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2024
Fertile solitudeSunday, December 24, 2017
From Luke 1 Driving a thousand miles. In every town Margaret and I drive through, churches are full. But in many living rooms, dens and kitchens there are quietly lonely folks waiting through another holiday alone. Often depressed, they feel unsure about how to spend their time when everything is closed and everyone else is with their loved ones. I've been there, in 1972, driving the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina, alone on Christmas for the very first time. The lights were garish, not bright. Honking cars, not jingling bells, hurt my ears. And I wept. That was 45 years ago, and these days, I think I "know a thing or two because I've seen a thing or two." (I love those Farmers Insurance ads.) Christmas Eve's quiet night settles me. Often I watch the Vatican's Christmas Mass, wishing the translator would let me listen to the sounds of so many languages without sharing as many of his thoughts. In Austin tonight, I hope to pay a midnight visit to St. Thomas More Catholic Church. I'll take a little flashlight, and maybe walk the labyrinth after the service. I like to do this kind of thing alone. Extravert that I am, this solitude blesses me. In her wonderful weekly column "Brain Pickings," Maria Popova remembers what Adam Phillips asked about "replenishing privacy: In states of solitude what does the adult depend upon? To what does she risk entrusting herself?" What it comes down to, I think she thinks that he thinks, is that fertile solitude is not so much an absence of company as a presence of ... what? "Our own available ghosts?" God, our perpetual witness? In any case, this kind of risk-taking solitude can be creative rather than cut-off, allowing me a quality of attention "in which what could never have been anticipated appears." Sometimes this is called "flow," the experience of suddenly gathering up into some creative expression what Tchaikovsky called "the thousand shifting moments in the mood of a soul." A beautiful prospect for Christmas Eve, or any other eve. Like so much of the rest of life, the way to walk a labyrinth is step by step by step. On this day before Jesus' birth, on this night of Jesus' birth, all my words are shut up and carried into the sounds of angels singing, bells ringing, choirs keeping watch over us by night. How still we see thee lie. Let me be a lamb, Lord, and curl up with you and sleep when it's time to sleep. While the silent stars go by. |
We are on the road today.