Friday, April 26, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Solitude creates space for God
Our grandson has been sick for several days. That means for us two unexpected (and unwanted) free days this week. “We can play cards all day!” But we haven’t done that, and really don’t want to. However, all the unfinished businesses of our life have wormed their way into our time, and really I don’t want that either!
For example, I spent much of yesterday morning reading about and getting costs for: cataract surgery (May 13 and 20), dental work including crowns and fillings (May 6, etc.), diabetes medications (today), prognosis for toe infection and removed big toenail (Tuesday and next Monday). Did I miss anything?
Enough! Two bodies, both nearly 75 years old, wearing out. The only question is how much intervention we want to take, and that mostly allows us to pray, having faith in God’s faithfulness. Advice might come from every corner of the arena, but we both want the prayers to be what guide us.
Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions; if there were not, would not have told you? I go to prepare a place for you, so that where I am you also may be.
Inside our apartment it has been quiet, except when we are watching TCM or Hallmark Mysteries or Cubs baseball. Our upright freezer in the corner makes a regular sound, kind of a loud gurgle. Flies buzz. Outside when I hear a plane fly over on the way to the Austin airport, I sometimes click on my phone app Flightradar24, which shows our location and the plane flying by. Click on a yellow plane or helicopter icon, and its flight path appears. Phoenix to Austin. Seattle to Austin. Austin to London.
In the quiet, I imagine I’m on the plane. On a long flight I can go to sleep and when I wake up at 3, I see how far we’ve gone, over Canada, over the ocean, even over the North Pole. As Henri Nouwen says about our spiritual life, I can “live in the world without being of it.”
But Nouwen’s article is titled, “Solitude Creates Space for God, ” not “solitude creates space for watching airplanes.” See what you think:
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To live a Christian life means to live in the world without being of it. It is in solitude that this inner freedom can grow. Jesus went to a lonely place to pray, that is, to grow in the awareness that all the power he had was given to him; that all the words he spoke came from his Father; and that all the works he did were not really his but the works of the One who had sent him. In the lonely place Jesus was made free to fail. A life without a lonely place, that is, a life without a quiet center, easily becomes destructive. When we cling to the results of our actions as our only way of self-identification, then we become possessive and defensive and tend to look at our fellow human beings more as enemies to be kept at a distance than as friends with whom we share the gifts of life. Solitude. Silence. Quiet. At our friends the Miller’s house, just 12 minutes away, the silence is deafening. When I visit my brother John’s house in the middle of central Illinois countryside, I hear birds singing, and that’s all. But at our apartment, the roar of three nearby superhighways never stops. But solitude does not require silence. At night my fan lulls me to sleep. I awaken to a beautiful icon of Jesus, but then I look further into the chaos in my room, I am un-lulled. I close my eyes for a moment. Solitude arrives, recedes, returns again. One thing I know in my body and my mind. Solitude brings peace, and the relationship I have with my complicated physical world (including my aches and pains) becomes much less insistent. And Jesus? Here is the good news: that what God promised our fathers he has brought to fulfillment for us, their children, by raising up Jesus, as it is written in the second psalm, “You are my Son; this day I have begotten you.” |
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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