The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught. Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place. But many who saw them leaving recognized them and ran on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things. Mark 6:30-34
“It seems to me that during Thanksgiving one of the big ambiguities has resolved itself out. The fact is, I do not want purely and simply to “be a hermit” or to lead a life purely and ideally contemplative. At the same time I want to break with all the fictions and pretenses, all the facade and latent hypocrisy of the community in which I live. Yet, I truly seek a very solitary, simple and primitive life with no special labels attached. However, there must be love in it, and not an abstract love but a real love for real people.
The conclusion then that God is calling me to a kind of missionary solitude – an isolated life in some distant, primitive, place among primitive and simple people, to whose spiritual needs I would attend. Not a missionary life pure and simple, nor a solitary life pure and simple, but a combination of both. No nonsense about asking permission to live as a hermit here–and raising all the futile questions and pretenses this would involve. It would get me into a whole network of lies for the sake of one grain of truth.”
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) in A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk’s Life, edited by Lawrence S. Cunningham (New York: HarperCollins, 1996) excerpt dated 14 June 1959. IV Sunday After Pentecost.
Thanksgiving in America, hopefully is a time to step away from work and rest. Like responding to the invitation of Jesus to the disciples, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”
To get away alone is to locate solitude. But I like how Merton describes it. The goal is not simply to be a hermit and make solitude the end. The balance he finds in the middle he labels as “missionary solitude.”
While today has been marked with “materialistic shopping” let’s pursue “missionary solitude” instead. Let’s “break with all the fictions and pretenses, all the facade and latent hypocrisy” around us.
And let’s cultivate our souls in solitude so we can go love and serve people generously. This is what happened with Jesus. After their time of rest came their richest ministry. May it be so with all of us.