Transformative Solitude: Nesting in God's Presence

well you were made to count you have a drive for significance god put that in you he put it in me it's a real good thing although it can easily get infected by ego but it is a drive that we are to honor and to nurture and to surrender to god and i want to talk to you today a bit about uh how to do that [00:00:19]

and i want to get to wisdom from another one of the masters we've often been thinking about ignatius in these days but there's a wonderful writer priest named henry nouwen and i want to get to some of his thoughts but i want to start in the book of acts when the spirit comes and peter gets up to speak in front of a whole bunch of people about jesus [00:01:16]

death itself far from being the end is actually a kind of new birth a kind of beginning we die in order to live he goes on to say for it was not possible death was not able powerful strong enough to hold him and it made me think of that poem by john dunn that you might know death be not proud [00:02:01]

and then he says and my body will also rest in hope and for body he uses the word flesh which so often um gives such a bad rap and flesh usually means just simply our lives apart from the power of god but our flesh our bodies are made to be redeemed you might just take a moment right now and relax your flesh relax your body take a deep breath [00:03:38]

and i love thinking about creating a little nest in the presence of god some people are gifted at nesting my wife is one of them i usually work in a little office off a garage and i would just let it look like whatever it looks like but nancy recently helped me pick out a beautiful picture for me to look at and the rug to put on the floor [00:04:16]

solitude is meant to be a kind of a gift now if you're introverted that might sound really good to you you look forward to it if you're extroverted you might hate that idea like solitude wouldn't be so bad as long as you could bring some friends along with you but it is an important part not the only part not the most important part but one important part of our spiritual journey [00:05:04]

in order to understand the meaning of solitude we must first unmask the ways which the idea of solitude has been distorted by our world we say to each other that we need some solitude in our lives what we're really thinking of however is a time and a place for ourselves in which we are not bothered by other people we can think our own thoughts express our own complaints do our own thing whatever it may be [00:05:47]

for them solitude is not a private therapeutic place rather it is the place of conversion the place where the old self dies and the new self is born the place where the emergence of the new man and the new woman occurs and in the bible very often the picture of this and the literal embodiment of it is in the desert in the wilderness [00:07:01]

now it goes on because how do i do this what do i do in solitude i get rid of my scaffolding no friends to talk with no telephone calls to make no meetings to attend no music to entertain no books to distract just me naked vulnerable weak sinful deprived broken nothing that sounds appealing doesn't it [00:07:53]

and there i can meet with god we first of all enter into solitude to meet with god and to meet with god alone there's a deep way in which when you try to go into solitude you can't get it wrong it's not primarily about what we do it's primarily about what we don't do i just abstain from all the scaffolding of my life from all the distractions from all the stimulation from all the conversation from all the noise [00:09:31]

and for me what happens if i am willing to stay in the solitude long enough is freedom spiritual practices disciplines if you want to call them that and some of you don't are always about freedom that's true for disciplines in general you practice scale so that you will be free to play the piano you recite a vocabulary or an alphabet of a foreign language so you will be free to say what it is that you want to say [00:10:05]

i build a little nest in my heart and it is constructive of hope and my poor flesh can rest there and then i can go back into the world having died to that old life nobody's freer than a dead man dead woman and then i find life so you might think today where can you carve out a little solitude you're doing it right now to nest in hope right now to be present to god right now [00:10:42]