Into the Quiet

Exploring the spiritual practices of solitude and silence in a noisy world.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

Hey friends!

Winter is sneaking its way into what has been a relatively warm autumn here in London. The ground is quickly filling up with fallen leaves, the cool air of the evenings makes warm sweaters and cozy socks a must, Christmas lights in London go up in less than a week, and it seems I’m beginning to see signs that the seasons are changing.

Although I’d love to linger on the autumn colors and crisp November walks, I suppose it’s not possible to begin this post without acknowledging that this week has been joyous for some and devastatingly hard for others as people across the United States live in the aftershocks of another chaotic election. At first I thought it might be best to hold off this week and connect with you all after the dust settles, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that talking with you about the spiritual practices of solitude and silence couldn’t come at a more important time.

Although living in the UK during a U.S. presidential election year has spared me from the relentless flood of campaign ads and uncomfortable conversations, my social media feed is still pulsing with polarizing views. Election season is just about as noisy as it gets.

I suppose my hope is that reading about the practices of solitude and silence this week will be like water springing up in a dry desert. My longing is that this post invites you to look closely at the things that hold your attention, reflecting on what an act of resistance to an age of distraction looks like for you. My prayer is that as we move slowly through this post together, you can feel God’s invitation to a pace that lingers, a pace that welcomes margin and embraces silence, a pace that invites you into the deep, a pace that deposits you in a suspended peace in the midst of a chaotic and noisy world.

So, let’s dig in together…

Solitude is a practice of abstinence — it is a removing, a taking away, a stripping back of sorts — and by doing nothing in the presence of the one who created everything, we find ourselves awakened.

We can’t talk about solitude for a single moment without recognizing that as a society, we are constantly overwhelmed by stimulation and pre-occupations. It is nearly impossible to go through an ordinary day without being overstimulated by the media, our devices, conversations, or a constant flow of distractions. Moreover, we are busy and life is demanding, in some seasons more than others. Often when we find ourselves in a sliver of solitude, we look to fill that silent space with something — social media, TV, podcast, music, reading, the options are endless — and these are not all bad things necessarily, but we’ve conditioned ourselves to a steady beat of stimulation and in the process we can easily dismiss solitude or misunderstand it altogether.

In contemporary culture, we are constantly consuming, and in many ways, we don’t stand a chance. Tech companies have gone to great lengths to exploit any means necessary to harness our brain’s dopamine system. We have more screen time than any generation in history, and the effects on our social interactions, relationships, and children are shocking. In any given moment, there are a million different things vying for our attention and plenty of reasons to give in. All of this, whether we like to admit it or not, is forming us. Although the practices of Jesus are practices in spiritual formation, formation is not just a spiritual thing. We are constantly being formed by what we consume, by others, by society, the list goes on.

Not only are we tech obsessed and distracted, but we are also incredibly productive. Productivity is one of the highest values in a consumer-driven society, especially in the U.S. where 46% of Americans don’t even use all their paid time off. We are so focused on being productive and efficient that anything which asks us to do nothing seems like a waste of time.

This is the world that the practice of solitude enters.

Solitude asks us to do absolutely nothing on our own with God for an extended period of time. In a world that feeds off productivity and noise, it is the most countercultural of all the practices of Jesus. It is also certainly one of the hardest in my own experience. And yet, solitude is extraordinarily transformational and it feeds into all of the other practices in remarkable ways.

Henri Nouwen writes, “Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.”¹

Solitude and silence go hand in hand, and together they will transform your life, not only because these practices are a direct resistance to the temptation to produce and consume, but because they require you to confront your whole self alongside the one who created you. There is nowhere to hide or nothing to hide behind — we are found by the Creator in all our nakedness and though it is terrifying, it is also incredibly freeing because we are found in his love.

Maybe the idea of solitude sounds like a gift to you right now in the midst of a busy life, or maybe it sounds like your worst nightmare. Either way, the practice of solitude is one of the most important spiritual disciplines in our culture today, and adding this rhythm into your rule of life will transform you.

Solitude strips everything away, compelling me to just be present, and in the process, through God’s intervention, I somehow become aware of myself—my gifts, my true self, my false selves, my doubts, my longings—alongside God.

Dallas Willard says, “Our aim in solitude is to simply be alone and to do nothing…In solitude, things will happen – you can bet on that. But, you’re not the one who is making them happen. And, you simply are enjoying the freedom of being there, and enjoying your consciousness and your life, and coming to terms with the fact that that really is valuable; it’s good. And, that, I think is the hardest part for people who are driven, like most of us tend to be, to accomplish. So, you’re not going to accomplish anything. So, you say, ‘well, then why do it?’ Well, something will be accomplished, but you won’t do it.”²

I began dipping my toes in the water of silence and solitude about five years ago. I had been following Jesus for just over two years and I was eager to continue to see how his practices could transform me. I had been working my way through Jesus’s rhythms of grace, but solitude and silence were at the bottom of my list, stashed away with Sabbath. As an Enneagram 2, aka ‘the helper’, these practices felt really hard for me. Not only did they require me to be silent and look inward, something I often struggled with, but they required me to do nothing. There was no doing and no ‘other’ for me to focus on but myself. Quite frankly, it terrified me.

Yet, in an effort to move toward Christlikeness, I began to set aside time each morning to just be alone and silent. At first, I couldn’t get through a few seconds without my mind racing and my body eager to do something with my thoughts. But, over time, I was able to still myself longer and then longer.

Some days, I felt completely alone in the stillness. Other times, I felt God’s presence all around me. Occasionally, negative thoughts pervaded my mind and I found myself distracted. But, I kept trying. And what I found in that silence and solitude was that God was always waiting there. Patiently longing for me to pause it all and just be present with him. Out of this solitude came transformation that required nothing of me except my time and a willingness to surrender it.

Dallas Willard is one of my favorite teachers in the way of Jesus. He teaches on solitude in his lecture “Silence and Solitude”, and I encourage you to have a listen to it in its entirety. Willard says,

“What I have tried to help people come to terms with here is that [in solitude] you don’t do any work. So, that means you leave your email, and you leave your undone writing and all of that sort of thing, you just don’t take it with you or you leave it alone. And, you focus just on being alone. Well, what about God? Well, God may come to be with you, along with Satan, and a few wild beasts. So, you accept that but you don’t try to make God show up. This is one of the most troubling things for people who are learning to enter into solitude is their expectations as to what is supposed to happen. You want to start from the idea that what is supposed to happen is nothing. Nothing. You’re learning how to just be there. And, this is a part of the disentanglement that goes into the discipline of abstinence… Solitude is designed to totally take us off of what we do.”

When you begin to disentangle yourself from the productivity and the doing, transformation begins to take place. And, it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with God.

So, what did God reveal to me in my first entry into practicing solitude?

My personality has always been ‘other’ focused, and this is not to brag about selflessness because in many cases my doing fed into pride in ways that were hidden and quite selfish. But, I am drawn to work which allows me to help others. During this particular season of life, I was teaching full-time, tutoring outside of my teaching, hosting alpha groups at church, serving on the prayer team, volunteering at charities in LA — I had built my life on helping others and I loved it. And, let me be clear, there is nothing wrong with any of these things, but I had conditioned myself to focus so much on others, in the process I had completely resisted dealing honestly with myself.

It was in solitude where I came face-to-face with my whole self. It was in silence where God’s whispers of identity and calling and love shaped and transformed me. It was in this space, alone and into the quiet, where alongside God, I confronted my own shadows. I faced my false selves, masks I had worn, pain I had hidden, longings I had ignored.

You see, on paper I was doing everything right in my Christian walk. I was attending church regularly, praying daily, seeking to love people well and helping others. I was serving my community through teaching and volunteer work. I was doing all the right things, but I wasn’t going to the deep inward places. I wasn’t confronting my shadows or shattering the false selves which had been built up over decades of living in a broken world. Solitude created the space in my life to face myself before God.

It was in solitude and silence where God brought these things to the surface. In this space, I experienced the “furnace of transformation” Nouwen speaks of. It was out of solitude where I began to gain confidence in my identity, an awareness of my tendencies, and an understanding of God’s calling on my life. But, I had to do nothing in order to see clearly. I had to surrender in solitude and silence to experience God’s deep inner transformation.

Years later I would enter a six month sabbatical and God would meet me powerfully in the longer days of solitude in that season. And here is the truth, I am always tempted to rely on my own self-sufficiency, to get sucked back into upward mobility, and forget the importance of solitude. So, I have to continually bring myself back into the quiet place to center myself around God again. Because it is out of this place of intimacy that I can be fully alive in all God calls me to do.

In Scripture, we see God’s people continually implementing the practice of solitude in order to walk in their identity and calling with confidence, and we certainly see a rhythm of solitude woven into Jesus’s ministry.

In all the gospels, there are countless moments where Jesus retreats to be alone with God. His regular practice of silence and solitude allow him to be fully present with the Father and it is out of this place that he walks in his identity and calling with confidence.

In fact, Jesus only begins his public ministry with forty days of solitude and silence in the wilderness. Before he publicly walks in his calling, Jesus retreats to be alone with God. In this space, he confronts the enemy, he is attended to by angels and nature, and he is strengthened by God. Jesus comes out of the wilderness, out of the solitude, ready to do God’s will.

Throughout his ministry, Jesus retreats to solitude to be alone with the Father constantly.³ He knew the importance of solitude with God in a chaotic world. He wasn’t impervious to the demands the world imposes, in fact, he was constantly being bombarded by the demands of others, everyone vying for his attention. Jesus chose to step away from the crowds to be alone with God because he knew it was only through this space that he could stay aligned with God’s will and be renewed in the Spirit to walk in God’s plans. If practicing solitude was vital for Jesus to do his ministry, how much more is it for us?

Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still and know that I am God”. It is only through solitude that we can allow this truth to move from our head to our heart. Thomas Merton once said, “The deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words and beyond speech, and it is beyond concept.”

It is only through solitude that we can truly live in this world in the way God longs for us to. It’s in solitude where we commune with God, and it’s in communion with God that we can know ourselves best and live out that identity in the world.

Curious about going into the quiet of solitude? Here’s a practice you can try.

Begin your day with a few minutes of silence and solitude. Set your alarm for a bit earlier before the rest of your household is up, especially if you have children. In the morning, your body is already rested and this can help you ease into this practice.

Find a quiet place in your home or outside in nature. Turn your phone off, or leave it in another room on silent.

Get comfortable where you are seated and take a few deep breaths. It might be helpful to simply inhale deeply through your nose, and exhale slowly through your mouth. Do this a few times.

As you inhale, welcome God into the solitude. I often use a phrase like, “Here I am, Lord” or “Come Holy Spirit”.

Recognize that in the beginning, your mind may start racing. Thoughts may come pummeling in about your day or your worries. Don’t be too hard on yourself here. Just focus yourself back to those deep breaths and repeat your prayer phrase with each breath. Do this for a minute or two just to settle yourself in.

Do nothing. Now just rest and soak in God’s presence. Perhaps you feel nothing beyond being still. As Willard suggests, let go of any expectations as to what you should be feeling and just be present. Don’t try to control the experience, just sit in the stillness of solitude for as long as you’re able.

Whenever you are done, bring yourself out of this space with a prayer of gratitude. Thank you God for being present with me in this moment. Help me to still myself before you regularly in solitude. Amen.

Try doing this practice each morning for the next few weeks and see what transformation comes out of it. I find it’s helpful to keep a journal and jot down my experience after or note any change in my behavior or demeanor throughout the day.

If you find yourself having longer periods of time to sit in solitude, embrace these moments because not all of our seasons in life allow for this. Although God is always working in and through us, he does so most powerfully when we commune with him in solitude. May this practice be a blessing to you.

The Poetry Nook

I am praying again, Awesome One.

You hear me again, as words
from the depths of me
rush toward you in the wind.

I've been scattered in pieces,
torn by conflict,
mocked by laughter,
washed down in drink.

In alleyway I sweep myself up
out of garbage and broken glass.
With my half-mouth I stammer you,
who are eternal in your symmetry.
I lift to you my half-hands
in wordless beseeching, that I may find again
the eyes with which I once beheld you.

I am a house gutted by fire
where only the guilty sometimes sleep
before the punishment that devours them
hounds them out into the open.

I am a city by the sea
sinking into a toxic tide
I am strange to myself, as though someone unknown
had poisoned my mother as she carried me.

It's here in all the pieces of my shame
that now I find myself gain.
I yearn to belong to something, to be contained
in an all-embracing mind that sees me
as a single thing.
I yearn to be held
in the great hands of your heart--
oh let them take me now.

Into them I place these fragments, my life,
and you, God -- spend them however you want.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God (trans. by Barrows and Macy)

There’s a Book on That

Although I can’t talk about silence and solitude without recommending Ruth Haley Barton’s Invitation to Silence and Solitude, I’ve already recommended that one in a previous post. So, I will instead share one of my favorite books on the spiritual disciplines, Dallas Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines. This is one of those books which will challenge and change you in ways which are hard to articulate. Willard is remarkably gifted and his words have been deeply formative for my walk with Jesus. If you only read one book on the spiritual disciplines, this is it.

I find it nearly impossible to pick just one quote from this book, but here we go. As always, here is a taster:

“It is part of the misguided and whimsical condition of humankind that we so devoutly believe in the power of effort-at-the-moment-of-action alone to accomplish what we want and completely ignore the need for character change in our lives as a whole. The general human failing is to want what is right and important, but at the same time not to commit to the kind of life that will produce the action we know to be right and the condition we want to enjoy. This is the feature of human character that explains why the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We intend what is right, but we avoid the life that would make it reality.”

Just in case you missed these recent posts:

• Living Generously: Generosity is not just a nice idea, it is a practice of Jesus and a way of living which can completely transform us. How can we live generously in regards to our time, talent, and treasure?

• Recovering the Ancient Practice of Sabbath in a Busy World: What is Sabbath and why does it matter? I've had my own battle with this spiritual discipline but the more I study Sabbath, the more I'm convinced it is crucial for a joyful life.

• Building a Rhythm of Prayer: Prayer is the most natural thing we can do as human beings because it is in our very design to communicate with the one who created us. Can a rhythm of prayer lead to transformation?

• Navigating Political Conversations with Grace: There isn't anything quite more divisive these days than politics. So, what does it look like to engage in political conversations with grace?

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Thanks again for reading this week’s newsletter. Cheers to diving into the deep together!

With love,

Jamie

1. Nouwen, Henri. The Way of the Heart. Random House Publishing, 1982.

2. Willard, Dallas. Solitude and Silence Lecture. Conversatio Divina, 8 June 2012. https://conversatio.org/solitude-and-silence/

3. Mark 1:12, Mark 1:35, Luke 5:15-16, Luke 6:12-13, 3:13, Mark 1:45, Matthew 14:13, Mark 6:31-32, Matthew 14:23, Mark 6:46, Matthew 15:29, and Mark 14:32.