12 Witnesses

Consider here the traditional toss to Words Are Not Enough: Live From New Orleans from Joe Kennedy. There you will find a list of the bloggers and their subsequent posts on the various Spiritual Disciplines to date. Gracias.

Solitude. This discipline is much akin to Silence for many reasons, most obvious.

If I struggle with the discipline of Silence, then Solitude is all but a complete failure. I am alone, mostly when I am studying, but that time is so short as to be all but inconsequential in the process of solitude.

The benefit of solitude, much the same as silence, is for the ability to be unfettered by distraction. Whereas I perceive silence to be more about hearing from God, I sense that solitude is at least partially about our ability to process what God has spoken to us.

You see, for me, solitude is not necessarily silent. I’m a kinesthetic learner, so that means I think better when I walk and talk. That’s why I move around the stage when I preach. If I were stuck motionless behind the pulpit, I wouldn’t even be able to think through what I am saying at the moment. When it comes to processing my life, I like to walk and talk to God about everything. I usually create a trail to walk through even the smallest of places and then just move and let my mind go through the process, verbalizing as I go.

As such, it can’t be a short amount of time.

In order for us to process all that God is doing around us, we need to think individually about each situation and collectively about all of them so that we get glimpses of God at work in the little pictures and they inform the big picture.

I have a friend who keeps encouraging me to build in sabbatical times to my work and personal schedule. It sounds really good, too, but I have yet to do it. He said he takes a couple of days every three months and goes on a personal retreat by himself and spends time with God, reading his Bible and reading other books.

I think that one of the reasons I have yet to do it is that I am afraid of what the church might say. It doesn’t look like work to most American church members, who already suspect the pastoral staff of their church of having it too easy. This is often not helped by actual pastoral staff who “phone it in” and spend their days out of the office, out of reach. Espescially if they are then spotted recreating out in the community.

I digress.

The fact is that time alone is vital for our ability to process. As I am writing this article on Monday night, my kids are at the table still eating while I am trying to type. They were having one of the most juvenile conversations I could ever have imagined. (Imagine that - they’re kids!) On top of the lowbrow content of their conversation, they were also being loud and my son, Jimmy, was repeating a particular phrase that he found amusing. This is kind of his modus operandi. He is 13. Finally, I told them, “Hush!” Not in the, as my wife calls it, “preacher” voice, but in a kind of exasperated, “please can you give me a break” voice.

There was no silence, but the cacophony squelched slightly before regaining momentum. I shushed them a couple of more times before finally relenting and moving to another room. I can still hear them, but it is removed enough that I can put words together in coherent fashion.

You see, to think- to really process - we need to be alone.

Now, maybe I am splitting hairs between the outworking of Silence and the outworking of Solitude. Beyond these differences, though, I can’t see much else that separates them.

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