Solitude and Silence
Insights from Dallas Willard
“The movement from loneliness to solitude is not a movement of growing withdrawal but is instead a movement toward a deeper engagement in the burning issues of our time. The movement from loneliness to solitude can make it possible to convert slowly our fearful reactions into a loving response.” — Henri Nouwen
A National Call to the Christian Practices of Silence and Solitude from the Center for Christianity and Public Life
In light of our current technological revolution
in the midst of great social distrust
in the shadows of profound political discord
we call on Christians
to take up the historic, Spirit-led practices of silence and solitude
as essential, formative disciplines for our time
so that we might grow in our capacity
to truly hear and pay attention to God and
to our neighbors and
resist the destructive and malformative habits of thought and behavior of our day.
Earlier this year, the Center for Christianity and Public Life (CCPL) called for Christians to practice silence and solitude as a means of cultivating a Christlike response to our challenging times. The CCPL invited the Martin Institute for Christianity and Culture at Westmont to be an original signer and partner in this national call. You can consider joining the call here: https://www.silenceandsolitude.org/
As a resource, the Martin Institute highlights Dallas Willard’s talk “Solitude and Silence” given during an intensive two-week residential course for Fuller Theological Seminary’s Doctor of Ministry program in June 2012, the year before he died. This story features Willard’s insights into these two essential disciplines. Find a video of his lecture and a transcription at conversatio.org/solitude-and-silence.
Dallas Willard begins his lecture by asking important questions about solitude. Does it show up in the Bible? Are there any explanations of how it works? Can we fi nd illustrations from the life of Jesus and others? What are the specifi c spiritual benefits achieved through solitude?
He then identifies two general types of spiritual disciplines: abstinence and engagement, noting the difference between them. “It’s like breathing in and breathing out — except you start with breathing out, that is the abstinence principle,” he says. “You empty areas out that have been filled with things” to make room for other things that need to be there. Disciplines of engagement help us breathe in the things that need to be there.
According to Willard, the major disciplines of abstinence can free us from spiritually hurtful entanglements, especially from overdependence on human interactions and our work. He quotes Peter on this subject: “Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11).
Willard shares his defi nition of solitude: “electing to step free from human relationships for a lengthy period of time in isolation or anonymity,” perhaps in a quiet room. “One way of practicing isolation is to have a comfortable place where you go, and you are alone, and you’re quiet, and you don’t do anything except just be there,” he says.
Choosing to do nothing in isolation clearly illustrates what solitude is, Willard says, contrasting it with enforced isolation such as solitary confinement, which can be torture. He quotes Mark 1:13 about Jesus after his baptism when the Spirit compelled him to go into the wilderness. “He was in the wilderness for 40 days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.” Willard seeks to help people come to terms with not doing any work, just focusing on being alone. “God may come to be with you, along with Satan, and a few wild beasts,” he says. “You accept that, but you don’t try to make God show up.” People often fi nd it troubling to enter into solitude because of expectations about what is supposed to happen. “You want to start from the idea that what is supposed to happen is nothing,” he says. “You’re learning how to just be there.” Being alone and doing nothing is what disentangles us from overdependence on human interactions and our work.
The discipline of solitude is tied to Sabbath. “It’s very difficult to practice Sabbath unless you are habituated to solitude,” he says. “The rule for solitude is no work — you don’t work.” So if we regularly practice the discipline of solitude, we’ll be able to practice Sabbath. Willard notes that legalistic settings can take practicing Sabbath to an extreme and result in a lot of decisions that look silly.
“You want to start from the idea that what is supposed to happen is nothing,” he says. “You’re learning how to just be there.”
“Solitude is designed to totally take us away from what we do,” Willard says. He advises choosing a comfortable place and then just being there. “You’re not trying to make something happen — you’re enjoying your experience.” He believes that things will happen, but “you’re not the one who is making them happen.” The hardest part for people driven to accomplish is doing nothing. “Something will be accomplished, but you won’t do it.”
Willard cites the example of Jesus: “He goes out, and he’s alone in solitude and obviously praying and perhaps doing some other things. . . . He’s not responding to the demands of the crowd.” When they hunt him down to bring him back, Jesus tells them, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent” (Luke 4:43). Jesus was free not to respond to the demands that came to him. Willard says, “We have the habit of responding, and we become worn out, exhausted with this. And we have to go into solitude
to begin to break the grip of our entanglements in that way.”
As a result, Willard associates solitude with Sabbath. Although Sabbath is a command, both disciplines require “turning loose.” When we practice the Sabbath, we turn things loose because we don’t do any work. Learning to practice solitude helps us turn loose. “Solitude is the radical cure of entanglement,” Willard says. It breaks our habits and teaches us that if we don’t show up, the world will go on. God will take care of it, and others can serve as well as we.
“Sometimes we just need to make sure we rest,” Willard says. For example, after Elijah ran away from Ahab, he took a nap. An angel woke him up and fed him, and he took another nap. Willard notes that two naps in a day can be much more effective. “It’s amazing how restorative that second one is.”
He advises us to study Elijah because it seems like he had come to the end of his ministry. He had reached his limit. “When we reach our limit, solitude becomes a place of restoration,” Willard says.
Using space and time well is important until we become practiced in disciplines such as solitude and silence. “Removing yourself in space and time, where you don’t have to deal with things — issues don’t even come up that you have to deal with. Being at another place helps us break the entanglements,” he says. It’s important to understand the use of the body in the disciplines. With solitude, we simply put the body in another place where people can’t place demands on us. The practice of solitude “aids our will by freeing us up from having to deal with things.” Willard
urges us to remember that “spiritual growth is not just a matter of growth in willpower. Willpower itself is exhausting, and if you have to live by willpower, it will get the best of you eventually.”
Willard identifies one of the greatest benefi ts of solitude: learning we can live without constant interaction with others. “Constant interaction with others becomes a way of being preoccupied and not really dealing honestly with ourselves and who we are and what we are to do.” We learn that the world doesn’t rest on our shoulders. We have time to focus on God, to clear the storm of life and mind for decisions and planning. While those are the benefits of solitude, “our aim in solitude is to simply be alone and to do nothing,” he says.
However, Willard notes that solitude isn’t especially holy — it’s “wisdom, not righteousness.” But practicing solitude frees us to engage in ways essential to holiness. For instance, Willard thinks people succeed little with prayer or study because they’re distracted. “Solitude begins to make a dent on the distractions and frees us up to return to our work or other activities in a way that is much more beneficial.”
He quotes Psalm 16:8, one of his favorite passages. “I have set the Lord always before me. He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.” According to Willard, we can be sure something like that experience will happen when we practice solitude — and when it does, we can take it with us wherever we go.
“God will not, as a rule, compete for your attention,” he says. “It is up to us to seek him, and then he will find us.” We can do that by stepping out of our entanglements. That’s our part. Willard says that as God shows up — or even whether he shows up — “you can be sure that something like that will happen, and it will change the way you live. But that’s God’s business, and he takes care of that.”
Willard asks, how do we seek the face of God and come to the place where he is always before us? “I think that solitude is one of the ways that we begin to move in that direction, and we need to make a place for it.” He says we can carry it with us so we won’t be overwhelmed with responsibilities and other people even when we work hard. There is nothing wrong with working hard. Rather, “it’s when you have to work very hard and also carry the weight of the world on your shoulders that it becomes destructive,” he says.
According to Willard, “solitude breaks the power of hurry,” a primary function of the discipline. Importantly, hurry differs from acting quickly. “Hurry is a kind of attitude that combines, usually, guilt and fear, and an excessive sense of your responsibility,” he says. Solitude helps us discover that we live and continue to breathe, enjoying the grace of God, the beauty of creation and the love of our family. We become thankful for our life. He quotes John Wesley, who wrote, “I am never in a hurry because I never accept more than I can do.”
Solitude trains us to avoid being victimized by the demands placed on us, Willard says. “The control of your time is a major thing that comes out of the practice of solitude....it will free you from hurry...from oversubscription to things that you think you have to do.” But the practice simply involves being alone and doing nothing. These effects — the benefi ts of solitude — result from the practice.
Solitude also cures us of loneliness. “You learn that you can be alone without being lonely....you are able to deal with what drives loneliness, able to think about it.”
Through solitude and silence, we become acquainted with what some call the false self, when we falsely present ourselves. These disciplines help us come to terms with that self and our submerged feelings and the entanglements of life keep us from dealing with them. “That’s important in families; it’s important in churches, because the burden of manning the facades…is life-crushing,” he says. “They make it impossible for us to live for God in a way that we can be truthful and open and honest and helpful to other people. The false self always distorts the whole configuration of relationships.” Solitude and silence help us see that we don’t needto present ourselves other than how we truly are.
Willard identifies two main forms of silence, the first being the absence of sound. “Noise reaches deeply into our body and into our souls, and it disturbs us.” We live in a world where we must pay attention to noises because sounds often keep us alive. For example, a scream or a siren alerts us to danger. We practice silence to allow our bodies to relax. “Silence is not an absence, it’s a presence,” he says. “Silence is a kind of substance in which we are able to experience eternity. It is a substance that enters into our souls, and if we don’t have it, our souls become impoverished.” He explains that noise drains the energy of our souls by making the body constantly alert and active.
“Silence is not an absence, it’s a presence,” he says. “Silence is a kind of substance in which we are able to experience eternity. It is a substance that enters into our souls, and if we don’t have it, our souls become
impoverished.”
The second form of silence is refraining from speaking. “Refraining from speaking is something that really does change everything about how we are inserted into life.” Willard thinks we may need to experience solitude to do this because we’re so used to speaking. Also, we learn to refrain from speaking when studying the Bible, reflecting on it, being silent and waiting for the Lord.
“When you refrain from speaking, you lay down the burden of adjusting how you appear to other people. That is one reason why it is so challenging, and why James says ‘Anyone who can get by without offending by their speech is a perfect person’” (James 3:1-12). Some groups have turned that into an absolute command and a vow of silence. But just as there is nothing particularly righteous about solitude, there is nothing particularly righteous about silence, Willard says. James simply says that if you can control your speech to avoid hurting others or doing something wrong, “you have come to a point where you know what is going on and you are able to stop what is not right.” You’re able to stop what is not right because of your self-knowledge.
Willard says, “The tongue is so close to our will and is so apt to run on without our knowledge of what is good, that if you can control that thing in your mouth, that means that your character has developed to such an extent that you are aware of what’s coming down.” He concludes that mastery of wrongdoing involves being aware and prepared to stop it when it can be stopped. The practices of silence and solitude can help, he says, quoting Proverbs 10:19, “Where there are lots of words, sin is not lacking. Those who refrain from speaking are wise.”
Dallas Willard, the late philosopher and longtime professor at USC, wrote many spiritual formation books, including “Renovation of the Heart,” “The Spirit of the Disciplines” and “The Divine Conspiracy.” Westmont honors his legacy and carries on his work through the Dallas Willard Research Center, part of Westmont’s Martin Institute for Christianity and Culture.
Voskuyl Library’s Special Collections staff preserve, catalog and provide access to the books and papers of Dallas Willard. Willard scholars may
contact the Special Collections and Archive at archives@westmont.edu with questions about the collection.
Dallas Willard quotes are © 2012, Willard Family Trust. Used by permission. All rights reserved.