The answer was so simple. The yearning, the anxiety, the restlessness needed to be addressed.
Suddenly the conclusion came thundering down on me like a bolt from the blue. The insight was hardly new. I had heard it from my earliest days. I needed to draw apart more and experience the Lord’s quiet time. Advent would be the perfect occasion.
It was so obvious. In this haste-make-waste world the very need for solitude gets lost in all the turmoil. Pre-consciously, we know the dangers of an all-consuming whirlwind existence, yet it barely registers.
And the Christmas present buying season is an ideal illustration of a preoccupation which obscures the meaning of the feast we eventually celebrate.
Consequently the best of us flounder in the depths of our involvements. It’s then that we look for the rough edges to be ironed out. Life has lost its zest and we turn to make-believe solutions and quick pickups. These might be the nearsighted answers of instant physicalism. Or the compulsion of viewer and buyer addiction. Or they might be the pill and tonic obsessions most of us have tried as we stumble looking for Mr. Goodbar.
But amid aching, cluttered heads and loves that involve little giving, we discover something is missing. And the more we turn to blind pursuits, the more we fear the quiet time which will expose our real selves.
Yet the risk of such exposure eventually becomes our very salvation. To stand naked before the Lord, whether in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament or in the privacy of our rooms, demands the courage of acknowledging who we are and what we have become.
It means seeing our sinfulness. But, once grasped and owned, we can then get on with the business of liking who we are and opening up avenues of growth.
Solitude is not necessarily prayer. But it can be a catalyst to prayer and the bridge by which the struggle of such self-revelation materializes into other possibilities.
The quiet time of which I speak needs to be set aside. Only then will opportunities to experience the warmth of the Father’s constant care for us emerge. Only then can we reciprocate in kind or sense the magic in the moments as we move out, with weak legs perhaps, into beautiful new areas of faith.
Gradually we learn a healthy dependency on the Lord. We begin to see that personal triumphs and victories with self-discipline are but a part of the picture.
Solitude is the time needed to affirm ourselves and choose the good. Feeling the Lord’s gentle nudge, it’s a glorious opportunity to experience our inner spaces and gain a new perspective on life. As Henri Nouwen expresses it, it’s the place of the great encounter and a time of conversion of heart.
Suddenly what was once important no longer is. The fears, the competitions, the vanities of false goals melt as a different horizon evolves. Pettinesses dissolve and life becomes a time of love again.
The feeling of preoccupation is ever natural. We’re too busy to schedule a time to be alone. But the naturalness of this feeling can leave us with a narrowness of vision. We can indulge ourselves in such a way that, without quiet time, we lack a feel for what really is real in the end.
at the bottom and then tap “Add to Home Screen”