Solitude

Solitude is something that I don't get that much of as a father of 3 young kids in a small Paris apartment. I'm a slight "I" (introvert) on the Meijers-Briggs Personality Inventory in that I get energized by solitude. I enjoy my people time, but need an occasional batch of solitude. To get it now, I often have to stay up later or get up earlier than the rest of the family.

Henri Nouwen's Lenten devotional for this past Sunday dealt with solitude. In "Show Me the Way," He writes (p. 103):

Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self. Jesus himself entered into the furnace. There he was tempted with the three compulsions of the world: to be relevant ("turn stones into bread"), to be spectacular ("throw yourself down"), and to be powerful ("I will give you all these kingdoms"). There he affirmed God as the only source of his identity ("You must worship the Lord your God and serve him alone"). Solitude is the place of the great struggle and great encounter--the struggle against the compulsions of the false self and the encounter with the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self.