Solitude

 

Rise or set, there is no correct answer,
fortunately.

The deeper the solitude, the deeper the solitude I want.

God is infinite, and it should surprise no one that in His immense  infinity, He does not fit  into anything we can conceive.

It is in genuine solitude that you appreciate His greatness and His immense love. Solitude is a spiritual thing, not a physical measurement, like miles or kilometers. While one can retreat farther into a cave, it is not until you have gone all the way to the back that you realize how close everything is in being a living being. Clearly, existence does not define solitude. It is purely spiritual, which is to say, divine.

Once you have realized that solitude is existential and not mathematical, you realize how difficult it is to be truly spiritual in the midst over seven billion other human beings. And every one of the seven billion that exist all crave the love and acceptance of God who does not retreat away from us; it is we who are retreating away from Him, in terror of the materialism that defines all other aspects of life.

It is not possessing things that fulfills the human longing for unity with God who fills every place and everything and lives and moves and has His being in every moment of our existence.

If one craves real solitude, first of all, it is a divine invitation to us to embrace. There is no more certain means of finding solitude than embracing every thing that pains us and fills us with longings we can scarcely define. But of all the cravings, one alone is certain to transcend our limitations to effect a state in which we are close to Him in understanding, and that is in suffering.

Jesus provided Himself as the one efficacious and forgiving sacrifice which atones and satisfies all needs. The longings are silenced when death cuts us off from the longing to enable us to feel the fulfillment that is at the deepest depths of yearning. The possibility of union with Him has driven countless saintly children of God  to embrace poverty, solitude and perpetual longing. The most crass kind of solitude is called loneliness. A transcendance awaits one who chooses to love God as He is found, and not according to one's desires, because the gratification of the longing is a satisfaction of human longing and not the divine longing that waits our embrace. I have been on the cross a long time, high enough above the earth so that the blood drops fall on the dusty earth with a definite sound. From that distance, entering into the divine suffering, one sees adequately to appreciate His love for us. One day, perhaps, it will resolve itself so I may find rest in Him that satisfied.