by Gerald May

Most of what I know about the spiritual life I have learned in relationships with other people, but there are some lessons that only aloneness can teach. I discovered this two summers ago when I found a place I could go for absolute solitude. It is on a mountain in a State Forest where almost no one goes when it's not hunting season. At the times I have camped there, I have never seen another human being. There I have learned that for me, at least in that setting, the essential value of solitude is freedom. When no one else is around, I am freed from my habitual social reflexes. There is no need for decorum, propriety, or tact, no fear of rejection or disapproval, no drive to compete or compare, no cause to endear, secure, protect, or define myself.

Freed from such interpersonal reactions, I find a different self emerging. It is young, exuberant, spontaneous, playful beyond restraint, courageous beyond my dreams. I do not act out fantasies or strive to fit images, because the reality of being free in nature's arms and God's love is more amazing than anything I could imagine. Along with freedom from self-images, I find liberation from my images of God. It is not a matter of replacing one image with another--instead it seems all the images disappear. God is not this or that, not me, not other, not within, not without; God just simply is. Similarly, prayer just is: no separation, no compartmentalization, no definition. At one point during my last visit to the mountain, I tried to pray the way I usually do at home. Immediately it felt wrong. It was, I recognized, an image of myself praying to an image of God. It seemed to put God at a distance and it made me feel separate from the trees and earth around me. When I stopped "praying," I relaxed into the deeper, truer prayer that had been given all along, a prayer without doing, almost without intent. In that letting-be of prayer I can sense the all-embracing intimacy of God: no need to reach out or even to seek.

I appreciate that intimacy deeply, even revel in it, but I do not want to think about it. To think is to label, to force categories, to separate this from that. With gratitude, I can say that solitude also liberates me from thinking. With no agenda except presence with God, there is no concern for plans, timing, or pursuing thoughts. Thoughts come, of course, but in solitude I feel no obligation to either follow them or fight them off. Thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories are all just part of experience, like the breeze shifting, clouds passing in the sky, squirrels playing in the trees.

The freedom of solitude also has taught me something about hospitality. My preparations for camping used to be obsessively organized. I would think through everything I might need, trying to foresee all possible dangers. On my first trip to the mountain I packed insect repellent, poison ivy medicine, pans to scare off bears, equipment for weathering storms, first aid and snake bite gear--everything I could think of. It makes sense to do a little thinking about such things, but focusing so much on dangers made me develop a defensive, almost paranoid attitude toward the wilderness that called me. But while driving there on that first trip, I felt a strange, comforting sensation. It seemed the mountain was not only calling me but also welcoming me. The foothills seemed to exude a warm personal friendliness, an almost maternal hospitality. As my paranoia softened, I discovered I was responding with my own hospitable attitude: a feeling of tenderness toward the earth and plants and creatures of the forest. Throughout my times there I have been very undefended; I have a gentle openness toward nature, and nature has been kindly toward me.

The freedom of solitude has taught me other things as well: something about the nature of my desire and the sources and limits of my fears. These are all lessons that I know I would not have been able to learn in the presence of others. If there were another person with me, even someone very close and empathetic, I would be looking out for them and changing myself because of them. In my normal social life, I so often feel I must try to make things different than they are. In solitude I am free to let everything--including myself--be just as it is. In other words, solitude frees me from having to try to accomplish what is already being given.

I have spoken of how solitude frees me from many habits and restraints, but true freedom is not only from something, but also for something. I do so wish to bring the lessons of solitude back into my daily life with others: the courage and exuberance, the simple playfulness and natural prayerfulness, the radical honesty and tender openness, the reverence for and responsiveness to things and people just as they are, the communion that exists when separating thoughts cease, and the realization of God's incomprehensible intimacy with us all. I keep feeling that if we could be that way together, the world would rediscover love.

In truly contemplative moments, I think freedom does happen. It happens in little tastes when our minds pause in their strivings. So contemplative practice helps. But freedom--which is the root meaning of the Hebrew word for salvation--is a gift, not an accomplishment. With God's grace and our willingness, both solitude and community can help us be more receptive to that gift. And we can work and yearn and pray for freedom together. I am convinced, however, that the fullness of freedom is in God's hands. It is, as Paul maintained, "something we must wait for with patience" (Rom.8:25).

Thomas Merton is reported to have said that spiritual community exists to protect the solitude of its members. If so, the protection of solitude is for the nurturance of freedom. It is too easy to think of community only in terms of togetherness and care-taking. It is much more difficult to claim our own needs for aloneness and to reverence those needs in others. For me, that is the call of the mountain forest--and I believe it is God's invitation to the freedom of solitude.