solitude, like all of the disciplines of the spirit, carries its risks. In solitude, we confront our own soul with its obscure forces and conflicts that escape our attention when we are interacting with others. Thus, “Solitude is a terrible trial, for it serves to crack open and burst apart the shell of our superficial securities. It opens out to us the unknown abyss that we all carry within us…[and] discloses the fact that these abysses are haunted.”6 We can only survive solitude if we cling to Christ there. And yet what we find of him in that solitude enables us to return to society as free
...more
