Holy Solitude: Lenten Reflections with Saints, Hermits, Prophets, and Rebels - Softcover

Haverkamp, Heidi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0664263151 ISBN 13: 9780664263157

Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017

Synopsis

Our faith is full of heroes who experienced God powerfully in solitude. From Hagar and the Hebrew prophets to Jesus in the wilderness to Francis of Assisi and Catherine of Siena, we see how escape from the toil and temptations of daily life can open our eyes, ears, minds, and hearts to the still, small voice of God. In the vast desert or a tiny room, solitudeâ€"frightening for some and a welcome reprieve for othersâ€"is far from an antisocial self-indulgence but rather is an opportunity for transformation and empowerment to serve God's people ever more deeply.

While most of us can't take weeksâ€"or even a few daysâ€"for private retreat, Holy Solitude offers readers thoughtful inspiration and practical devotional activities such as taking a solitary bus ride or baking a loaf of bread for a neighbor. Daily reflections introduce readers to figures in both Scripture and Christian history whose stories of discernment and discipline are a guide for our own spiritual practices as we seek to know God more fully and follow Christ more faithfully.     Â

About this title

About the Author

Heidi Haverkampis a writer and Episcopal priest. She is the author ofAdvent in Narnia: Reflections for the Season, andHoly Solitude: Lenten Reflections with Saints, Hermits, Prophets, and Rebels.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Holy Solitude

Lenten Reflections with Saints, Hermits, Prophets, and Rebels

By Heidi Haverkamp

Westminster Jonh Knox Press

Copyright © 2017 Heidi Haverkamp
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-664-26315-7

Contents

Introduction, vii, 
Preparing for Lent, xiii, 
Preparing Your Calendar, xiv, 
Preparing for Fasting, xv, 
Preparing for Almsgiving, xvii, 
Preparing at Home, xix, 
First Days of Lent, 1, 
Ash Wednesday: The Inner Room, 1, 
Thursday: The Wilderness, 3, 
Friday Fasting: Thirst, 6, 
Saturday Almsgiving: Congregations, 8, 
Week One: Solitude and Silence, 11, 
Sunday: Listening to Silence, 11, 
Monday: Elijah on Mount Horeb, 14, 
Tuesday: Mary the Theotokos, 16, 
Wednesday: When God Is Silent, 19, 
Thursday: Catherine Doherty and the Poustinia, 21, 
Friday Fasting: Silence, 23, 
Saturday Almsgiving: Conservation, 25, 
Week Two: Solitude and Struggle, 27, 
Sunday: Enduring Yourself, 27, 
Monday: Antony the Great, 30, 
Tuesday: Hagar of Egypt, 32, 
Wednesday: Saul at Damascus, 34, 
Thursday: Francis of Assisi, 37, 
Friday Fasting: No Pain, No Gain?, 39, 
Saturday Almsgiving: Illness, 41, 
Week Three: Solitude and Journeys, 43, 
Sunday: Taking a Walk, 43, 
Monday: Jesus Left the Crowds, 46, 
Tuesday: The Coracle Monks, 48, 
Wednesday: Mary of Egypt, 50, 
Thursday: Jonah Runs Away, 52, 
Friday Fasting: Boredom, 55, 
Saturday Almsgiving: Refugees, 56, 
Week Four: Solitude and Hospitality, 59, 
Sunday: Welcoming Guests, 59, 
Monday: Benedict of Nursia, 62, 
Tuesday: Julian of Norwich, 64, 
Wednesday: Moses and the Veil, 66, 
Thursday: Anna the Prophet, 69, 
Friday Fasting: Hunger, 71, 
Saturday Almsgiving: Food for the Hungry, 72, 
Week Five: Solitude and Resistance, 75, 
Sunday: Jesus Withdrew, 75, 
Monday: John the Baptist, 78, 
Tuesday: Catherine of Siena, 81, 
Wednesday: Howard Thurman, 83, 
Thursday: Charles de Foucauld, 86, 
Friday Fasting: Poverty, 88, 
Saturday Almsgiving: Justice, 90, 
Holy Week: Solitude and Confinement, 93, 
Palm Sunday: Imprisonment, 93, 
Monday: Daniel in the Lions' Den, 97, 
Tuesday: John of Patmos, 99, 
Wednesday: Solitary Confinement, 102, 
Maundy Thursday: Alone Together, 104, 
Good Friday Fasting: Behold the Cross, 106, 
Holy Saturday Almsgiving: Captives, 107, 
Easter Sunday: Mary Magdalene at the Tomb, 108, 
Acknowledgments, 111, 
Appendix A: Ten Ways to Be Silent, 113, 
Appendix B: Recipes, 117, 
Easy Little Bread, 117, 
Dying Red Easter Eggs, 118, 
Notes, 121, 
Further Reading, 127, 

CHAPTER 1

FIRST DAYS OF LENT

ASH WEDNESDAY: THE INNER ROOM

"But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you."

— Matthew 6:6 NASB

A certain brother went to Abbot Moses in Scete and asked him for a good word. And the elder said to him: Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.

— Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert

In the King James Bible, the "inner room" verse of Matthew 6 reads: "When thou prayest, enter thy closet." The Greek word tameion means "storage room" — a humble, quiet room with a few buckets and crates but probably no beautiful view or easy place to sit. Finding a place to be in the presence of God doesn't require much, Jesus seems to say. He is teaching, first, that prayer isn't a public performance or a way of showing others we're religious; at the same time, he wants us to realize the opposite — that prayer is a way to know God in a private and personal way. The inner room he mentions may not be a place in your physical home so much as inside yourself.

What is the inner room of the soul like? Catherine of Siena spoke of keeping a hermitage inside her heart. Francis of Assisi said, "Brother Body is our cell, and the soul is the hermit who remains inside the cell to pray to God and meditate." Teresa of Avila wrote a book about prayer, The Interior Castle, named after the intricate extended metaphor she used to describe the soul. You can think of the inner room of your soul as a cozy house, a simple cell, or a "vast, spacious, and plentiful" place. However you may like to imagine it, there's a place inside you where God is waiting to sit with you.

Abba Moses, also called Moses the Black, was a fourth-century desert father from Ethiopia who was a thief before he was a monk. He taught his monks that "your cell will teach you everything," as Merton quotes above, and he meant both the physical cell where a hermit was living (a cave or hut) and the inner, spiritual cell of solitude. Solitude invites us to sit not only in the presence of God but also with ourselves. There's no better way to get to know someone than to sit in a car with them for a while. The same is true of God and the self. It's not always easy to sit still with yourself or with God, especially for extended periods of time; but like a child resting in a parent's lap, sometimes just to sit together is enough.

Contemplation and solitude go together. Thomas Merton described it as "life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness and for being." This Lent, like many saints, hermits, prophets, and rebels before you, you're going to spend some intentional time in solitude and, I hope, get to know God's love more deeply and enter more fully into Jesus' Passion and Resurrection by doing so.

Questions for Reflection

1. What image do you prefer for the inner room of the soul: cell, closet, hermitage, or castle? Why? Is there a term you do not like? Why?

2. Have you ever thought of Lent as a contemplative season before? What about Lent, specifically, could be called contemplative?

3. What made you pick up this book? What do you hope to gain from using it for Lent this year?

Choose a Practice for This Week

— Observe the ancient tradition of fasting on Ash Wednesday. Skip either lunch or dinner. Sip tea or water to ease hunger pains. Use those twinges as a call to prayer and to "remember you are dust and to dust you shall return."

— Find twenty to thirty minutes of quiet solitude. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide and speak to you through drawing. Draw either your inner room or your "interior castle." If you have time, or at another time this week, draw your "wilderness" as it feels at this season of your life. If you would prefer, you can describe these things with words instead of drawing.

THURSDAY: THE WILDERNESS

He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts.

— Mark 1:13

And I say, "O that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest; truly, I would flee far away; I would lodge in the wilderness.

— Psalm 55:6–8

We must cross the desert and spend some time in it to receive the grace of God as we should. It is there that one empties oneself, that one drive away from oneself everything that is not God and that one empties completely the small house of one's soul so as to leave all the room free for God alone. ... It is indispensable: the soul needs the silence of it, the inward retirement, this oblivion of all created things.

— Charles de Foucauld, as quoted in Sara Maitland, A Book of Silence

Going out into the wilderness is just the opposite of entering into your inner room: there are open vistas and rough terrain instead of an enclosed, private space. In the wilderness, solitude is less about intimacy with God and more about spiritual awe and freedom. Going into the wilderness is also an act of vulnerability: there is danger from weather, snakes, scorpions, and other wild animals, or just in finding enough to eat and drink.

Jesus was probably seeking both awe and danger when he went out into the Judean wilderness for forty days before his public ministry. He went to pray in the freedom of solitude and to be alone with God. He also went to test himself. Alone in the starkness and quiet of the desert, he must have wrestled with his deepest questions about his humanity and his divinity and about what it was that God was calling him to do. The desert took away all barriers between his soul and God's wide gaze, which must have been thrilling but also quite strenuous.

There is a long tradition in scripture of faithful people going alone into the wilderness and encountering God, including Hagar, Moses, Elijah, and John the Baptist, among others. The Israelites spent forty years as a people alone with God, out in the desert. Early Christians continued this tradition when untold numbers of men and women left society to live with God in the wilderness, especially in the deserts of Egypt but in places all around the Mediterranean, following in the footsteps of the first desert solitary, Antony the Great (see Week Two). These desert mothers and fathers discovered, as Jesus did, that both God and the Devil, or demons, wait for us in solitude.

There is something about wilderness that draws prayer from us, whether in wonder, discernment, help, or lament. There is something about wild places that invites spiritual solitude; where, in spite of ourselves, as Foucauld says in the quotation above: "one empties completely the small house of one's soul so as to leave all the room free for God alone." We cannot help but feel vulnerable and exposed in the wilderness. It is a place for both awe and humility.

If Lent is a time for us to imitate Jesus' forty days in the desert, then it should be less a time to suffer and endure and more a time to grow in this kind of wonder and vulnerability. Engaging in prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are not about punishment; they help us transcend ourselves — finding greater intimacy with God and greater clarity about who we are. These three practices are also disciplines of solitude, forms of self-denial or self-emptying to make more room in us for God. Prayer reveals our emotional and spiritual vulnerability; fasting reveals our physical and psychological vulnerability; almsgiving reveals our material and financial vulnerability. In the wilderness and on the cross, Jesus made himself vulnerable, too — even unto death.

Lent is a wilderness set in time. In it, whether or not we are living anywhere near a physical wilderness or in a wilderness time of life, we can choose to live starkly and mindfully, in a way set apart from the rest of the year and the rest of human society. Even if you do not leave your hometown in the next seven weeks, you can find ways to "flee far away [and] lodge in the wilderness," and there encounter God.

Questions for Reflection

1. When you go on vacation, do you enjoy traveling to wilderness places? What about the wilderness draws you? Or what is it about the wilderness that doesn't hold much interest for you?

2. When have you had a time of wilderness in your life where you met God in a new and powerful way?

3. Is there a wilderness in your life right now that is pushing you to prayer? How would you describe it? Are your prayers of wonder, discernment, help, or lament?

FRIDAY FASTING: THIRST

Drink Only Water (Eat as Usual)

O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

— Psalm 63:1

Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life."

— John 4:13–14

Inspiration

Drinking nothing but tepid or warm water is a small way to begin to fast. You're practicing an emptiness of your body, growing in awareness of your thirst (what are you really thirsty for, if you have plenty of water to drink?), and growing in awareness and compassion for people who truly are in want of clean, plentiful water. By making a water fast, you can really notice the empty, thirsty places within you and purposefully invite God into them: your own inner deserts in need of God's living water. This is an incarnate solitude!

Practice

Drink only water, without ice and without flavoring. Hot or warm water is okay. Decide if you can realistically go without caffeine; if not, adjust accordingly. You may want to carry a water bottle with you in case only iced or chilled water is available in restaurants, your workplace, or school. Every time you crave something besides plain water to drink or you feel irritated or unsatisfied by it, remember and offer prayers for those who may not have clean water at all. Ask God: What am I truly thirsting for in my life right now?

If at all possible, do not announce or reveal your fast to others outside your immediate family, if even them. If you want, keep your fast for the whole weekend. If you're feeling the need of an even greater challenge, keep your "water only" fast until next Friday.

Questions for Reflection

1. How did it feel to quench only your thirst and not to drink for pleasure?

2. Did you notice your thirst in a different way? Did you drink more or less than you usually would?

3. Did it help you deepen in solitude with God, or was it just inconvenient?

SATURDAY ALMSGIVING: CONGREGATIONS

I was glad when they said to me, "Let us go to the house of the Lord!"

— Psalm 122:1

In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

— Ephesians 2:21–22

Choose the form of almsgiving you will practice this week or, if it gives you joy, do both. Give an amount that feels generous and "hurts" a little in the context of your weekly expenses. Grow in solitude by giving to others.

1. Give cash away to someone who asks you for it.

2. Mail a check, give online, or put your gift in the offering plate tomorrow for a congregation.

One of the most important centers of your spiritual life is the congregation you call home. Its sanctuary is a particular "inner room" and, hopefully, a shelter for your soul. Congregations are only as strong as the generosity and joy of their members. Make a special Lenten gift to your congregation or to any other congregation that is meaningful for you:

— the congregation you attend now

— the congregation where you grew up or where you feel you really became a Christian

— a congregation that is taking very good care of someone you love right now

— a mosque, synagogue, or other religious or spiritual center in your community

Questions for Reflection

1. Does generosity make you feel rich or poor this week?

Does it feel like a spiritual act?

2. How did you choose where to give your alms this week?

3. Did giving make more space within you for the presence of God? How?

CHAPTER 2

WEEK ONE

SOLITUDE AND SILENCE

SUNDAY: LISTENING TO SILENCE

For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall never be shaken.

— Psalm 62:1–2

True silence is the search of man for God. ... True silence is a garden enclosed, where alone the soul can meet its God. ... True silence is a key to the immense and flaming heart of God.

— Catherine Doherty, Poustinia: Encountering God in Solitude, Silence and Prayer

One year, I tried giving up listening to music and radio news for Lent. After a week, I was going nuts. The idea that I was going to have to stick with this deafening quiet for six more weeks did not help, so I quit. Maybe I proved my own weakness, which some say is the point of Lent, but maybe I failed because I didn't add anything to replace what music and news were providing in my daily life. I could have filled all that empty audio space with intercessory prayer, singing out loud to myself, conversations with God, and phone calls to family or friends. I love silence, but that particular Lenten silence was nothing more than an endurance test: there was no deeper spiritual learning or understanding to my practice that could've helped me grow in my relationship with God.

Life-giving, contemplative silence is not just the lack of noise; it is the audio space to feel that Something More is deeply present and deeply loves you. The point is not sterile quiet but the sense that there is Something to listen for. Quakers have called this the "sacrament of silence" and practiced it together for centuries. We might call it, in the spirit of The Book of Common Prayer's definition of a sacrament, "an outer and audible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." When most people find themselves walking out into a beautiful spot in the natural world or sitting in an empty church or other sacred place, the deep stillness and silence feels moving and profound, often even for people of no religious tradition. There is transcendence — a feeling of mystery and love — in this kind of silence. Thomas Merton wrote that churches should always be left open for all to come and find this kind of stillness: "A place where your mind can be idle, and forget its concerns, descend into silence, and worship the Father in secret." His words echo the "praying in secret" of Matthew 6; we can find our inner room in large sacred spaces of silence just as we can in the silence of a cozy room or hermitage. Even in the midst of a busy day or an otherwise normal worship service, a moment of silence and quiet can open a door to the presence of God. At my last church, during the Sunday evening service, three minutes of silence followed the homily. Attenders of that service often told me it was their favorite time of the week; one man once remarked to me, "It is more profound than the greatest Bach chorale or the most astounding sermon!"

It can be both awkward and wondrous spending extended time in silence and solitude. It is easy to get fidgety.

Sometimes keeping it simple makes the difference for me; just to look out a window for a while or to notice the pause of a moment in time.

Ruth Burrows, an English Carmelite nun, writes that prayer, especially in silence, is simpler than we think, because it "is essentially what God does, how God addresses us, looks at us. It is not primarily something we are doing to God, something we are giving to God but what God is doing for us. And what God is doing for us is giving us the divine Self in love." The real discipline of solitude and silence is to let go of our preconceptions and distractions, to let God love us — even just for a moment — and to remember that this is the most important practice and nourishment for Christian life, each and every day.

Questions for Reflection

1. What has been your relationship with silence? What circumstances make silence a "sacrament" for you or a time you can feel loved by God? What can make it awkward or unsettling for you?

2. Have you noticed "moments of silence" in your everyday life before? Perhaps waiting at an elevator, standing in line at the store, waiting for the microwave to beep, or noticing the sudden quiet after you turn off a television or finish a phone call. Have you ever used a moment like this to be aware of God's presence with you and God's love for you? How could you remind yourself to try this?

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Holy Solitude by Heidi Haverkamp. Copyright © 2017 Heidi Haverkamp. Excerpted by permission of Westminster Jonh Knox Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0664263151
• ISBN 13: 9780664263157
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 152