There is a solitude that is loneliness, and a solitude that is communion. The saints have always known the difference. This sonnet sits with the second kind, the walk taken alone that turns out, slowly, to have been walked with Someone all along.
The Sonnet
I thought the road would feel like emptiness, A walking-out into the world's wide hush, With nothing but my own thin restlessness, No company, no kindly listening crush. But somewhere in the silence I came near To Someone walking quietly at my side, Whose steps I had not noticed, whose held ear Had been attending all along, abide. The solitude was not the absence then, But just the room where I could finally hear, A clearing where the One who knew my name Could speak it without crowd, could come up near. So now I walk alone, and yet not so, For God walks where the lonely pilgrims go.
Reflection
The contemplatives have always insisted on a strange truth, that solitude is not the opposite of communion but, rightly entered, its deepest form. We carry so much noise in the company of others that we cannot always hear what is being said to us at the level of the soul. The walk alone, the quiet hour, the empty room, these become not absences but openings.
Christ Himself withdrew to lonely places to pray. He went into the wilderness, into the early morning hills, into the boat at night. He did this not because He had no friends but because there are conversations the soul can only have in the quiet, and there are gifts only given to those willing to receive them alone.
If your road feels solitary today, listen for the steps beside yours. The One who walked the wilderness still walks with the ones who have stepped aside.
