photo by Collyn Ware

There is no place more intimate than the spirit alone. –May Sarton, The House by the Sea

In her last years, author May Sarton lived alone on the coast of Maine. In her journal, The House by the Sea, she explores solitude, the intimacy of being alone in your own body and spirit. In her reflections, she writes, [s]olitude, like a long love, deepens with time. She recounts a letter she received from a young woman who was living alone, a filmmaker who desired to make a film about those who live solitary lives. Sarton writes:

I told her that I feel it is not for the young (she is only thirty-three). I did not begin to live alone till I was forty-five, and had “lived” in the sense of passionate friendships and love affairs very richly for twenty-five years. I had a huge amount of life to think about and to digest, and, above all, I was a person by then and knew what I wanted of my life. The people we love are built into us. Every day I am suddenly aware of something someone taught me long ago–or just yesterday–of some certainty and self-awareness that grew out of conflict with someone I loved enough to try to encompass, however painful that effort may have been.

Sarton understood that solitude grows and ripens like a long love affair, that it matures over time into spiritual intimacy. Her claim that solitude is not for the young rings particulalry true for me. In the weeks I spent cleaning motel rooms during the summer of my freshman year of college, I was utterly alone. For days, I marveled in my newfound solitude, content to be alone with my own thoughts and a bottle of disinfectant. Soon, however, I longed for any interruption, any distraction that might take me out of myself and into something, anything else. I’d come quickly to the end of myself as I became painfully aware that, in solitude, I worried and fretted. I came face to face with my own limitations and, more often than not, moved through my work hours with shame as my constant companion. In truth, I was not a person by then, as Sarton wrote. I’d only begun to know what I wanted of life and was ill-prepared to digest the life I’d already lived. My solitude became a sad prison.

I understand, too, that although some may choose solitude, others may feel as though solitude has been inflicted upon them. Circumstances like illness, physical and/or emotional separation, retirement, and old age–just to name a few–may feel more like punishments than blessings. In these circumstances, solitude may be a crucible against which we test our mettle. We may literally count the hours until we’re rescued by human company. We may look for any distraction to fill the painful space that solitude brings. In solitude, we may see our cups as half-empty and rue the vacuum that it creates.

We may also lament we’ve become invisible in solitude. In our aloneness, we may feel ourselves slipping away. We may find ourselves believing that we’re simply out of sight, out of mind. Alone with our own spirits, we may find this intimacy anything but virtuous; we may find it soul-crushing. In solitude, we may languish and long to be seen. In the Atlantic article, “The Invisibility of Older Women” (Feb. 27, 2019), Akiko Busch considers the paradoxical virtues of invisibility:

A reduced sense of visibility does not necessarily constrain experience. Associated with greater empathy and compassion, invisibility directs us toward a more humanitarian view of the larger world. This diminished status can, in fact, sustain and inform–rather than limit–our lives. Going unrecognized can, paradoxically, help us recognize our place in the larger scheme of things.

At its best, solitude offers us opportunities to explore a more humanitarian view of the larger world, to recognize our place in the larger scheme of things. In solitude, we can turn our attention outward, instead of solely inward. That is, we can benefit from embracing the larger world and the larger scheme of things. In humility and gratitude, we can discover that we have lived, that we are living still, and that we continue to be blessed and challenged by a broken and beautiful world. Alone in our spirits and separated from our duties and distractions, we can draw closer to God. This is solitude at its best, at its most generous.

In Letters to a Young Poet, Austrian poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke writes:

Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away… and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast…. be happy about your growth, in which of course you can’t take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don’t torment them with your doubts and don’t frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn’t be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn’t necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust…. and don’t expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.

I’m encouraged by Rilke’s charge to love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you, to embrace the growth that comes with it, to accept the love that is being stored up like an inheritance, and the faith that in this love there is a strength and blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it. If there is inevitable pain that comes from solitude, it may be the preface to peace, love, and joy. Rilke acknowledges that there will be those who stay behind, who cannot or will not enter into solitude. And so it is that although the invitation to solitude is offered to all, not everyone will accept. Still, Rilke cautions that those who’ve grown and benefited from solitude should be gentle with those who haven’t, for they haven’t understood or experienced the call to solitary living.

American Transcendentalist writer, Henry David Thoreau, went to live alone in the woods outside of Concord, Massachusetts to live deep and suck the marrow out of life, to live deliberately. Of his experience there, he wrote, I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. When I first moved to Iowa, I didn’t know a soul in my new community and actually didn’t speak to anyone for three, long weeks (except for two phones calls to my parents–I was poor and couldn’t afford the long-distance rates). Let it be said that at 26, I did not find solitude to be companionable. As I walked through town near the end of this three-week period, I’m sure I looked like a starved, crazed woman as I desperately tried to make meaningful eye contact with everyone I passed, hoping that someone would show pity and speak to me. Had I met Thoreau on the streets, I would’ve given him an earful about solitude.

Up to this point in my life, I’d never been alone for this long. Looking back, I’ve come to see that this period was the beginning of my own journey with solitude. A painful beginning, yes. A necessary beginning, absolutely. Through the decades, I’ve learned to live in companionable joy with solitude. I’ve learned that solitude, like a long love, deepens with time. Like Sarton, I’ve learned that the people we love are built into us, that even though we’re separated from them–by distance or by death–they live happily with us in solitude. And as I’ve aged, I’ve learned to enter solitude with great peace and expectation.

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Matthew 6: 28-29

Taped into the back of my grandmother’s Bible was a funeral instruction sheet. On it, she’d listed her favorite hymns and scriptures for her funeral service. I confess that I was taken aback when I read the primary scripture she’d chosen from Matthew 6. My grandmother and I shared a history of migraine and neck muscles that my mother once described as “steel rods.” Suffice it to say that we were not laid-back women. We were worrrying women who often found ourselves migraine-stricken before or after big events, our bodies ravaged with stress and the debilitating effects of its let-down. When Jesus contends that we shouldn’t be anxious about tomorrow, that we shouldn’t worry about what we’ll eat or wear, that we shouldn’t fear that we’ll have no place to shelter, my grandmother and I undoubtedly offered a hearty “Amen” and then promptly returned to worrying. Consider how God has cared for the small, the lilies of the field and birds of the air? Sadly for most of my grandmother’s and my lives, not nearly enough. Still, her faith was founded in Jesus’s promise to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Even as she worried, she knew she shouldn’t. Even as she lay in darkened rooms waiting for the migraine to pass, she understood that God knew her intimately and wouldn’t forsake her.

Having recently returned from Glacier National Park, I confess that it was easy to appreciate God’s majesty and power. It was easy to let God’s bigness consume me, tamping down any worries or doubts. And it was much easier to live as though I weren’t anxious for tomorrow. Here among active glaciers were 500-feet deep lakes the color of sapphires, rugged peaks that pushed thousands of feet from the earth’s floor, and meadows of alpine wildflowers that stretched as far as the eye could see. Here, the morning air smelled like heaven, as clear and pure as it must have been on the first day. Here, the bigness of creation encouraged one to let go and let God. Each night, I slept soundly, and each day, I hiked migraine-free. Grammie, you should be here, I thought to myself. This is the kind of place where you can lay it all down.

As I’ve aged, I’ve come to see that my home in southeast Iowa is also just this kind of place. In truth, every place is this kind of place. We may not have mountain vistas or glaciers or moose in rural Iowa, but we have smaller, yet equally wonderful, reminders of God’s majesty and love. As I was walking this morning at the nearby nature preserve, I noticed Queen Anne’s Lace growing along the edge of the path. Once a yard tall, it had been mown to the ground and was beginning again. Today, six-inch stems with exquisite lacey heads lined the path. Small wonders with big beauty. Somehow, the miniature versions of these blooms were even more glorious, for here were clear reminders that God cares for the small and singular just as powerfully as he does for the big and plentiful.

In his novel, I Am the Messenger, Markus Zusak opens with Ed Kennedy, a cab driver who mourns his lack of direction and success. Ultimately, he begins receiving instructions designed to help others and finds purpose in his ability to serve. Kennedy finds the big in the small and ordinary, concluding that [b]ig things are often just small things that are noticed. I like this so much. Throughout the years, I’ve trained myself to notice the small things–in nature, in people, in art. I had great teachers in my mom and dad whose perfect Sunday afternoon was a drive through the Nebraska countryside to see what you might see. Just the other day, my grandson and I were in my office when he pulled a buckeye from a small dish on a side table. Remember this, Grandma? He returned the buckeye and held a small feather to the light. And this? I did remember. We were paying it forward with small things that had big memory value for us. We were training our eyes to see. I like to think that my parents would be cheering us on from heaven. Don’t stop, they’d tell us. Keep finding the big in the small.

Mother Teresa once said, I don’t do great things. I do small things with great love. She continued:

We must not drift away from the humble works, because these are the works nobody will do. It is never too small. We are so small we look at things in a small way. But God, being Almighty, sees everything great. Therefore, even if you write a letter for a blind man or you just go sit and listen, or you take the mail for him, or you visit somebody or bring a flower to somebody-small things-or wash clothes for somebody, or clean the house. Very humble work, that is where you and I must be. For there are many people who can do big things. But there are very few people who will do the small things.

Finding the big in the small begins with humility, as Mother Teresa contends. If God cares for the lilies of the field, if his eye is on the sparrow, so must we care in singular, small ways, being keenly present as we see and serve. My most precious memories are grounded in small moments that yielded big treasure. Walking to campus with my father, watching my mom rock my babies to sleep, hearing the opening measure of the musical score from my favorite film, sharing my grandmother’s cinnamon rolls over coffee with my family–the list is endless. I live and love large today because of these small moments and things.

In his novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Charles Dickens writes:

He was simply and staunchly true to his duty alike in the large case and in the small. So all true souls ever are. So every true soul ever was, ever is, and ever will be. There is nothing little to the really great in spirit.

Both Charles Dickens and Mother Teresa understand that there is nothing little to the really great in spirit. A true soul is one who humbly serves the small as well as the large. Oh, to be humble in deed and great in spirit, to see the majesty and care of creation in a single blade of grass, in a single person! How I long to be this kind of soul.

As I age, I think more about how the world we navigate while we’re young (youngish!) and able to drive becomes smaller and smaller until it’s often contained in a single room–perhaps even to a single bed. And I look to those who’ve lived with big spirits in spite of their small circumstances. Housebound, my mother sent encouraging messages to hundreds of people through Facebook Messenger and her trusty iPad. As her circumstances confined her to days spent in her maroon lift-chair, she loved in such a big and generous way. She found great purpose in sending small messages of comfort and encouragement to so many across the nation. She continued to do small things with great love until the day she died. Finding the big in the small is a paradox worth living and dying for.

Never Laughs Mountain, Glacier National Park

Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow builds her nest and raises her young at a place near your altar  
--Psalm 84:3

On the southern shore of Two Medicine Lake,
Never Laughs Mountain shoulders the burden of identity.
In a family of serious intent—
each brother, each sister standing taller than the next—
it is more hill than peak.

In a land of giants who shear the sky,
it is a glacial bud.

Hear the song of this mountain
who never laughs:

God of the small—
the lily and sparrow—

God of the singular—   
the blade of grass and pine needle—

God of the voiceless—
the aspen and stone—

God of all sorrows—
the flood and char—

I wear a robe of larch and laurel.

See me.

While so many others are going to the sun
with eyes fixed on a summit they’ve only imagined,
join me on this little mountain.

For blessed are we 
who sit at the throne of spruce beetles
and tell the stories of those who never laugh.