I Need People and Solitude

I mentioned Mary Oliver yesterday. I don’t agree with her on everything, but when I read my old sermons, I realize I don’t even agree with myself on everything!, but I do love her writing…especially her poems. I think the thing I most disagree with her about it that she seems to substitute nature for the Bride…the Church. I admit that while I love being with the Church and the greatest lesson I learned in the Covid year was just how much I needed the church, I do find I feel closest to God outside.

Gary Thomas, in his book Sacred Pathways, gives nine ways we connect with God. I find myself in the category he calls the “Naturalists,” but there is no substitute for the Church and being with the Body of Christ.

As an introvert I find being in crowds drains my battery and I have re-charge in times of solitude. My wife is a natural extrovert. I remember she once told me, “I like being alone,” and I responded, “But I need to be alone.” She finds her battery recharged in a crowd…mine is recharging as I sit alone in the back yard or walking in the woods or sitting by a stream.

Thomas said,

“Many of the Old Testament theophanies, or appearances of God, happened in the wilderness. God met Hagar in the desert, Abraham on a mountain, Jacob at a river crossing, and Moses at a burning bush. It was far less common for God to visit someone in an urban center.

Jesus himself seems to have sought out the beauty of creation. Early in his ministry, he moved from Nazareth to live in Capernaum, which was by the lake (Matthew 4:13). When he called some of his disciples to follow him, he was walking by the Sea of Galilee (Matthew 4:18).”

Spurgeon once said,

“Oh, but surely, everything that comes from the hand of such a Master-artist as God has something in it of himself! . . . There are lovely spots on this fair globe which ought to make even a blasphemer devout. I have said, among the mountains, “He who sees no God here is mad.” There are things that God has made which overwhelm with a sense of his omnipotence: how can men see them, and doubt the existence of the Deity?”

I quote both of these men to show that while it is of value to study, to observe, and to learn from the created world, we must never stray from the Word of God or from His Church. In her poem, “The Beautiful, Striped Sparrow,” Mary Oliver spoke of walking through the fields humming hymns she used to sing in church. She closed it with these words,

“…am i lonely?

the beautiful, striped sparrow,

serenely, on the tallest weed in his kingdom,

also sings without words.”

Nature is a great place to get alone with God, to spend time in solitude, and to offer up prayers and praise, but it cannot take away our need for joining in with the Body of Christ. I need the hymns of the Church, I need to sing them with the people of God, but I find I also need to sing with the “striped sparrow” as we praise our Creator. So, I’ll walk through the fields humming a hymn, but that hymn I hum will most likely be from the service I attended and sang with my brothers and sisters. God seems to work best through me when I attend to both areas of my life.