Thou hast made me known to friends
whom I knew not;
Thou hast given me seats in homes
not my own.
Thou hast brought the distant near and
made brothers and sisters of strangers.
~ Tagore
Only solitude can provide the depth for universal friendship. Those who can be solitary have withdrawn their projections and are innately nonviolent. They have broken with the crowd, and their communities do not become rival crowds in their turn. Solitude gives us the transformational insight that all things are held together in the boundless, open community of God. To be friends with one another is only seeing what we are in God together. This insight is the criterion of all genuine holiness.
Holiness demands courage. The courage born of holiness.