Dear Reader:

It took me a good part of my life (to date) to distinguish solitude from loneliness. And oh what a difference there is!

Once I understood that we are each connected in this universe to all other living things…to Something bigger than ourselves…an importance piece of the whole picture…I have never felt a deep loneliness again. Our lives are individually and uniquely paramount to this thing we call life.

There is no separation….just connection.

These days I seek solitude….if I go too long without a chat with my soul I feel off-kilter…like the nomadic tribe in Africa that would stop at intervals along their travails to wait for their souls to catch up with them.

In today’s society… with Iphones becoming another appendage connected to the human body ( not even listing all the other high-tech gadgets to help us communicate with each other 24/7) people are lonelier than ever. What is slowly sinking in to people of all ages is that twittering, emailing, texting (as far as I can go) stops short of fulfilling human relationships….because there is no human contact.

Even when you see my nature/ garden photos….you might admire or like a certain flower but there is no way you can feel what I felt holding, it, planting it (feeling the rich soil in my hands) and talking to it….encouraging it to grow tall and strong. I know each flower, shrub, and tree in my yard…and also their personalities.

…Who likes a lot of water, who likes a little, and who just wants to be left along for about a week before taking more liquid nourishment.

*Gerber daisies demand lots of water! (It’s a good thing they prefer water to “stronger” drinks or “gerbers” would have to attend AA on a regular basis.)

We have all felt bouts of loneliness in our lives, even in a crowd….but solitude is something we seek  because the divine spark within calls to us when we have gone too long without conversing with ourselves through God.

In Amit Awakin.…Sherry Turkel, also, shares her thoughts on the importance of solitude and its importance is building relationships.

The capacity to be alone is the capacity to know enough about yourself and who you are, and be comfortable enough with that. That way, when you are with another person, you’re not trying to make that person into somebody you need them to be in order to buttress a fragile sense of your own self. You can actually turn to a person and see them as another person, and have a real relationship with them

(The longer I observe relationships the more I agree whole-heartedly with this author….if we can’t be by ourselves for any length of time contentedly, instead of depending on some one or some others to define our identity…we are in for a long, hard journey through life.)

…The capacity to be in a relationship requires the capacity for  genuine solitude. One of the gifts of a fruitful childhood is that we learn this capacity for successful solitude. And we learn it, paradoxically, by a caretaker being with us, but able to leave us a little bit of space.

...I remember walks with my grandmother to Macy’s in Brooklyn. We would just be quiet together. Every once in a while there’d be a word, but we were just side by side in our thoughts, and sharing a thought once in a while, and you knew that there was someone there protecting you as you learned to think your own thoughts.

People have many different models of what that is: sitting together sewing, reading, playing, giving a child a bath and then letting them have the privacy of their thoughts. These are the moments of childhood where children are not abandoned, but they learn to be alone with themselves.

It is the impetus to forming later relationships. . If instead of that, we put newborns and toddlers in a baby bouncer that has a slot for an iPad or an iPhone or a laptop, they’re always mirrored by some other outside thing. Something non-human with no human contact. They’re not brought back to their own self and their own resources…to their own mind and imagination.

I went over to Anne’s to pick up a new book we are studying in our Sunday School class. It appears to be right in line with our thoughts today. The title & sub-title say: So Long Insecurity: You’ve Been a Bad Friend to Us.

We started talking about some of our own insecurities…one we share in common is finances. That particular category in life makes both of us uneasy and feeling very insecure. 

Anne is going through what I did last summer….a large renovation of her house and garage which requires dipping into savings you hoped to avoid. It is quite nerve-wracking…because renovations almost always cost more than predicted.

We, humans, relate financial savings to security and it is hard to let go of that life-line and put our trust in God that we will be provided what we need. Financial upheavals still make me want to run hide under the covers with a pacifier in my mouth.

From what I’ve already read….I think this book is going to be very helpful in using  solitude time to express our fears of insecurity to God while asking Him to help us trust in Him to lead us through the valleys of insecurity when we reach them.

*Both of us feel very secure about gardens and flowers…..here are some examples from Anne’s yard.

……………………….

So until tomorrow: “Loneliness is the poverty of self: Solitude is the richness of self.” May Sarton

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*”Look how my garden grows” If I ever get lonely I can open my bedroom door to my deck and there I am in a matter of seconds looking out at my garden!