Introduction
To approach a discussion about solitude and intimacy it is necessary first to define solitude as something other than loneliness. Loneliness is an experience that can happen when a person is in isolation from others, or with others. Being with others doesn’t necessarily cure loneliness. Loneliness is a painful human experience that also can be destructive. Solitude is here defined as an alternative to loneliness and as something that is a type of remedy for it because it can be help to deeper connection to God and others.
A foundational premise for this article is that we are made for communion with God and others. The aim of this article is to grow in understanding of the relationship between solitude and intimacy so that we may deepen our loving communion with God and others.
The Context
There is an incredibly diverse amount of literature devoted to solitude. There are philosophers who have devoted works to its study, ascetics who have sought to incarnate their deepest yearnings through it, creatives who have found it essential to their creative work, and psychologists who have published research about mental health benefits to solitude. To keep this article brief I will not review that literature here but I do encourage you to research the topic as a way to have a more well-rounded appreciation of the topic.
Our culture mitigates against healthy solitude (for the purposes of this article I will use “solitude” and “healthy solitude” synonymously). We are more connected than we have ever been, in many ways. By air, by sea, by road, yes, but now by network, by cable, by fiber optic, by screen. We are never more than a hand’s reach away from a profound connectivity to the world of information and interactions, messages, communications. We search out connection constantly through affirmations in the form of likes, smiley faces, chats, and responses. Rather than seeing the cultural, digital, landscape as negative let’s ask ourselves what it reveals about human nature.
What is driving this need for connection?
We are made for intimacy, a type of intimacy that increases our communion with God and others. In any possible cultural scenario, this need, which is intrinsic to being human, drives everything that we do. It just gets a little messier in the digital landscape but it is still the same basic human need. To have a basic human need is a good thing, not a bad thing. It comes from our Creator and is something that we need to recognize. We neglect it at our own peril.
Our need for connection is from God and at the heart of how we are completed.
So, this article is particularly focused on solitude for God, or solitude that is oriented toward seeking Divine Union.
The Challenge
The human person is essentially good, made in the image and likeness of our Creator. But we are not entirely well, and in many cases, very unwell. Our need for communion with God and others is easily misdirected, distracted, and lost. The drive for completion is there, yes, but something happens. St. Ignatius of Loyola called this something the Enemy of Human Nature, otherwise knows as the World, the flesh, and the Devil.
Upon closer examination we see a World that despite many people of good hearts and wise intentions, is riddled by hatred, violence, and war. We see that the World, taken by itself, is fallen and lost, and that people are easily lead astray in it. We also see within ourselves a reality where with St. Paul we can say, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (Rom. 7:15), despite the fact that we may earnestly desire to be faithful to God.
And, then, if we really pay attention we notice something unseen, a force, a darkness, that envelops man and leads him to destructive darkness – and we see people who seem lost in servitude to this darkness, some who even glorify and promote it. While we have faith it doesn’t have the final say, its effects are real and tragic.
If we are honest with ourselves and our reality we should come to a somewhat stark assessment: we are good but not well.
We struggle to be present and loving to those we most love, and to our Creator. We often fall incredibly short, and hurt ourselves, and others. We harm our relationship with God, become alienated from Him, forget about Him, avoid Him, hide from Him, run from Him.
The Reparation
God alone can repair us, God alone can heal us. We have to go deeper than what our typical approach to devotions and prayer may allow. We need to encounter our Creator in solitude. Solitude doesn’t mean so much a physical separation from others as a willingness to be broken before God of our running and hiding from Him – to give up a definite time and space solely for Him alone.
Interior silence and stillness are essential elements of solitude.
It is good to come before God in silence and nakedness of spirit, like a child. The capacity to encounter God in solitude has to be grown into little by little. Too much at once is not good if we are not ready, but begin we must. As we begin to carve out time and space for solitude with God we can grow in our capacity for it, like any virtue. But it is important to remember that the aim of solitude here understood is not isolation but instead deeper intimacy with God and others.
Below I offer a way of being in solitude with God, an exercise, if you will, that can help to orient ourselves toward intimacy with Him in solitude.
An Exercise
Looking within oneself while before the Divine Presence begin to reveal where you are hiding from God – come out of hiding in the entirety of your being. Because we are a unity of body & spirit, one person, it can help to use the body as a reference point for the progressive revelation of self in the Divine Presence.
We can use conscious awareness to attend to the body by sensing where we seem to be most dark, most distant, most alienated from God.
Perhaps we will notice our eyes and how we have used them. Maybe we have committed the adultery of the heart that Jesus speaks of, using the eyes to dart and flit, to take, to steal, to deceive… show God your eyes, let His Divine Presence in, bare them before him. Maybe we also have used the eyes to scan for gossipy headlines and calumnious proclamations or our ears as portals for slander, for violence, for objectification.
Our eyes and our ears are incredible gifts, but have we treated them this way, have we recognized they are sacred, that they are senses of a temple made for Divine Union? Have we spent them that way? If not, there is darkness and alienation that has built up in our very being that needs to be exposed to the Divine Presence. Show it to Him, offer it to Him, come out of hiding in those very places of your being. Let Him in.
Perhaps you have been able to use your eyes to see beauty or to communicate loving presence, thank God for that. He is close.
The neck, the shoulders. Notice the tension, notice if there is any anxiety or even fear that drives it. Notice any self-reliance. In that very area of your being allow the words of Jesus to speak into you, ” Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest,” and give this up to Him. Reveal yourself to Him in your self-reliance, come out of hiding, come out of the darkness.
Notice how we can hold our self-reliance in the the back and into the pelvic area. Bring yourself before God there and offer it to Him as a humble gift, as what we really are, where we need Him most. Don’t keep any area of your being from Him.
When we move into the pelvic and genital region, this area may be the last place we often want to be honest with our Creator. Can we be humble here and honest? Can we admit that we are in the Divine Presence who has already seen everything? Can we be like a child before God in our woundedness, in our falling short, in our thwarted desires?
Hiding sin and pain associated with this part of our being can be particularly destructive but being weak and powerless before God might be the beginning of healing and deeper sexual integrity. Come out of hiding. Admit that God is Present and that He sees you. He sees more of you than you do. Do not be afraid of Him.
What about our shoulders, our arms and our hands? How have we used them to glorify God? Or, how have we spent them in ways that diminish the Creator and ourselves as His adopted children? Our hands are given to express the gifts God has given us, to comfort others, to express love. But, they can also be used to steal, to hurt, to abuse. Have we used our hands to hurt ourselves or others?
Or, are we being called to use our hands creatively in a way that we are afraid to respond to? Can we lay down our hands as if we are laying down our arms against God? Can we quit fighting against the Divine Presence and allow it into the depths of our experience? Allow God in, show Him what he already sees. You aren’t showing for His sake, but for your own, because you have been hiding from the Divine Presence.
Come out of hiding so that you can see yourself in Him. Leave alienation behind. Lay down your arms.
The legs – the running. We run from God! But how grateful we are to God for them for they work so hard for us. But what do they symbolize for us? How have we used them? Have we ran to God? Or, do we tend to run away from His advances? Do we stop to be still? The human person needs stillness in the Absolute.
Do we allow this? Slowing down is essential. The legs, how amazing they are, yet they can symbolize the one thing that most prevents intimacy – running from the Divine Presence. Remind yourself that your are in the Divine Presence, that you could run to the ends of the Earth and He will still be there. You can’t run away from Him, nor can you hide. Come out of hiding, let Him in.
The Divine Presence is wherever you could possibly run.
The feet, oh our poor feet. How we mistreat and abuse them. How busy we have been!!! Busy for what? Be gentle here, for the feet are sacred, they connect us to the Earth, to God’s splendid creation. Take off your shoes and socks for this is Holy Ground. Feel the ground.
Thank you Lord for these feet, may we take care of them. May we let God know we see our feet in Him that we may see ourselves grounded in His very being, rooted in His essence as our own ground, our own floor, our own foundation.
Conclusion
By progressively revealing the self to God like this in solitude we are doing a few different things that increase our intimacy with Him.
First, we are giving God time and space that is solely about growing in our relationship with Him. As we enter into solitude before the Divine Presence we may ask ourselves, what is my relationship like with God in the present moment? Sometimes I also ask myself, where am I currently placing my faith, my hope, my love? I notice the extent that it may currently be placed in self, or in persons, places, and things. This can be a good way to lead into the period of solitude with God.
In solitude we are careful not to distract ourselves from what is most essential: the Divine Presence of God and our relationship with Him in the present moment.
Second, by referring to the body we are honoring the fact that we are creatures who are united in body and soul, we are not pure spirits, or pure intellects, our thoughts alone aren’t the entirely of who we are – though we live often too much in our heads. We are embodied creatures who carry wounds that we may not see. Like Adam in the garden, we hide the parts of ourselves most in need of healing from God. We might typically only relate to Him with a part of ourselves we want Him to see or even something that is more fiction that truth. In solitude we bare our entire being before God, not neglecting to use the body insofar as it holds and signifies deeper realities that we may not be in touch with. It is sacramental in that way. We must not forget that we have been called to be temples of the Holy Spirit.
By showing these places to God we are allowing His Spirit to touch us, and heal us. We are becoming more intimate with Him by coming out of our alienation, our hiding, our shame. We are trusting Him to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. We are letting the love and personal care of Jesus’ heart for us into the depths of our experience of being.
Third, because God is truth, seeing ourselves before God we grow in humility before His greatness, before His love, before His gentle touch. This helps us to be more present to ourselves, to live in a self-awareness that more deeply reflects our reality as creatures created for loving communion with God and others. Also, the reality of the Divine Presence makes us more loving, more gentle, more patient, more present. It helps us to let go of the egos many defenses and escape routes. They weren’t working anyway, they were only leading to misery and loneliness.
The paradox is that solitude for God leads to deeper intimacy with others.
I trust that some who read this article will have experienced this: intimacy with God increases our capacity to be intimate with others. But, perhaps we have forgotten, or we distracted ourselves from this truth, or we are called to deeper faith in it. What we may be called to in our lives is allowing for space and time for solitude to be before our Creator and grow in intimacy with Him. There is nothing more life-giving than God our Creator. He is the foundation and end of our being, the reason we exist, and we find ourselves only in Him and we lose ourselves without Him.
How can we be present to those we are called to love if we are lost to ourselves? We find who we truly are only in God. We can be present to others when we are present to God and self.