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Friends United Meeting |
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May 2000
Encounters in Solitude
by Linda Lee
What gifts I have received since becoming a Quaker! Most recently, the gift is solitude.
Here at Quaker Hill Conference Center I sit at a table overlooking a tangle of trees visited by cardinals. Here is a room exemplifying simplicity. I brought food, clothing, journal and writing materials. Everything else I need is here, yet there is nothing extraneous. I thank God for those who, recognizing the value of solitude, donated time and money to create this place.
Many people find answers to their questions by talking with friends or pastors. I have done that too. But once I spent five months mostly in solitude and I know that visiting with myself and no one else opened me to God's love. I experienced that love so fully, that my soul was stretched. How could Jesus bear so much love? For days I could do nothing but thank and praise and sing hymns. Unlike Jesus, I could not sustain that perfect love and gradually over two months, contracted back to a more usual way of being.
Solitude now brings me in less dramatic ways to that love. Knowing the love of Christ brings with it a responsibility to express that love in action. I fill my time with people and activities. Yet when I become ill, when I do too much, when I scatter my resources like leaves, beautiful but blown from the tree, I come back to solitude, to seek and reconnect with God.
Sitting in silence, my mind becomes still. I pray for family, for friends, for people in our Meeting, for myself. Then I wait. Sometimes a thought comes, or I notice my body, then I see a vibrant purple color, luminous like sun through a prism. Sometimes I sit with that color for a while-maybe an hour-but usually I forget about purple and wait in stillness. When thoughts do come, they drift like distant clouds in a clear sky.
Today, my third day in what has become a sacred place for me, I realize that I have more clarity about several decisions I need to make. These decisions were not the focus of my contemplation, yet this morning as tree branches emerged against a pale sky, I knew what to do.
Another time I came here with the intention to sit in prayer and contemplation and to do nothing else but the physical necessities. The first day I sat for most of the afternoon and a short time in the evening; the next day, all morning. But a friend had died, so I drove to Indianapolis for his funeral service. Returning, I prayed and contemplated for the remainder of the afternoon, and again for a while in the evening.
Then on Sunday morning, after I sang a few hymns including a favorite, "Silently now I wait for thee, ready my God thy will to see," I sat again. A voice began to speak inside my head and it did not seem to be mine. It was as close as my breath, yet knew things I did not know. We had a conversation. An insightful and wise friend was quietly speaking and it felt so natural, so easy and relaxed, so normal, that it seems this ought to be a daily occurrence. Yet I had to clear away the busyness of my mind to be able to listen.
There are machines that can measure brain waves. Purple is associated with theta, the next level of consciousness up from sleep. Deep silence seems to create changes in the brain that make it possible to sense what cannot be sensed ordinarily. Even though there is research and speculation about how this happens, the important thing is that it leads to Love.
Last night, reading the Gospels, I encountered Christ and wrestled with the dichotomy between the loving Jesus and the judgmental parables reported by Matthew and Mark. I have trouble understanding the Jesus who said in Matthew, "One will be taken and the other left." Yet, as I center deeply in prayer, the loving Christ is present. I have noticed that the more I express love, the less I judge others, the more I become aware of "that of God" in everyone.
Maybe what seems like exclusion in the gospels is a way of saying what a large and difficult commitment is required to live a life of spiritual awareness. I will leave these questions to scholars, and know that it is knowing the love of Christ, being in service to that love and bringing it into this world, that counts.
I walk out on the trail that curves down to bottom lands where young walnut trees grow. The area is a Classified Forest under the auspices of Indiana's Division of Forestry. Volunteers and foresters planted 5,000 trees, many of them walnut, in 1995, 1996 and 1997. The short trail leads to a stream, along the stream to a waterfall. It is startling to see a car passing on the road just above the falls since the feeling of the place is so private. Here is yet another place where Quakers draw a boundary, setting aside places and times for worship and for the interior processes that lead to wholeness, integrity and faith. I pick up some of the rocks and find fossils of tiny sea creatures millions of years old. I carry one with me as I return to pack my things.
True to the simplicity of the place, I strip the bed and remake it clean for the next person. I add a brief entry to the journal placed in the room and put the Bible on the table where I found it. I leave the key in a basket by the front door upstairs and go home feeling blessed.
Linda Caldwell Lee is the author of poetry, short stories, essays and a book in search of a publisher. She is a member of First Friends Meeting in Indianapolis and of the editorial team for "What Canst Thou Say."
Woodard Lodge was dedicated in 1971 and the Solitude Room was dedicated in the late 1980's, after being converted from a dorm. To make a reservation, call the Quaker Hill Conference Center, (765) 962-5741.
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