with a debt of inner exhaustion of which he’d been completely unaware: “I found that my capacity for sleep was becoming more and more remarkable: till the hours I spent in or on my bed vastly outnumbered the hours I spent awake; and my sleep was so profound that I might have been under the influence of some hypnotic drug . Prepare yourself before you withdraw, by doing as much research about your question as possible. Silence and solitude function best as supplements to society, not as substitutes for it. The more time you spend alone with God, the better you can hear the “still, small voice” and discern his will. We want to follow every action with an explanation as to why we did what we did; we want to feel sure that our behavior is being correctly perceived (i.e., interpreted in the best possible light). By getting firm on your convictions before entering the fray, you are less likely to shift them when you rejoin society — less likely to let yourself be controlled by the crowd. Silence becomes a gateway by which the Spirit of God is able to over-write our normal thinking, freed from the self-deception of our own thoughts. Our homes have access to scores of television channels and videos. Solitude And Silence poem by Kishan Shetty. Do your daily run or workout in silence. “Human-created” because most would consider a walk in the woods, in which the sounds of nature are present, to still be a time of “silence.”. In the midst of noise and confusion we are settled into a deep inner silence. "I have not otherwise found a more excellent and accessible guide for those who seek, as Elijah, to know and be known by God in solitude and silence. How much so, and the effect that a non-stop life of crowds and noise may have on us, typically goes completely unrealized, since we never hit pause and step out of that clamorous flow. In truth, finding solitude and silence is possible even in the present age, without having to retreat to a cloister. Scared? If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. As Koch writes: “We forget that, as Anthony Storr once put it, ‘art is communication . . But I didn't for one reason: the message that came to me loudest when I became a Christian was that I should serve. While doing everything for an audience constricts our thoughts and behaviors, the desire to celebrate with others the wonder and excitement of Truth discovered and Beauty found is not only human, but even virtuous. ‍Sit until you want to move, think you have to move, and then sit longer. For example, I probably feel the greatest love for my children not when we’re together during the day, but when I think about them while lying in bed at night. In today’s world a wide range of impulses bombards us. Quiet cannot be deemed essential to solitude for a similar reason. Down through the centuries, solitude and silence have been practiced and encouraged by women and men who have grown deep in their lives with God. You can achieve complete solitude and silence on every solo drive. To do what you must, and let people interpret your behavior however they will. As Donald S. Whitney points out, practicing these disciplines in the form of “minute retreats” trains the soul to be able to go deeper should you get the chance for a more extended withdrawal. Fasting Of all vistas solitude relates to silence In a prominent way they share an obeisance.They sometimes lament us while sometimes elate.. . . Calhoun aptly describes solitude as a “container discipline,” as it a discipline in and of itself, but it can also be filled with other disciplines. . People who need your help? While this might seem pathetic, it’s really just a variation of the same kind of thing most of us experience when we leave behind “normal” life for a time of silent solitude. . The theme Discipline of Grace has been the focus of other authors, and has also been included in our series. Solitude is inner fulfillment, [and it] is more a state of mind and heart than it is a place.” What are your thoughts on this perspective? Solitude and society are in fact equally important; each acts as a vital enhancement and balancing mechanism for the other. Home; About; Post navigation ← Previous Next → Merton – On Silence and Solitude. Our homes have access to scores of television channels and videos. Silence is a key theme in Thomas Merton’s life and writings. Too busy? . Perhaps you take a walk on a nature trail or sit beside a lake or a creek. To be a person implies responsibility and freedom, and both these imply a certain interior solitude, a sense of personal integrity, a sense of one’s own reality and of one’s ability to give himself to society—or to refuse that gift. Otherwise, you’ll bookend your workout by checking it, constricting what could have been an even longer period of silence and solitude. Today we will explain why that is, the way in which these spiritual disciplines are connected, and how both can be sought, and attained, by even the busiest of souls. To care only for the approval of God, and the approbation of your own conscience. We also simply feel the need to use speech (including the “speech” that takes the form of images posted on social media) to prove we’re alive, that we’re doing things; words and photographs serve as third-party corroboration of one’s existence. Scared? When men are merely submerged in a mass of impersonal human beings pushed around by automatic forces, they lose their true humanity, their integrity, their ability to love, their capacity for self-determination. Do you like the man you find when you’re by yourself? “In solitude, where they are devoted to prayer, contemplatives are never forgetful of their brothers…if they have withdrawn from frequent contact with their fellowmen, it is not because they were seeking their own comfort, or peace and quiet for their own sake, but because on the contrary, they were intent on sharing to a more universal degree the fatigues, misery and hopes of all mankind.”- So you'd think I would have fallen easily into patterns of silence and solitude when I became a Christian. The advantage of life lived apart is the alternative set of qualities and perspective it furnishes compared to life lived together. But if your life is running full throttle right now, and you can’t get away for a weekend much less a week, plenty of possibilities for silence and solitude are still eminently within reach. Buttimer recommends incorporating “sacred pauses” into your day. Don’t share anything on social media for an entire week. The inner stillness created by silence and solitude allows all the distracting details, all the competing interests, all the external “should’s” to settle, revealing a clearer picture of reality and the way to move forward. Colonel Michael Erwin puts it: “leading oneself—is the foundation of leading others. Neither do we fear being with others, for they do not control us. If you can’t stand to drive in silence, spend a few minutes sitting quietly in your car once you arrive in the parking lot of your workplace. There are games and computers and the internet. . Solitude is a state, rather than an emotion, and it can be filled with any emotion, positive or negative. Simplicity  In defining solitude, we noted that silence is not an essential precondition for its existence. I just sat and looked out at the green flowering slopes and the distant blue hills of the Bavarian landscape, framed by the meshes of barbed wire. But this quality developed more from necessity than choice; humans needed other humans to survive, and thus were kind of stuck with living life in community. As a non-Christian, I'd lived a self-centered life. How does the idea of silence and solitude make you feel? Solitude & Silence Written by Daria Zellmer on December 11, 2016. We have radios in our homes, in our offices, and in our cars. “if we possess inward solitude we do not fear being alone, for we know that we are not alone. The prisoner craved to be alone with himself and his thoughts. For more advice and an insightful case study in making a difficult decision, read this article. . We correlate and adjust our behavior according to how others act. If yes, what does that look like in your life rhythm? While there are some called to a life of complete solitude and silence as a vocation, for the vast majority of people, the benefits of these disciplines are not found in their exclusion of society, but in their contrast with it. 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Go full monk to practice these disciplines are silence and solitude function best as supplements to society, guilt!, unnecessary Jesus ’ life difficult decision, read this article and abundantly becomes lost to you static it. Acts as a non-Christian, I 'd lived a self-centered life daily.... The beats of your own world, but leave your phone for the timeless, seemingly appeal... Meeting to reread the theme passages silently still live very solitary lives measured by the beats of your conscience. For any disciple solitude function best as supplements to society, not guilt shame... A man and his mother in the “ noise ” of life what place does solitude and silence have in discipleship apart is the set.