"a need for solitude..."

"I have a need for solitude
I never feel peace
in crowded rooms.
I like the sound
of silence coming on..."

The following, remarkable photo taken by my friend, Todd Herzer, was the perfect reminder to revisit the following post from 2010 - about my once, insatiable need for solitude.

  
Sometimes re-visiting the depths of my own spiritual journey starts with a photograph or a song. Mary Chapin Carpenter has sung me down many a dusty road.  With my hands on the wheel, sobbing, driving hard and fast just to get away from the sadness, her songs have been the answer to my  prayers for a song that will make me feel less alone.

Her CD "The Age of Miracles," was borne on the wings of her own "miraculous" adventure through a life-threatening health-related crisis.  A wilderness experience that led her into a period of what she characterized as" painful depression, fear, and anxiety." 

The lyrical content of this CD is masterful, sobering, intuitive, and deeply moving. What it takes me hundreds of words to hint at, she hammers home with three verses.  When married to her musical vision, it is a CD that makes my heart weep, sing, and soar.  Her songs have always reminded me that I am not alone on this wilderness path.

There are cuts on this CD that I can't help but listen to with my eyes closed.  It is almost as if I am remembering how it felt to have lived through the moments that gave the song birth.  She is singing from her own experience, but like a tuning fork, it is resonating with my own.

There is one song that, when I read its title, "I Have a Need for Solitude," I couldn't help but wonder if we weren't actually "twin daughters of different mothers."

For me, solitude is not just a refreshing interruption from the otherwise social norms of people and events. Solitude is my natural habitat -- like salt water to a sea anemone. I need it. 

It is the oxygen I begin to gasp for, after a long day of truly wonderful conversations, and deeply inspiring interactions with people who I truly love. And it has only been by the grace of God, that I have learned to accept and appreciate the importance of these shifting levels of aloneness in my life.  But that was not always the case.

There was a time when I seemed to need solitude in a way that was almost crippling. My need to be alone felt insistent.

There were days when taking our daughters to school, or having people come into our home, was terrifying. It was as if the sound of other people's voices, their shapes slicing through the changing light, the movement of air, the rustling of atmospheric ions as they stole from room-to-room, felt like someone was sucking all of the carefully negotiated alone-ness out of my perfect solitude -- and I couldn't breathe.

Unfortunately, my profession as a spiritual healer seemed to give me an endless supply of "get out of jail" cards --justifications for why I needed to leave a party, a gathering, a dinner.  My work gave me one great excuse after another for demanding my solitude. 

I would seek it out from daybreak to well-past midnight.  Often staying up through the night, because it was only after my family went to bed, that I could most easily find it.   

There was a point in this chapter, when my favorite place in the world was a three foot by five foot windowless, cedar-lined closet under the eaves of our house where I had a little chair, table, lamp and fan. I would take my phone, and go there for hours on end, just to take be alone in the dark, take calls and pray. For me,  it was a slice of heaven. It became a self-imposed tomb that I never wanted to leave.

Yes, I did learn to cope with the need to be out-and-about as a mother, wife, professional, and member of my community.  But it was a coping - not the peaceful shift from alone to "in company" that I knew was balanced and right.  The ache for solitude was never far from reach. I took it with me wherever I went. And when society became too much, I would retreat. I would leave. I would excuse myself and find a place to hide - a bathroom, a closet, the backseat of my car, under a quilt, in my head -- all alone. 

Social gatherings felt cloying, dense, and paralyzing. Solitude was like walking into a fresh, sweet, light-filled clearing -- a high mountain meadow, fragrant with the scent of chamomile and pine. 

But as much as I loved it, and as happy as it made me,  it was not freeing or liberating.  I truly thought that I couldn't be "me" anywhere else. My need for solitude had become a prison, instead of the open space I thought it was.  I was trapped in the self-certainty that without solitude I could not be inspired or creative. It felt like madness, and I didn't know how I would find my way out of the labyrinth of my own creating -- or if I even wanted to.

And then something quite beautiful happened. 

On a very ordinary day - while I was sitting all alone in my perfectly silent kitchen - I realized, that in all spiritual actuality, solitude was impossible. 

And in that moment, I started to feel the grip of my need to be alone, relax.   Solitude was no longer the holy grail in my life. Just like that.

As I sat there surrounded by blue and white gingham and bathed in golden light, I found myself asking, "Why would I  want something that was never going to be true in God's eyes."

It was as clear as day to me that I couldn't be me - truly me - all alone, without you. And not just the "you" of my immediate friends and family -- my husband, my children, my friends.  But all who I am blessed to have waft through my life -- like the perfume of hyacinth blossoms on a warm spring day.

I realized that I could express love, without "you."  I could not discover myself as generous, kind, compassionate, honest, forgiving -- without you. Each of the you-s in my life, allow me to more fully be who I am. God's beloved and be-loving child. 

Although it's been a struggle at times to remember that I really do want to be this "best me," -- and not someone who seeks out closets and solitude like a drug -- I now find, that even in those lovely moments when the gift of solitude does descend like a divine surprise upon my day, I am no longer more at peace than in a crowded room or a noisy kitchen. I've stopped seeking something spiritually unattainable -- since, in Truth, we can never really be alone anyways. We live together as "one universal family, held in the gospel [the good news] of Love."

We are not, as Mary Baker Eddy states in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "isolated, solitary ideas." We are each, and all, members of the body of Christ, the spiritual collective called "man." In Truth, we are but individual saplings - the branchings of a vast root system.  We are the offshoots of one spiritual organism -- one that is even larger than "the aspen grove," which stretches its arms across the Continental Divide. We are one with "the earth and the sky, one with everything in life," -- and I am as much you, as I am myself. We are His.

Yes, to answer the unasked question, I still love my solitude.  I love my alone time when the house is clean, the silence is golden, scent trails of lavender swirl with the shifting breeze. In that space figurative notation paper hangs in the air -- just waiting for poetry and music to find their positions, like birds on a wire, and become a song or a prayer. 

 But I no longer like my life better without people in it. I no longer think that I need soliude to be myself -- to breathe, to feel peaceful, or to hear God's voice. 

And yet, as Mary Chapin Carpenter sings, I will always love, and welcome, "the sound of silence coming on." 

Thank you MCC -- so grateful you are in our world.  I have missed your voice.  Thank you for your words, your music, your heart that sings to us of miracles. Thank you for bringing this statement to life for me:

"My sense of nature's rich gloom,
is that loneness lacks but one charm
to make it half divine — a friend,
with whom to whisper, 
"Solitude is sweet."

- Mary Baker Eddy  

I smile when I think of this verse today. In it, I am sitting in the forest with my back to the trunk of a sturdy tree -- but not all alone, just all quiet.  Around me are countless other solitude lovers -- basking in the pine-filtered light, the wind-hushed quiet, in our aloneness -- together.


offered with gratitude -- and with Love,

Kate

"i'm barely breathing…"

"I'm falling apart,
I'm barely breathing,
with a broken heart,
that's still beating..."

I can't hear Lifehouse's "Broken," without remembering.

It's been almost two decades now, but the moment is seared on my fingertips. The pattern of the damask on the love seat where I was sitting that day burned into my flesh. The light coming through the mullioned panes in the bay window. The fragrance of steam rising from the teacup poised at my lips.

This was the setting for my "crisis of faith."  You see, if there was one thing I'd been sure of -- my entire childhood -- it was that I would do anything for my family. I would allow myself to be shattered into a million pieces, if it would hold us all together. And I was convinced, that I had done, just that. I was sure that, because I had put my love for my family before everything else, I was heeding the voice of an overarching universal Love.  For in this place of loving them most,  I felt detached from the suffering, the sadness, the loneliness of it all.

But that day, almost 30 years after the suffering had subsided, I heard words I never imagined, "you know, I really never felt that I loved you as a child…"

How could that be. How could I have sacrificed everything for someone who could blithely admit that I'd never been loved -- much less, appreciated for all I'd gone through. I felt betrayed. Not by this person who was so oblivious to the fissure she'd set off in the fragile shell of my heart, but by God.

How could God have let me suffer so persistently, when the one I was devoted to helping, didn't even love me. It was more than I could bear. I felt as if I could actually feel the small cracks inside tear through my being. I wondered if I would survive the moment without going insane. Madness insinuated itself at every turn. The fight I'd waged against disassociation for most of my life, was taking me down for the count.  It seemed likely that this battle was on the verge of ending -- with me in a straightjacket.

For so many years, I'd survived by holding on to the promise that God loved me, and that even if I couldn't understand the reason for my circumstances, I could cling to the hope that the love that I had for my family was more than enough evidence of God's presence in my life, to keep me safe and sane.

The days that followed this careless moment of confession were surreal. I wandered through my days in a haze of "just keep it together, Kate. Don't let anyone know you are losing your mind. You have children, you have a career, you have responsibilities. You can do this, you did it as a girl, you can do it now." But I couldn't. As a girl, I'd had God. I'd held on to the promise of spiritual purpose. Without God, I had nothing.

As the madness descended, I disappeared. I hid in my work, I escaped into a closet where darkness was a friend and the voices that hissed, "you were never loved…" were somewhat drowned out by the sound of silence. I wept for the death of hope. I mourned the loss of my one truth -- I'd been loved, it had all been for a divine purpose.

One of our neighbors was a grief counselor, and although I didn't feel comfortable pouring out my whole miserable life story to her, I found myself wandering over for tea -- often. I needed to know that someone out there cared about those of us who felt bereft and completely lost in sadness.

I listened intently as she talked about the books she was reading, the exercises she used to help her clients heal, the messages that made a difference. But nothing was finding its way through the sharp cracks in my heart, and reaching the soft flesh of my pain.

Then one day, while sitting in my dark little closet under the eaves -- and yes, it really was a closet. I felt something begin to rustle in my heart. It was like the light I was hoping would reach in through the cracks from without, was pouring out through them from within. There was a warm feeling of love, a soft light, radiating outward. It burnished the edges of each fissure and caused them to glow like fire-touched shards of ancient pottery.

All the hope I had for being healed by a system, a person, a message of comfort was obscured by the power of this inner surety -- I had been loved by God. A clear knowing that I was, in those moments of crucifixion, the very love of God being shown to my family -- regardless of what they thought, saw, or felt about me.

The fissures in my heart became the windows of my soul. I was not hiding in the dark, waiting for the light of day to stave off the madness, I was the light. I was not the shattered shell.  I was the inner light -- the divine magna -- bursting forth from within.

My crisis of faith was over. I knew that nothing could ever -- again -- deprive me of who I was. I was not the object of love. I was not a child hoping, waiting, praying to be loved. I was the very love of Love. This had always been my purpose, my identity, my life -- all along.

I had not let go.  I had held on long enough. I had not lost my faith in God. I had found a new sense of who I was in relation to God. My love for God and my trust in His love for me, was never going to be a guarantee that I would feel loved by others.  Nor would it justify the sacrifices made. My love for God and his love for me was enough. It was, in fact, everything. It always had been, and now, it always would be.

Every time I read this statement from Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, I smile. I had long thought that if God loved me, I would find a place where there were no disappointments or woes. But I have since discovered that this is exactly where my most profound spiritual discoveries actually have their beginnings:

"Our disappointments
and ceaseless woes,
turn us like tired children
to the arms of divine Love,
then we begin to learn life
in divine Science."
 

My "crisis of faith" was not an interruption of my love for God, my faith in His omnipotent goodness, or my trust in his care. It was actually the beginning of a higher and deeper understanding of how invulnerable my relationship to Love, and my purpose as Love's reflection, is.

I remember, some years ago -- after having this experience -- hearing of Mother Teresa's crisis of faith.  I understood.  It is possible to love God supremely, to give your life to His service and the care of his children, and still be shattered by the suffering in the world - your own or that of others.  But it is this breaking open of the heart, that allows compassion to pour out with with greater understanding.

And I -- for one -- am grateful for every opportunity to draw closer to Him.

offered with Love and profound gratitude,
Kate