“Solitude is listening to the voice that calls you the Beloved. It is being alone with the One who says, ‘You are my Beloved, I want to be with you. Don’t go running around, don’t start to prove to everybody that you’re beloved. You are already beloved.’ That is what God says to us. Solitude is the place where we go in order to hear the truth about ourselves. It asks us to let go of the other ways of proving, which are a lot more satisfying. The voice that calls us the beloved is not the voice that satisfies the senses. That’s what the whole mystical life is about; it is beyond feelings and beyond thoughts.” (Henri Nouwen)

Are we afraid of solitude, because we are afraid to hear the truth about ourselves? We are quick to believe the lie that we are not loved; we are a failure. It is the lie that has controlled us for years. And so we run, hoping that the inner voice of the Beloved will be blocked. But each time we stop and be still, we hear the truth once more. We are like the person in the poem, The Hound of Heaven. We feel hounded and so we run, until finally when we can’t run any longer we stop to face that voice. We cry out “Why are you chasing me?” We hear the truth once more: “I love you. Come into the silence and learn the meaning of my love.” Enter into the silence of solitude.