Solitude: From Compulsive to Compassionate Ministry

We are all very busy people. This includes pastors, priests, ministers and people like me who choose to serve God in church, CF or somewhere. As Henri Nouwen says in his book 'The Way of the Heart', ‘There is seldom a period in which we do not know what to do, and we move through life in such a distracted way that we do not even take the time and rest to wonder if any of the things we think, say or do are worth thinking, saying, or doing. We simply go along with the many ‘musts’ and ‘oughts’ that have been handed on to us, and we live with them as if they were authentic translations of the Gospel of our Lord. People must be motivated to come to church, youth must be entertained, money must be raised. We are busy people just like all other busy people, rewarded with the rewards which are rewarded to busy people.’

We then become people who are moved by compulsions – Bible studies to lead, ministries to run, people to please and meetings to attend. According to Nouwen, compulsions form the basis of two main enemies of the spiritual life: anger and greed. When my sense of self depends on what others say of me, anger is a quite natural reaction to a critical word. When my sense of self depends on what I can acquire, greed flares up when my desires are frustrated. We get angry when our programs do not run smoothly. We get angry when people do not respond the way we want them to. We get angry when people do not attend meetings we hold. But the kind of anger that we experience is a different kind of anger. This is not an open, blatant, roaring anger, but an anger hidden behind the smooth word, the smiling face, and the polite handshake. It is a frozen anger which settles into a biting resentment and slowly paralyzes a generous heart. Yes, I am all too familiar with anger in such forms. I see it in myself all the time.

The solution, according to Nouwen, based on the lives of Jesus, St. Anthony and the desert fathers, is solitude. But this is not our usual distorted, notion of solitude. It is not a place where we can have privacy to escape the worries of the world – to do our own thing. It is not a place where we go to be recharged before going out for the next round of the fight. According to Nouwen, this solitude is the furnace of transformation – where we die to our old selves and the new emerges. When we are in solitude, we have nothing to hold on to. We have no telephone calls to make, no news to hear, no friends to talk to, no work to do, no titles and positions. There in the moments of our solitude, we are just who we are: our naked, weak, broken and sinful selves. It can be dreadful. Everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something. But if we remain in solitude, this is where we encounter God, because only in the context of grace can we face our sin; only in the place of healing do we dare to show our wounds; only with a single-minded attention to Christ can we give up our clinging fears and face our own true nature. As we come to realize that it is not we who live, but Christ who lives in us, we can slowly let our compulsions melt away. In this solitude, we are transformed.

This is not a kind of solitude where we escape from crumbling society to save ourselves. The desert fathers went into the desert for solitude, but they emerged as servants of Christ with fruitful ministries. In this kind of solitude, rather than running away from the world, we are transformed for ministry to the world. How? In solitude we realize that nothing human is alien to us, that the roots of all conflict, war, injustice cruelty, hatred, jealousy, and envy are deeply anchored in our own heart. We lose all forms of judgmentalism, and put on the clothes of compassion instead, because apart from God’s grace, we are all the same. We stop evaluating others and judging others. Instead, we become compassionate. According to Nouwen, compassion is the fruit of solitude and the basis of all ministry. Solitude molds self-righteous people into gentle, caring, forgiving persons who are so deeply convinced of their own great sinfulness and so fully aware of God’s even greater mercy that their life itself becomes ministry. In such a ministry there is hardly any difference left between doing and being.

Instead of being so concerned about wanting to make an impact through our ministry with quick solutions and program after program, our ministry flows from who we are through our compassion. He says, ‘As busy, active, relevant ministers, we want to earn our bread by making a real contribution. This means first and foremost doing something to show that our presence makes a difference. And so we ignore our greatest gift, which is our ability to enter into solidarity with those who suffer.’ Will we enter into solitude to experience God’s transformation? Will we allow God to work in our solitude to turn our ministries dictated by compulsions into ministries flowing out of compassion? It will be a tough struggle, just as Jesus struggled with the temptations to be relevant, spectacular and powerful in the desert. But without such a desert we will lose our own soul while preaching the gospel to others.