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SOLITUDE - THE NEGLECTED PATH TO GOD
Christopher C. Moore
Cowley Publications, Cambridge - Boston, Massachusetts, 2001

"This book was born in solitude on a quiet summer morning on the coast of Maine ..."

So begins Christopher Moore's exploration of solitude as a spiritual path to God. Although we often avoid time alone out of fear of loneliness and isolation, in Christian tradition solitude has always been a significant way of drawing closer to God and discovering the truth about ourselves. Moore believes that our human need for solitude is often left unmet today; even the church places great value on constant activity and personal involvement. Our spiritual lives dry up because we cannot pay attention to the insights that well up in solitude and silence.

Moore considers a variety of factors that affect the quality of our solitude, as well as both the dangers and healing power of solitude. Finally, he shows us practical ways to reclaim the experience of solitude as a spiritual and personal discipline, no matter how busy and demanding our lives may be.

Why I am still a Catholic
Stories of faith & belief
a collection of reflections compiled by Kate Englebrecht
Available from David Lovell Publishing,
P.O. Box 822, Ringwood, Victoria 3165
Phone (+61-3-9879-1433)

Many people who have known some sort of life changing event of a dramatic nature know that it is invariably around that period of time that you keep yearning for things to be back to normal and you realise they are not going to be.

I felt quiet alienated for a short while because of my particular situation. I had broken one of those rules that I knew had been given to me. I left my marriage and set up house with anther man who is now my husband. I definitely knew that I had stepped outside my group.

I didn't feel I'd stepped outside my God, but I wondered whether I was deceiving myself. I put an enormous amount of thought and prayer and conscience-searching into that decision, a truly awful decision, using the precise meaning of that word. But I felt pretty clear in my own conscience about what I'd taken on and what I was leaving.

I really had to think: Why am I still a Catholic? The very faith that I felt so secure in seemed to be metamorphosing in front of my eyes. To be honest, I simply went on using dogged perseverance. Perseverance is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit - I think I'm right. We were told about it as children. I didn't understand what it meant then, but I certainly grasp it now.

'Be it done to me according to thy word.' This wonderful phrase from Mary I found incredibly liberating. I used to say it to myself at times I didn't feel I understood what was happening even though I had initiated it, some of it anyway. It was good just to say these words, and find yourself just being so gradually calmed by them.

So, funnily enough, I've come to the view that crisis can be therapeutic. If you have been given sufficient structures, ironically you can almost throw them up in the air - respecting them but stepping beyond them. A bit of a trick! I think there is a way of realising you have to yield and then stand down some of your attitudes to those structures. In my opinion the aim is to reconstruct a structure for yourself that makes sense.

Christianity gives us the wonderful repertoire of the stories of both the Old and the New Testament through Jesus Christ and his mother and friends. Lessons for life. And a route to the interior. That's the one thing I think that really kept me joined to the faith. I couldn't imagine life without some form of guided introspection.

Another way in which we can experience God is in the providential dispensations of life. Events of carious kinds are talking place around us all the time. People come and go. We have to transact all kinds of business. Events impinge on our lives from many quarters, and the influence they have on us persists and affects our lives. Life is full of this constant interaction; we are constantly influencing and being influenced. For the most part we do not devote much thought to this process. We are content if we come through it unscathed and are able to keep our heads above water and do our work. But sometimes we may feel the presence of something out of the ordinary behind the events that influence our lives. We may feel they are not simply taking place and passing through our lives, but that they have a special relationship to us. The whole thing seems specially intended for us. Some happening may bring a solution or lead to a decision. At some turning point in my life, I may look back and discern a pattern emerging over a long period of time, people and events and circumstances fitting into one another and forming a pattern in life ... If we are prepared to open the depths of the heart and the eye of the spirit, a more fundamental truth will appear. We shall see that such patterns do exist after all and that they are brought about by a dispensation from another source: by the goodness and wisdom and gentleness and power of grace.

Monsignor Romano Guardini (+1968) was an Italian priest and a renowned theologian and writer.

How do we in busy people, worrying about two jobs, children, mortgage and school fees, maintain an active spirituality? How do we satisfy our hunger for the infinite?

This article initially appeared in the first edition of Australian Catholics in 1993. It helped to define Australian Catholics as a magazine connecting faith and everyday life.

My monastery is silver. It tracks through the suburbs from Surrey Hills to Melbourne. It is the 8.25. Being husband, father, brother, office worker, mortgagee, smothers me with demands. God’s powerful presence in prayer is equally insistent. Life consists in integrating and answering the demands of these two belongings.

How and where can I pray during the working day? How do all my activities as father, husband, son, brother, worker, interweave with this deeper belonging?

It starts. Bring in the paper and the rubbish bin, put on the kettle, feed the cat, make the lunches, borrow train fare from the kids, sign that note, pull up the doona, shave, find a pair of socks, where’s a hanky, pack that bag, put in those bills and cheques, defrost the sausages, rush for the 8.25, think up that agenda, remember to make those calls.

During the morning busyness the ear half listens to the news summaries: Bosnia, Cambodia, Burma, South Africa, Somalia, Tibet, Bougainville, unemployment. Between 6.40 and 8.10 the heart sinks lower and lower, almost to despair. There can’t be a God in a world like that!

Life seems so frantic, the news so profoundly disturbing, the two so unconnected. The challenge to survive neutralises the challenge to respond to humanity. Our lives can feel shallow, our hearts despair.

These predicaments frame our spiritual lives. How do we in busy urban Australia, worrying about two jobs, children, mortgage and school fees, maintain an active spirituality? How do we satisfy our hunger for the infinite?

We all have our ways, expressive of our temperament, of preventing our profoundest instincts from being smothered. Here are some of mine.

Trains, planes, buses, trams. These, for me, are the best places for prayer. Rakes, brooms, spades, forks. These, for me, are the best tools for prayer. Hat, overcoat, walking shoes. These are the best garments for prayer. Travelling, working, walking: in these are purpose but no straining of will. In all these the heart can seek its goal.

I walk to the station in the morning. The air clears my head. The rhythm of the steps and the breath is simple prayer giving thanks for the morning.

On the train, the silver monastery, hiding in a corner, with a small book, I read the morning prayer from the Divine Office. It takes four stations. After that I just sit, half asleep, half praying a mantra, wondering about my fellow travellers, feeling empathy for their lives. Imagining how they live.

Work can be exhilarating, but often is like gnawing on the same hard stones, meal after meal. The ache of boredom can become claustrophobic. Try as I might, many things I have to do are deeply frustrating. How can the boredom be transformed into prayer, made productive? How to both preserve a loving attitude to squabbling workmates and keep integrity?

You play the role, answer the phone, meet the deadlines. Lunchtime is a chance to make contact again. Sometimes I put on the jacket and walk to one of the nearby churches, sometimes Catholic, sometimes Lutheran, my favourite is Anglican. The emptier the better, and it is better to walk out of the city centre. I drop into a steady, comfortable gait. As I walk, I take it easy and let the feverishness of the brain fall away, concentrate on the mantra of the walk.

I sit in a pew or follow Mass. I think of Bosnia, Cambodia, Burma, South Africa, Somalia, Tibet, the people on the train, the unemployed who come to the city in the off peak. In a small way I enter into their suffering. Lunch hour is my great silence.

Going home on the 5.59, I should say the evening prayer. I don’t, I’m too tired. The brain is empty, barely working. On Friday nights, in the winter dark, at Richmond station, I wait forlornly for a connection, looking out across the lights of the suburbs, looking at my anonymous companions, following their own trail of light to their homes. Each to their own, to a shared table, to those with whom they share it, to their space where everything allows them to name themselves, to be named by others.

At home, kids doing their homework, family meetings, doing the dishes, making phone calls, bringing in the washing, watching TV, the crabbiness, the relaxation.

The discipline of loving in the family: the core and test of our spirituality. That one has low self esteem, that one is joyous, that one is likely to win ‘bitch of the week’, that one is cross that we because we are tired while she is wide awake, that one wastes money, that one gives lectures, that one is lazy.

Each with their beauty of spirit, blooming and fragile. Each one needing nurture and being nurtured. We sandpaper each other smooth. ‘Thank you for this food, thank you for our guest and God bless the cook’. The love of each, and the love of the group, give an inkling of the shape and hue of divine love. In the universe, we stand in that love. I pray that this love sustains those in Bosnia, Cambodia, Burma, South Africa, Somalia, Tibet, Bougainville, those on the 8.25 and those caught in all those wars in all those places whose names I can’t remember.

Our working class origin is long left behind. We have two well paying jobs. Are we becoming complacent? How do we prove our solidarity with those in the news? Prayer is too easy. Giving money to causes (making sure we get a receipt for taxation purposes) seems like tokenism. Does political commitment count? Maybe, but that too is mixed up with self interest. Later in our lives, when the children are independent, perhaps there will be a chance for some full-time service. Time will test our genuineness.

Last thing at night, the jog or the walk. The final mantra of the step and the breath. Sometimes with the partner, sharing the day, our first conversation for the day. Put out the rubbish bin, the paper stack and the bag of bottles. Sometimes, in the bath, I finally get around to evening prayer.

A SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE
At the National Council of Priests Convention
Andrew Zerafa SJ

Millions of words are spoken at a convention. You cannot hope to remember them all. Some fall on good ground. They touch you. They bear fruit. In 2002, I attended the annual Convention of the National Council of Priests.

One speaker, Father Michael Mason, a Redemptorist, spoke of the example of people having a religious experience. It really touches them deeply. So deeply, in fact, that they will not share it with anyone lest they be considered queer or strange.

For some reason that touched me, but it did not affect me. It did not affect me until something happened. We all went on excursion. It was glorious weather, and we were offered wines to taste and cheeses to nibble, as we cruised over the Brisbane Waters for several hours.

I roamed all over the vessel: upper deck, lower deck, the thin end and the blunt end. Eventually I ended up right at the front. I had not noticed the ‘Crew only’ sign on the door. The Captain was genial. He showed us some of the instruments, especially the sonar, which tells you how deep the water is under your boat.

From time to time he would pick up the microphone and tell everyone on board some interesting detail about the area we were passing through. His comments were pointed and often whimsical. On our left we saw a bridge tilted at some thirty degrees. ‘The island is slowly sinking’, he remarked. ‘That bridge used to be level.’

With the microphone switched off, he would then continue with his interesting remarks about one thing or another. Somehow we got on to different religions and the scriptures. He not only read and liked the psalms but he also had looked up their meaning in the original Hebrew. No, he did not know Hebrew, but he had a book with a parallel translation: one page in English and the opposite one in Hebrew transliteration. It gave him great insight and satisfaction.
Then he told me how he came to be interested. Like St Paul, he had been shipwrecked. During the salvage operation a cable snapped and his arm was badly injured. As a result. it was very limited in its movement. He was not a church goer. His wife was Italian and went to church. One day she heard of a faith healer and she urged him to come along. ‘I had nothing to lose’, he remarked.

The healer was a Scottish farmer. Towards the end of the service, the Scotsman asked if there was anyone who wanted to be healed. Our Captain got up and went forward. The healer prayed over him, and slowly the strength and flexibility returned to his arm. And he showed me how he could raise it. Then the healer said, ‘I encourage you to read the Bible’.

‘And that is how it came about that I am so interested in the psalms and so comforted by them. I still don’t go to church, but my wife does.’

It was not until I got home that I realised what had happened. That afternoon, the Captain of our vessel had trusted me sufficiently to share the personal story of his religious experience. I felt truly and deeply touched.