Jesus walked this lonesome valley, he had to walk it by himself.
Oh, nobody else could walk it for him, he had to walk it by himself.
We must walk this lonesome valley, we have to walk it by ourselves.
Oh, nobody else can walk it for us, we have to walk it by ourselves.
Somewhere in Luther’s table talk, he mentioned that each of us have to do our own faith-ing, just as each of us have to do our own dying. Whatever Luther said, this will be my introduction to what I will call “aloneness,” and I will extend that word to mean “the intentional living of our solitary contemplative inquiries.”
“Contemplative inquiry” is the conscious viewing of the contents of our own consciousness. No one else can do this for us. “Contemplative inquiry” is also our thoughtfulness about these inward contents. This is essentially a solitary practice even though it can go on in group settings led by experienced persons.
For example, a contemporary Vipassana Buddhist retreat focuses strongly on a personally practiced meditation. This solitary practice entails getting used to a vibrant type of aloneness. This is quite different from a self-absorbed U.S. president rising at three in the morning to rage in his current defendedness and write tweets castigating his critics.
A Vipassana meditation practice focusses on the seemingly boring practice of carefully watching our own breathing—in-breath, pause, out-breath, pause for 45 minutes or more at a time, perhaps followed by a period of solitary walking, focusing on each step. What is going on here is an inquiry into the reality of our actual lives beyond the workings of our busy minds and beyond the always present impulses to think and do our established habits of living. This practice can be understood to be religious in the sense that it seeks to allow the happening of a realistic type of enlightenment of what it actually means to be a conscious human being. The interest that sources this practice is human authenticity. In doing this practice, we are not defending our current sense of self, we are watching those defenses come up and thereby preparing ourselves to be aware of the real me as something wondrously opposed to the self I think I am, wish I was, or hope to be.
We don’t have to invent or produce the reality of our own authenticity. Authenticity is simply Reality being Reality. It takes no effort to be authentic. It takes a sort of willing surrender not to be false. Meditation is a discipline of surrender that allows our authenticity to emerge into awareness from where it has been hidden among the replacements for authenticity that we have invented, defended, clung on to, and presented to the world.
Jesus practiced another solitary practice he called “prayer.” In Mark’s portrait of Jesus we see him going apart for hours of solitary prayer. This intense need for solitude dramatizes Jesus’ humanity, as well as our own.
Nevertheless, Jesus was not a recluse. He lived and worked with very close friends, both men and women. He was a public figure who was followed by large crowds who listened intently to his teachings. He was an organizer who sent out teams of followers to villages throughout his region, and listened carefully to the reports they brought back.
Mark’s story tells us that after Jesus’ baptismal washing by John the Baptist the spirit drives Jesus into the desert for a 40-day fast. I am guessing that this intense solitary time alone was about his vocation, his dangerous mission—whether and how to pursue his authentic calling. Mark, Matthew, and Luke all picture Jesus all alone dealing with serious temptations during these 40 days of this preparation for the rest of his life.
We can also see Jesus as an exemplar of our solitary authenticity in that intense aloneness pictured in his prayer vigil in the Garden of Gethsemane. Perhaps no other story is more vivid as an illustration of the meaning of prayer as a practice of solitary freedom in preparation for living freely within a future situation. In this story Jesus’s prayer is a solitary practice in preparation for living freely in the anticipated experiences of a trumped up trial and a probable torture to death.
Aloneness practices, whether of Buddhist description or of Christian description, is revealed as a big part of our authentic life. Whether the circumstances we face are grim or joyous requiring courage or celebration, we can envision meditation or prayer as an exercise of freedom in carving out for our ongoing nurture life enough time and enough intense time to be alone in this lonesome valley of walking the walk that nobody else can walk for us.
Solitary Discipline
Discipline is not the opposite of freedom. Discipline is an expression of freedom. Taking responsibility for each bit of food we eat, each bit of entertainment we partake, each person we hang out with, each drug we don’t take or do take, each book we read or don’t read, each movie we see or don’t see. No one else can make these choices for us. We have to take full charge of our solitary lives by ourselves. We are challenged to employ a stubborn aloneness in searching out our grounding in realism for our free choices.
Such freedom-enhanced aloneness is an empowerment for our lives. Aloneness is certainly not a deprivation or a punishment. Self-chosen solitary time can be an enablement of an otherwise wasted life. Indeed, solitude is necessary for the discovery of our spirit depths and for living out those deep truths that have graced our consciousness.
I strongly recommend a disciplined solitary practice, but I do not presume to prescribe what solitary practice is appropriate for each person. I am going to suggest three broad arenas of solitary practices that each of us can consider for our own solitary time: (1) reading contemplative-dialogue sources, (2) practicing basic mediation-type exercises, and (3) articulating our life intents.
Reading Contemplative-Dialogue Sources
A devotional classic by an acclaimed personage of spirit depth is a primary source of contemplative reading. Poets and writers from many religious traditions quality—Rumi, Lao Tzu, Jon Bernie, A. H. Almaas, Meister Eckhart, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Thomas Berry, and Thomas Merton are among the many examples of devotional reading that I have found useful. Novels that were written to reveal life truths, as much or more than to entertain, also qualify as contemplative dialogue sources— Sir Walter Scott, Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Richard Powers, and many others have written such novels.
Reading Christian theology cannot be omitted from our list, if we are going to practice a Christian religion. Theologizing with the best of thinkers is a religions practice of great importance. Any of the more devotional writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer are excellent. Paul Tillich’s sermons and brief books are likewise useful for a wide audience. H. Richard Niebuhr’s books are competent theology written for general readers. For our solitary nurture time, we may prefer writings of a more sermonic quality, rather than of an academic quality. Yet it is also true that we may find some sermonic material boring, and we may find some academic material gripping. For example, the hot essays and the personal biography of Rudolf Bultmann I found quite nurturing as well as exceedingly thoughtful. In addition to these context forming 20th century theologizing luminaries, scores of other theological writers of every gender and race, and almost every ethnicity, and nationality have contributed to the reemergence for our time of the Christian “good news” and to the modes of witnessing to this “good news” to our various communities of humanity.
Everything depends on who each of us is at this particular time in our journey of spirit. We need readings that push us, but we do not need to be entirely overwhelmed by materials that are too difficult for us or best read later in our lives.
Finally, a Christian solitary life is incomplete without the Bible. For Christian nurture to neglect a familiarity with these texts would be like practicing Buddhism without meditation. Both mediation and Bible reading are lifetime practices that we never finish learning how to do. It is much more difficult than commonly understood to render contemporary the ancient Christian Scriptures. Ancient literature of any sort requires a mode of metaphorical translation from that very different time and place. In spite of these difficulties, the actual poetry of the Bible can be marvelously useful for our solitary practices.
Practicing Basic Mediation-type Exercises
Many Jews, Christians, and Muslims have found deep help in a serious practice of Buddhist meditation. Hindu yogas, Tai Chi exercises, and other well-fashioned products of the East have also been working well for persons of many religious backgrounds. Native America and Africa has also provided contemplative practices that meet important needs for people across the planet. If practicing Christianity is our core practice, we also need to be aware that contemplative practices have flourished in Christian heritage as well.
Contemplative-type exercises are not the same as doing spirit readings with which we dialogue. Contemplative exercises are actions of our consciousness that exercise consciousness itself beyond the experiences of a conscious using of the mind.
Contemplative exercises are crafted to seek an aliveness that is sometime spoken of as “being out of our minds.” This does not mean a contempt for our minds or for our religious thoughtfulness. Contemplation means enlarging the primal discovery that our conscious being is deeper than our mere thinking can ever fathom or be a substitute for.
Articulating Our Life Intents
Making a list of things to do is a practical form of articulating life-intents. Items on a serious do-list are more than a useful memory device. Each item is an externalization in writing of a life intent, and thus is a prayer for some change in the future course of our lives. The word “prayer” has been understood in the heart of Christian monastic practice as a life intent. Here are four types of life intent according to that understanding:
A confessionary prayer is an intent to face up to some aspects of our life that resists exposure. This could be a failing or a wayward bit of living that you regret. It could be a hard-to-face feeling of emptiness, or overwhelm, or grueling despair that you are resisting knowing, suffering, or handling. Confession does not always entail sharing your life with someone else. Solitary confession can mean a secret solitary intent within your own private life for the sake of moving forward within an absolution you already assume.
A gratitudinal prayer in an intent that brings affirmation, vitality, and liveliness to whatever is happening. Our positive experiences require our intent of gratitude for their full enhancement. Grim times also require intents of gratitude to enhance a full bodied living of these life passages of grief, fear, despair or whatever.
Petitionary prayers are acts of preparation for receiving what you need and for enabling what you project. In a petitionary prayer we are consciously recording what we are open to receive as some blessing for our personal lives.
Intercessory prayers are acts of intent on behalf of others— acts of preparation for specifically shaping our living in readiness for our outgoing, caring, loving responses to other persons, to groups of persons, and for the broad social changes that claim our commitments.
Conclusion
Whatever solitary practices each of us choose from this large “paint pallet” of options for our solitary time, we do well to opt for our own, effective, self-initiated, solitary practices. We need a disciplined form of spirit aloneness, crafted just for ourselves and for our own life calling. Discipline is freedom. Discipline increases freedom. Also, freedom enhances the disciplines we continually reinvent for our solitary time and for our lives as a whole.
We must walk this lonesome valley, we have to walk it by ourselves.
Oh, nobody else can walk it for us, we have to walk it by ourselves.