All of us are solitaries: we are born alone through the birth canal into the world and time, and we die alone. No one can enter our interior experience, or its continuum with the outer world we call community. Solitude is the human condition, the universal vocation to be human. It is the willingness, with Love indwelling, to go to the heart of pain to find new life and share it with the world even though you may be separated from it physically. It is from this commitment to be focused through the narrow gate of solitude that self-emptying love is outpoured, and the heart of the community, the heart of its pain, is transformed into the heart of joy.
The restlessness of the human heart is ever absorbed in a longing that finds rest only in that which transcends all longing...I myself lie outside in the backyard at night, alone and in silence, as if waiting for a huge mountain to rise over the trees with the moon each evening. The mountain never appears. Nothing usually happens. But the sheer delight that's mine each night in that time of utterly thoughtless silence is hard to describe. How do we explain the deepest desires that we have? The very desire is what gives us pleasure, not just its gratification.