I like stories, metaphors, analogies that take me somewhere. Make me think. Like this one first published in July, 2019. I have always lived where solitude and public life come together, imagining them like two streams merging in a forest or a desert. One would think such a merging would result in a new stream having equal parts. But such is rarely the case. How is it with you? Does your “public life” overwhelm the solitude so essential to one’s spiritual wellbeing? Maybe it’s time to put your toes in the water and see.

 

Two Streams

 

I HAVE TO GET OVER MYSELF

every now and again. I remain a rather private person who has lived a very public life. Not an introvert. Not a flaming extrovert. But it has been my experience that life lived out among people constantly needing or wanting something from you can become like an opioid addiction. Eventually you need it. You need to be needed. You feed on being needed until it consumes you. Until—

 

Sometimes you just want to go

Where everybody knows your name

And they’re always glad you came

You want to be where you can see

The troubles are all the same

You want to be where everybody knows your name.[1]

 

And then one day you realize you’ve burned out!

 

Growing up in farming/ranching country, instills an unquestioned work ethic. From my youth, I have been a “doer.” Much of the “doing” in my early years was done alone, with completion of a task the true measure of success. Alone there was time to “remember the days of old … meditate on all you have done … ponder the work of your hands.”[2]

 

IT IS DIFFERENT

in the role of pastor. For me it was “find a need and fill it.” Reach for the next even bigger challenge than the last. Prepare for and engage with tasks that will never be completed no matter how hard I might try. Whereas with each new day in the fields, I could see yesterday’s work clearly marked in the soil, it is much different in the soil of human hearts.

 

My life may not be much different from yours. Lived in the flowing together of two divergent streams, solitude and public life, solitude all too often being the loser. There is no hiding out in a pastor’s life. Even when alone one may not really be alone. Those you serve and their concerns are still a part of your everyday. They go with you, even if not physically present.

 

If you are a professional or business leader, a stay-at-home mom or dad, or retired and maybe a grandparent, it is likely you face this conundrum as well. The “doing” of the next big task, working with others on the job, nurturing and caring for family members at home, can be never ending and all consuming.

 

WHICH BRINGS US

weary and spent at the end of our busyness, to one of the Apostle Paul’s more esoteric statements. What does it mean to be “hidden with Christ in God?”[3]

 

If you have read my blog, Fewer Things, you know I am engaging in my newest holy adventure, permitting solitude to be a more meaningful part of my life. Solitude, not loneliness. Paul Tillich says it well, “Language… has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.”[4]

 

I’m reading The Imitation of Christ with fresh eyes these days. “Who knows himself well, is little in his own eyes, and is not pleased with human praise . . . love being unknown and being esteemed as nothing . . . It is great wisdom and high perfection to be unconcerned about ourselves and to be kind and attentive to others. A person who wishes to be good and devout, first of all puts his interior life in order and then attends to his other duties.” (Italics mine)[5]

 

Few of us are so heavenly minded we are of no earthly good. More of us are so earthly minded, we are of little heavenly good. As strange as it may sound to modern ears, our greatest danger is when we strive to be known and esteemed in the church and by the world, instead of loving being unknown and reduced in estimation.

 

Jesus is our example. “And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”[6]

 

TWO STREAMS

merge, public life and solitude, where true self identity and interior order is to be found. It is at the junction of these two streams that Paul declares, “your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

 

So who am I in this powerful new season of my life? Who are you? It is not what we hope others believe we are that matters. It is what we already are and believe.

 

According to Henri Nouwen “To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of our loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude.[7]

 

This is where we get our “who” right. “Who knows himself well, is little in his own eyes, and is not pleased with human praise . . .” It is how we rediscover the life for which we were created. A true follower of Jesus begins with humility.

 

Two divergent streams. Public self and solitude.

 

To be “hidden with Christ in God” in the confluence of these two streams is where I must put my “interior life in order and then attend to my other duties.”

 

Blessings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Theme song from the television series CHEERS

[2] Psalm 143:5

[3] Colossians 3:3

[4] Quote from Paul Tillich

[5] Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book 1, ch 2.

[6] Philippians 2:8

[7] https://henrinouwen.org/meditation/from-loneliness-to-solitude/