Experience the Unexpected Blessing of Solitude

Posted on Apr 07, 2020 Topic : Inspirational/Devotional, Women's Christian Living
Posted by : Rachel McMillan

Having long decided to never put any opportunity, trip or event on hold due to the lack of a companion, I love encouraging people to learn how to be their own best company. To stay as long as you want in a new space, to grab your gear and go at the last minute, to enrich your life with the beauty of intentional silence.

One of the most powerful moments of my life was in a church--- but not during a service. My first of many subsequent visits to a medieval church Londoners affectionately call Great St. Bart’s is one of the most profound memories of my life. The priory church of St. Bartholomew the Great in London, England is over 900 years old. It withstood Henry VIII’s desecration of the monasteries and later the zeppelins of World War I, even though one of the early explosives fell so closely to it. In World War II as Luftwaffe bombs blitzed the city and destroyed nearly as many churches as the Great Fire of London of 1666, St Bart’s remained tucked into the ancient market of Smithfield.

The moment I stepped through the columns and stones, from the Narthex to the Crossing and what in church architecture we call the Quire, I was transfixed. Indeed, it took me a moment to catch my breath. The tiles beneath my shoes were worn with age. The names etched into the tombstones interred in the floor and the chancels and chapels were nearly scrubbed illegible.

Here, alone, I listened. I sought. Here I It is so important to carve out space in our lives to listen, to approach, to heed, to seek hallowed spaces without others. The quiet of solitude should be as cherished in our pursuit of God’s voice as our recognition that he meets us when two or three are gathered. The pressure to be accompanied, the belief that we must be with other people in order to travel or enjoy or experience can keep us from experiencing the still, small voice that meets us in grand churches or rocky streams, in the deep of a forest or wandering a snow-felled path.

I often retreat into that memory of St. Bartholomew the Great when the world closes in. On a crowded Toronto subway, when my thoughts and stresses close in. When anxious moments cloud my mind. I can squeeze my eyes shut and recall the rafters and quire, the nave and the transepts of a church I explored…alone.

Tucked into a corner off of London’s Cloth Fair—near Smithfield Market so long populated by the bustle of merchants toting their wares. The columns and lines, the candelabras and priory windows. The stillness. The echo of the slightest footfall interrupting haloed silence in a sacred space. Turn off the noise of the world, find a place in a church or a courtyard or a bookstore or a library and recognize who you are—fearfully and wonderfully made—with your Creator as the best company.