Solitude & Silence: A Spiritual Discipline

Many of us are very intentional about practicing the spiritual disciplines. We will likely look at some of those very soon here on our blog and on FB our Facebook page. Meanwhile, in the wake of an intense two weeks, my heart and mind are keenly aware of my need for rest. And, in a beautiful coincidence, the Lord also recognizes my need! So today I am sharing the insight of Dallas Willard, a philosopher and religious teacher whom I greatly respect, on the spiritual discipline of solitude and silence....




Solitude and silence are primary means for correcting the distortions of our embodied social existence. Our good ideas and intentions are practically helpless in the face of what our body in the social context is poised to do automatically. Jesus of course understood all this very well. Thus he knew that Peter's declarations that he would not deny him were irrelevant to what he would actually do in the moment of trial. And in fact the social setting and Peter's deeply ingrained habits moved him to deny Jesus three times, one right after the other, even though he had been warned most clearly of what was going to happen.
The "wrung" habits of mind, feeling and body are keyed so closely and so routinely to the social setting that being alone and being quiet for lengthy periods of time are, for most people, the only way they can take the body and soul out of the circuits of sin and allow them to find a new habitual orientation in the Kingdom of the Heavens. Choosing to do this and learning how to do it effectively is a basic part of what we can do to enable us to do what we cannot do by direct effort, even with the assistance of grace.
Indeed, solitude and silence are powerful means to grace. Bible study, prayer and church attendance, among the most commonly prescribed activities in Christian circles, generally have little effect for soul transformation, as is obvious to any observer. If all the people doing them were transformed to health and righteousness by it, the world would be vastly changed. Their failure to bring about the change is precisely because the body and soul are so exhausted, fragmented and conflicted that the prescribed activities cannot be appropriately engaged, and by and large degenerate into legalistic and ineffectual rituals. Lengthy solitude and silence, including rest, can make them very powerful.
But we must choose these disciplines. God will, generally speaking, not compete for our attention. If we will not withdraw from the things that obsess and exhaust us into solitude and silence, he will usually leave us to our own devices. He calls us to "be still and know." To the soul disciplined to wait quietly before him, to lavish time upon this practice, he will make himself known in ways that will redirect our every thought, feeling and choice. The body itself will enter a different world of rest and strength. And the effects of solitude and silence will reverberate through the social settings where one finds oneself.






http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=57