Francis Weller

Solitude is a state of hospitality, a welcoming of all that needs attention. Solitude offers a ground that is embracing and inclusive. Everything can be made welcome in the broad arms of solitude, even fear. For as long as humans have sought counsel with the sacred, much of it has happened in a space set apart from others. Here, in silence and nourishing aloneness, we can become receptive to the influence of soul...

We have entered a time of descent that takes us down into a different geography. In this shadowed terrain, we encounter a landscape familiar to soul—loss, grief, death, vulnerability, and fear. We have, in the old language of Alchemy, crossed into the Nigredo...This is a season of decay, of shedding and endings, of falling apart and undoing. This is not a time of rising and growth. It is not a time of confidence and ease. No. We are hunkered down. Down being the operative word. From the perspective of soul, down is holy ground.

Our apprenticeship with sorrow has led us here, to the very edge of culture and the wild, uncertain times we are in...We are being called upon to gather the wisdom we have found on our long walk with sorrow and make it available for others. We must enter the healing ground as elders who have been seasoned by grief, recognizing we carry soul medicine for those who are beginning their apprenticeship. Perhaps now we can begin to build a new culture, one that honors soul and the soul of the world.