In my life with Maria, we are both often alone – we work all day in our own spaces, yet we are always close by. We both know we need being alone as well as being together.

Solitude is essential to me; every meaningful revelation I’ve had in my life has come when  I’m alone and able to think alone.

I’ve been alone often in my life, even when people surround me, and I’m used to it. I know that’s where I see my truth.

This morning, Maria got up early and went off to Vermont to help run a friend’s farmer’s market booth. Her friend had to do something with her daughter. Maria is a very good friend and has very good friends in return.

Saturday mornings are a precious time for us; we often sleep late, read together, talk, love. I am grateful for every second of my life that I spend with her.

I’m alone until lunchtime this morning. I’m grateful for that also.

Aloneness is a sweet time for me. I have my blog to write on, throw the ball for the dogs, make myself breakfast, have an excellent book to read if I can get around to it, and an idea for a photo.

It was through reading Thomas Merton’s journals during my year on top of the mountain that I learned the importance of being alone; it was there I learned to be grateful for my time alone. Some people fear aloneness, and there is, I know, a difference between voluntary and involuntary loneliness.

Still, being alone is a sacred time for me, something inside of my rejoices. We live in a world full of other voices, many loud and disturbed; I need space and time to hear mine.

Merton wrote that those who are not grateful soon begin to complain of everything, and we see the damage that has done to our country and our ability to work together and find community. I understand that without gratitude, there is only anger and complaint, and grievance. We seem to have left appreciation behind in our rush to make money and snarl at one another.

“When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude, it can no longer be held together by love,” wrote Merton, “and consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. But when men are violently deprived of the solitude and freedom which are their due, then society in which they live becomes putrid, it festers with servility, resentment, and hate.”

There you go. The men in Washington know no interior solitude; the government is no longer held together by a love for our country. I believe that will change. Truth and love are much more powerful than selfishness and hatred.

When Maria first told me she would be gone this morning, I felt a jab of resentment and even self-pity. With my troubled foot, I need help, and with surgery coming up, I am sometimes anxious when I wake up right now. This is our time together, I thought. But I know better than to believe that ancient and destructive way of thinking. I let go of it a long time ago.

Complaint is almost always poison. And freedom breeds love. I grew up in a family of perpetual complainers; it’s inside of me. But I’ve worked hard to catch it, I have a gratitude list in my head, and when I think about the things I’m grateful for, the complaints melt away.

I know many grumpy and complaining older adults, and at least half the country is in a state of perpetual complaint, grievance, and self-pity. Here we are in the world’s wealthiest and most exciting country, yet so many people constantly complain and with so much anger and resentment. Perhaps human nature keeps us from being thankful for what we have; we only love what we don’t have and want.

Being alone doesn’t make me lonely or unhappy, not for a long time. It gives gratitude a chance to grow. Complaints and grievances are in the air. We are fed grudge, lies, conspiracies, and hatred everywhere we go – online, TV, cell phones, e-mail, cable news. The best way for me to get away from it is to be alone. Fortunately, the writer’s life makes that easy.

It takes work to live above that resentment and fear. I work at it almost every day.

I believe the human spirit of love and good is more vital than our anger, jealousy, and lament tendencies. Maria and I love one another and love being together, but true love isn’t about clinging; true love thrives everywhere my heart is, not just everywhere she is.

When she is away, I see our love more clearly than ever and trust it more deeply.

We all have our ideas of God; I’ve never quite understood the idea that there can be only one idea of God when our minds are so fertile, and we are all so different. I believe I cannot meet or see or find my God unless they show themselves to me, and that can’t happen on Facebook or Twitter or via text messages.

Sometimes, I believe that God reveals himself to me while I’m writing on my blog. It’s a moment of exhilaration and lightness. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens.

I need silence to feel and see this, to stay grounded in reality. There is no greater disaster in my spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for the spiritual life for me is maintained and nourished by the truth. Despite the turmoil in the world, the truth is genuine and can be found by anyone who looks. We know it when we see it and hear it.

But how can I hear it amidst all of this din? I find the truth in solitude.

The proud, arrogant, and greedy words impose silence on all of us so that he alone can be heard. The humble man speaks only to be spoken to.

I give thanks for being alone this morning; it strengthens me and braces me, and brings me closer to the thing I call God.