The experience of solitude is necessary because only in solitude and silence is the living God revealed as the binding source of all that is. The veil is lifted, and we begin to see the wonderful possibilities of life together that surround and inhabit us. This means that, at our worst and darkest moments, we can affirm that we are God's handiwork, that God's image has marked us forever, that the most real thing about us is the Spirit who dwells in every human heart. We may be fundamentally and utterly nothing, we may be creatures marked for death, but we are peculiar beings whose very emptiness has been designed to be inhabited by nothing less than the living God. And it is in the living God that we meet one another. The life of prayer revolves around two poles: solitude and community. God is encountered in both places.
Regards to the day, the great long day
That can't be hoarded, good or ill.
What breathes in us likely means us well.
We rise up from an earthly root
To seek the blossom of the heart.
What breathes in us likely means us well.
We are a voice impelled to tell
Where the joining of sound and silence is.
We are the tides and their witnesses.
What breathes in us likely means us well.