Solitude

Rosy the RV, where I live, is within hearing distance of this ocean. But this post is about silence. Rosy has become my cave. But a cave of delight now rather than dread. It was here that I grappled with loneliness in a very cold, wet February - when I realized I was completely mateless and alone, for the first time in eight years.

Maybe it is that spring is beginning and the sun is coming out. Or just grace. But I am honestly relishing this completely private space. I am not only learning to truly value my own voice, to love her, to cherish her. I feel the inner peace creeping in, growing strong and proud, like a scar over the wound of this winter. My heart is dancing freer with every day. I hung blue bottles, wrapped with silver wire, in my still naked crepe myrtle tree yesterday. They will move a little in the wind. The Gullah people taught that the evil spirits would be caught in the bottle trees, that the even the color blue protects us.

The German mystic Meister Eckhart, believed that nothing resembles God like silence. John O'Donohue, poet, priest and writer of Anam Cara, a book I am reading now (and quite seduced by) suggested that "the highly strung character of western life was explained by the absence of silence. "When you acknowledge the integrity of your solitude, and settle into its mystery, your relationships with others take on a new warmth, adventure and wonder."

I am called to more integrity. "The duty of priviledge", he said, "is absolute integrity." Wow.