The World is Too Much With Us
One of the earliest memories I have is sitting alone. It sounds sad, but I wasn’t sad. I knew my mother was close by in the kitchen. I just didn’t mind sitting on the third step of the wooden stairs, with an empty bowl of cereal in front of me. I half watched Sesame Street (or Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, maybe), and half looked at the late morning sun playing in the branches of the magnolia tree outside the living room window.
Thoughts swirled unhurriedly, without intention–like the branches outside.
As I entered grade school, I realized that I wouldn’t be alone much, except at recess where I–and occasionally a couple mystified classmates–would wander around looking for fossils in the playground gravel or rolling huge snow boulders in the field just past the playground.
The rest of my life was full of people. I found an expression for my feeling of overwhelmedness in fifth grade in Wordsworth (a romanticist lamenting the loss of natural input in modern life, as I would later discover):
“The world is too much with us.”
That line of poetry became a mantra for my early life. But, is there something that we can glean spiritually from solitude, or was it only the instinct, say, of an introverted boy making his way in the world?
Spiritual Solitude
How often are you intentionally alone?
If you live like me, the answer is “not very.” Introvert though I am, I happily married my wife as an antidote to the loneliness that characterized nearly a decade of my adult life. Now, we have kids, and I have nearly constant companionship, whether I want it or not.
When I am alone, I all-too-often reach for my smartphone, through which I am connected via Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to online communities of friends and fellow hobbyists of one stripe or another.
I can consume media, and struggle to constrain my time on Facebook to an hour a day–using an app in which I can track the time I spend.
Lately, if “the world is too much with us,” it would seem we do indeed prefer it that way, as Wordsworth laments later in that poem.
It would be easy to turn this into a self-righteous finger wag at people even more dependent on social media than I. More difficult is disconnecting from others, whether digitally or in person.
Why is it hard? One reason is surely that It becomes difficult to ignore who I am when I am alone.
Alone, but Not Alone
My thoughts turn to introspection, self-reflection, and ultimately, I don’t like what I see. Yet, it is hard to ignore the reality that Jesus went off alone as a spiritual practice:
“And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone,” (Matthew 14:23).
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich.
A towering figure is contemplating the world below: If I felt like this when alone, it might go over better.
We are not given much context here as to what Jesus did, other than pray. But, as many pastors have argued over the years, if it was good enough for Jesus, it should be good enough for us.
It is easier for me to drop some of my introverted ways than it sometimes is to face my problems: the self-criticism, dark feelings, doubts, fears, foibles, and bald-faced vices.
I imagine it was easier for Jesus, being God and being perfect to go off by himself and experience unbridled joy.
But, of course, this is not true.
Think of Gethsemane. Read the words Jesus used to predict his sufferings (John 16:32): “Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me.”
I am not alone, for the Father is with me. I suspect Jesus could say that in the face of his despair and death because he had experienced it in times of relative calm.
What is it Like to be Alone with God?
What does it mean to be alone as a spiritual practice: Is it just downtime to rest and recover? Or is there something more?
The important thing is that alone time as a spiritual practice is realizing we are not truly alone. Let’s take an example of a mere human, instead of the God-Man, Jesus:
In 1 Kings 19: 4-6, Elijah is being threatened with imminent death by Queen Jezebel, whose false prophets of Baal he has killed.
A statue of Baal.
Elijah despairs: “But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.”
And he lay down and slept under a broom tree. And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, “Arise and eat.” And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and drank and lay down again.”
Elijah is alone, fleeing for his life, and decides all his efforts at eliminating the Baal worshippers is not worth anything. He has done no better than past generations.
Yet, God intervenes as Elijah prays. God feeds him and has him rest.
Perhaps solitude with God–even if it is a long, dark night of the soul–is a key way for God to reveal and meet our needs.
Practical Steps to Being Alone as a Spiritual Discipline
- Consider what I am alone with.
Is it my jealous or negative thoughts, my smartphone, my addictive tendency toward social media or online window-shopping? If so, then perhaps I am not simply alone with God.
In Ezekiel 8:12, Ezekiel is shown a vision of the idolatry of Israel: “Then he said to me, ‘Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in his room of pictures? For they say, ‘The LORD does not see us, the LORD has forsaken the land.’”
What could be more like today than each of us retreating into a “room of pictures,” whether mental, digital, or in print, that is private to us?
A solitaire board game, for example, immerses me in a fantasy world in the same spirit of movies or novels. Is this a diversion or am I relying on it to be something more via my fandom?
- Consider how to bring God into my private world.
“But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matthew 6:6)
Often, I have self-critical thoughts. God already knows them. What would it look like to not attempt to mitigate their effects by short-lived distractions?
I’m afraid to find out, sometimes. It’s a lack of trust that there is a better rest than what I can come up with on my own.
- Don’t worry about schedules.
A schedule can help keep us disciplined, and if it helps you, then by all means, have a scheduled alone time with God. Jesus put forethought into when and where to be alone with the Father.
Still, for me, the most challenging alone time creeps in, unbidden. When I am alone and exhausted after a long day or week, and no one is there to talk to, what is my response?
Maybe it could even be the same activity: reading a book, taking a shower, having a snack. God’s response to Elijah’s despair was surprisingly mundane: eat and sleep.
But, God would be in it with me. Being alone, but not alone might make all the difference.
