SNOWBOARDING

Out of Solitude Henry Nouwen

Saturday February 13, 2010

Reflect on lonely places. With Care.

Jesus tries to retreat to a solitary place with his disciples in a boat. Crowds and hoards of people learn where he is going and get there on foot, ahead of him, waiting for him. Instead of pursuing solitude, he has compassion and teaches them, feeds them, cares for them.
I hold my solitude the same way. I try to make it a daily practice but do so with flexibility. Sometimes I am in the hospital with others, or someone need for me or care or something I can do, is far greater than my need to retreat.
To care, he says come from the root word kara which means lament. The basic meaning of care, he says is: “to grieve, to experience sorrow, to cry out with.”
It is definitely not a natural tendency to do those things. Usually we want to run away from painful realities or change them as soon as possible. But this makes us impatient and unwilling to share each others burdens.
I have seen this in my own life. It has been a far more powerful experience to have someone sit with me in my suffering/sadness and cry/feel with me than being with someone who just tells me to suck it up or get over it... or more gently just tries to fast-forward past the grief and make me laugh/smile.
The most beautiful experience of my life happen with both people or a group of people all lay down their heavy self-protective armor and come together in mutual vulnerability. And right away we are confronted not by our differences, but by our sameness... And there isn’t an attempt to take the pain away or to mask it, but rather to share it--to bear it together.
“As long as we are occupied and preoccupied with our desire to do good but are not able to feel the crying need of those who suffer, our help remains hanging somewhere between our minds and our hands and does not descend into the heart where we can care.”
I spent half an hour doing a mindfulness meditation Dr. Yeung made and gave me. What I realized in doing the practice (although, I’m not very good at it yet) is that it is in solitude where my heart learns of itself, and learns to take off the many protective layers (which have sometimes concealed my own hurt from myself) and grow deeper and wider. So that it will be able to hold, partner in, sit with any human suffering or in pain or in need of care.