(Above, Dogs In Quiet Time)

I started giving myself a great gift a year or two ago. I call it my quiet time. Henri Nouwen calls it his Voice In The Garden Of Solitude. Thomas Merton s says solitude is essential if we are to have spiritual lives. I agree.

It’s usually the late afternoon, around 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. I either put music on my speaker or put earphones on my head. I turn out the lights and turn off my phone and computer. I sit in the corner of the living room. Sometimes I listen to music, sometimes I read, I just close my eyes and soak up the silence.

I’ve said before I love the adaptability of dogs, and over these months, my dogs have embraced the idea. When I leave my study and come into my chair in the living room, the dogs follow men.

Bud jumps up onto the chair next to me, Zinnia stands guard by my feet, she does not move the entire hour, like a statue or guard,  and Fate curls up in her bed to go to sleep.  Dogs seem to know solitude and love it.

Unless an Amish wagon comes by or a UPS truck pulls into the driveway, Fate is also still during the quiet hour.

Nouwen writes that solitude is the only place where our aloneness can bear fruit. Merton says the man or woman who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely. The world has forgotten the joys of silence, he says, the peace of solitude, which is necessary for the fullness of human living.

At first, my hour of silence was painful and difficult. I came to it with so much fear and insecurity that I was easily distracted by thoughts, feelings, sounds, worries.

But it was cleansing and healing to deal with the truth about myself. Ah, I said, so that’s what you are like, that’s what the fuss is about. In solitude, I learned what I needed to change and what I needed to keep. I stopped wondering what would become of me, and just became me.

For me, solitude is a place of truth, once I knew who I was, I would begin to accept myself. In solitude, I began to have a spiritual life, and not just yearn for one. And that changed everything.

In solitude, I came face to face with my demons, addictions, obsessions, anger, my need for reassurance, approval, and recognition, for someone to finally listen to me.

I overcame this over time and figured out that what I needed was to listen to me. That inevitably happens for me in solitude, given enough time. I didn’t always like what I heard and saw about myself, but I did know I came to love the quiet, it changed me, and for the better.