They used to say that lighthouse keepers went mad because of solitude. That was probably some of it, solitude is difficult, I think it had more to do with the fact that lighthouse lanterns used to spin on mercury and heavy metal poisoning will do terrible things to your brain. Trust me on this one, do not experiment with prolonged exposure to mercury.
I have been practicing solitude, not just out of the necessity of living and working at a summer camp in the dead of winter, but as a practice in spiritual discipline. Have you ever noticed how loud our lives are? Television, audiobooks, smartphones, radio stations, podcasts, they are so many things grasping at my attention, it is no wonder no one has the old testament moments of God literally speaking to Elijah (or was it Elisha?). We spend most of our energy creating noise to block out God and our own thoughts that solitude and silence become both impossible and terrifying. So, I have been practicing solitude and silence.
Every day I take a ten minute walk from the ranch house to the river through camp’s fields, no phone, no other people, no ipod blocking out my thoughts. I try to spend that time praying. Not praying the way that we so often think of it with me speaking about all of my problems and life issues, and certainly never with the flowery words that so many people think you have to use to pray. I am trying to be quiet, to listen in stillness.
It sucks.
Seriously, it’s the worst. It is so hard.
Sometimes it is hard because there was a strange sound and I am alone in the woods where I know there is a cougar and a pack of coyotes and I am pretty sure that is the way I am going to die. Sometimes it is because I have a lot of thoughts in my head that are difficult to quiet. Mostly it is because the river is the spot where I get the best cell service in about 10 square miles and I feel like I’m wasting time that could be spent sending important messages and checking emails and I don’t know how to discipline my mind enough to sit and be quiet without trying to do something or accomplish something. I have been conditioned since childhood, through schools and our culture of competition to overachieve so I can lead a mediocre life. I guess that’s why it is a discipline. And that is why I am practicing.
When I say spiritual disciplines, I mean discipline like practicing the piano every day (practice makes permanent), not a punishment for the fact that I actively ignore God most of the time. These times of solitude are not God putting me in time out, or me putting me in time out. They are me sitting down at the piano to play the same piece over and over until all of my mistakes are permanent. Or, maybe they are me sitting down and working through the piece carefully, until I don’t make those simple mistakes anymore and then making that perfection permanent. Practicing solitude and being quiet until God speaks is me letting God sort through all of the nonsense and noise of my life until the real work can begin.
I started practicing this discipline because I didn’t know how to pray anymore. I would lie down in my bed at night, or wake up to do my morning prayers, and get distracted. I get 20 minutes into a completely different series of thoughts until I remember that I am supposed to be talking to God. Worse than that though, I had the weight of a person and their troubles on my heart, but when I started praying for them one night I felt as though I was trapped in a box. The words just echoed back to me, and I knew I was the only one who would hear them. I knew that I was supposed to be praying over that person, I just no longer knew what I supposed to be praying for them and I had not listened to God recently enough to know where God was directing me. That was an isolating feeling. A different kind of solitude. So, obviously, being a fixer, I had to fix that.
How do you fix the fact that you don’t know how to listen to God?
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