Article May 2, 1936 Issue

"Sacred solitude"

FLORENCE IRENE GUBBINS

On page 331 of "Miscellaneous Writings" Mrs. Eddy writes: "In sacred solitude divine Science evolved nature as thought, and thought as things. This supreme potential Principle reigns in the realm of the real, and is 'God with us,' the I am ."

Much is said about the need for companionship and of the misery of loneliness, but little is thought or said about the beauty of solitude and of its essential place in the spiritual development of every individual. Jesus spent nights in prayer, alone in the wilderness or on a mountain. St. Paul tells us he was for some time—possibly three years—in Arabia after his vision of the Christ. Moses was forty days and forty nights on the mount alone with God.

More than ever today we need to cultivate "sacred solitude," to be alone with God and our thoughts. Modern inventions have made solitude and quietness something to be sought after. Is not mortal mind aware that Christianly scientific thinking is its destruction, and does it not endeavor to blind us to the necessity for having time to think quietly and systematically? Thus solitude is clothed with unattractiveness, and many of us are afraid of the wilderness, the aloneness that we must encounter in our path from a material sense of things to the spiritual. But in that aloneness God is waiting to speak to us. While we clamor for the company of fellow mortals we cannot hear the "still small voice"; for God speaks to us as he did to Elijah, as a modern translation has beautifully rendered it, in "a sound of gentle stillness." We also must be still to know that God is, and cultivate quietness of spirit, a resting in the presence of the Lord. Each one of us finds in the depths of his being the kingdom of heaven; and "it is the purpose of divine Love to resurrect the understanding, and the kingdom of God, the reign of harmony already within us," our Leader writes on page 154 of "Miscellaneous Writings." But even as a miner would never find the gold hidden in the earth without digging for it, so we must likewise sound the depths of our spiritual consciousness. And how can we do this unless we are willing to be alone with God? There seems to be a fear among mortals of being alone, because they do not know that God is there in that silence. Coming to us over the stormy sea of troubled, restless thoughts, Christ, Truth, is saying, "It is I; be not afraid." It is a significant fact that after Elijah the prophet of God had heard the "still small voice" on the mount, he found his companion and helper, Elisha.

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