"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.

Maybe some heart, hungering for human companionship, has not been willing to stand alone upon the mount before the Lord, as did Elijah, and hear the "still small voice" of divine companionship. Truly, the companionship of God is not, as it were, a second best. We are so often afraid that we shall be required to renounce some cherished joy. As Francis Thompson has so beautifully expressed it:

For, though I knew His love Who followed,
Yet was I sore adread
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside.

Whereas, only as we find God do we find His expression. Therefore the key to all real joy is acquaintance with God. For this we need "sacred solitude," time to be alone to pray—not merely moments snatched hastily here and there, but consecrated hours of prayer—time to shut out the clamor of worldly thoughts, seeking, by dwelling upon spiritual facts of being, not merely to get some much-desired healing, some much-needed peace, but to get to know God better, even as we get to know our human friends better, if we can be alone with them. Truly God's presence, when consciously realized, will be found to be more tangible than the presence of any human friend, a divine presence in which we live, move, and breathe, and of which the clamor of the senses is seeking constantly to deprive us.

Christ is saying to you and me today, more than ever before, "Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while," a place where we can learn to rest in the consciousness of God's allness and omnipresence, and discover the truth of our being. Our Leader tells us in Science and Health (p. 361) that "God and man, Father and son, are one in being." God has not stopped speaking to us, and as we learn to drink in that spiritual consciousness we shall find that no good thing is withheld from us. In the words of the Psalmist we shall be able to say, in the deep sincerity of conviction, "In thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore."

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