An Essential Solitude
An Essential Solitude
"I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert. I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top." (Psalm 102.6-7)
"And the daughter of Zion is left like a shelter in a vineyard, like a watchman's hut in a cucumber field, like a besieged city." (Isaiah 1.8)
Writing of his own vocation to serve the Lord as a hermit, the Trappist prophet Thomas Merton, spoke of the "paradoxical, tormented solitaries for whom there is no real place".
He said that these men and women "have not so much chosen solitude as been chosen by it". They "have not generally found their way into the desert either through simplicity or through innocence. Theirs is the solitude that is reached the hard way, through bitter suffering and disillusionment." He went on to explain that "the real wilderness of the hermit is the wilderness of the human spirit which is at once his and everyone else's. What he seeks in that wilderness is not himself, not human company and consolation, but God.
"In this solitude and emptiness of his heart there is another, more inexplicable solitude. Man's loneliness is, in fact, the loneliness of God."
God's greatest compaint against the officially sanctioned prophets to Judah (and Israel) in the days of Jeremiah, was that He "did not send" them, yet, "they have run with their message; I did not speak to them, yet they have prophesied." (Jeremiah 23.21)
"The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I have not sent them or appointed them or spoken to them. They are prophesying to you false visions, divinations, idolatries (things of nought) and the delusions of their own minds (the deceit of their heart)." (Jeremiah 14.14)
To be appointed, spoken to, and sent by God must logically and inevitably lead to a high degree of a peculiar solitary-ness (even isolation) for the authentic prophet. His allegiance is first of all to God...thus there is a necessary, creative estrangement from mankind. His is the "hermit...desert" ministry...his "skin" is charred and his "lips" burnt by the environment which forms him, and yet constantly seems about to overthrow him. His home is not in this current world. He does not require the permission of the religious police to speak. But more than anything else, he does not trust and recoils from popularity, adulation and applause! (I am not here referring to or approving of that which is false or bogus, and thus deserving of the strongest reproof and rebuke from that which is true!)
If what I have just said is true, then we in the Western Church are in a deep, deep ditch of our own digging. This is because the "prophetic" is today celebrated, "prophets" are celebrities belonging to blocs and coteries, and "prophetic" swarms jet from convocation to conference, panting and salivating for yet juicer morsels of "revelation".
"For the time is coming when people will not tolerate wholesome instruction, but having ears itching for something pleasing and gratifying, they will gather to themselves one teacher after another to a considerable number, chosen to satisfy their own liking and to foster the errors they hold, and will turn aside from hearing the truth and wander off into man-made fictions." (2 Timothy 4.3-4)
Let me press this matter further, and say that by-and-large those people and organisations which presently pride themselves, and are regarded by others, as being the prophetic elite and creme de la creme, do not have room in their vocabularies for such words as "separation", "wilderness", "solitude" and "reproach"! Why? Because the pseudo- (supposed but not real) prophetic intuits that the desert means its death...and that's precisely how God has planned it.
"Judgement shall dwell in the wilderness." (Isaiah 32.16)
"But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted." (1 Corinthians 10.5)
"But with whom was he grieved forty years? Was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness?" (Hebrews 3.17)
"At once the Spirit sent him out into the desert, and he was in the desert forty days, being tempted by satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him." (Mark 1.12-13)
"Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her." (Hosea 2.14)
"They shall dwell safely in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods." (Ezekiel 34.25)
"They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts; he made water flow for them from the rock; he split the rock and water gushed out." (Isaiah 48.21)
"This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spoke to him on the mount Sinai, and with our fathers who received the lively oracles to give to us." (Acts 7.38)
"And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time from the face of the serpent." (Revelation 12.14)
Being solitary is one of the most dangeorus things imaginable for a Christian, who is called (non-negotiably) to be "the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it." (1 Corinthians 12.27)
As the venerable mystic and theologican, Juan de Yepez (John of the Cross, Spain, 16th C) has observed, "The virtuous soul that is alone and without a master, is like a lone burning coal; it will grow colder rather than hotter. Those who fall alone remain in their fall, and they value their souls little since they entrust it to themselves alone."
Yet, a peculiar kind of solitary-ness will be in the foundations of the reality of life for the authentic prophet. Isolation weakens and can "destroy" Believers. But it forms, tests and proves the prophet. If the fake, fraudulent or synthetic goes out into the desert, it will perish. If that which is bona fide, valid and legitimate does not enter into solitude, then it will decay into phoney-ness, and will surely expire also.
In his message "Jeremiah - Prophet of the Last Days", Art Katz (a pre-eminent prophet of the 20th C) spoke incisively and poignantly about this necessary tension and suffering, which the authentically prophetic must be permanently immersed in. Art talked (first-hand) of the genuine prophet being "a real anomoly...a round peg in a square hole...an odd-ball!" He is charged with announcing good news and bad news, all of which is usually unwelcome.
"The irony and paradox," Art said, "is that what is most intented for the good of the people is construed by men in their fleshly minds as being intended for their harm." The prophet will be seen as "an enemy and as a traitor". Being "one of the boys" is not possible.
Art recounted how he had once asked "one of the prominent prophets of today" why he wasn't invited to this man's prophetic get-togethers, "because my history in this calling goes back far before you ever began." The reply he obtained was not unexpected: "We know that Art. The reason you're not invited is you're not an 'in-house' prophet. You're not one of the boys, and your words may not fit in comfortably with the consensus of the kinds of things we speak, where we reinforce and confirm one another."
Living as an existential and integral part of the Body of Christ, and yet being simultaneously set apart (even sometimes estranged...at odds) from its members is "a kind of martyrdom," according to Art. And it is "not momentary...it is continued. This is the isolation, the rejection, the sense of strangeness that is characteristic of true prophets. This they have to bear as a mild form of suffering. Their martyrdom begins long before their final martyrdom."
Hence, Art pointed out, Jeremiah is regarded by some Bible scholars as a martyr, even although the nature and manner of his death is not known.
(Note: The pseudo-prophetic is usually more interested in the "martyrdom" of its audience and the object of its criticism...rather than its own humbling and absolutely necessary holy "death"!)
It is of the utmost importance that a prophetic life lived adamantly within this tension and reality be understood by the Church, acknowledged by those whose spiritual ambitions are misguided and disordered, and embraced by the legitimately sent. Such ones must never cease to view themselves as practical and affectionate, moment-by-moment members of His Body. But their office will repeatedly prove itself by banishing them out and into the wilderness. This is the very milieu ordained and created (and for a season inhabited) by Jesus Himself, to confirm their legitimacy and ensure their survival. And yet it will test them to within an inch of their natural and spiritual life. They and the People of God will always be to some degree unsure of exactly what the prophetic is up to and if it's all actually really okay. But by this very real and painful, and mutually experienced, mysterious condition, God will keep us all close to Himself and like unto Him, who is perfect in His lowliness and humility of heart!
"Alas, my mother, that you gave me birth, a man with whom the whole land strives and contends...When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart's delight, for I bear your name, O Lord God Almighty. I never sat in the company of revelers, never made merry with them; I sat alone because your hand was on me and you had filled me with indignation.'" (Jeremiah 15.10 & 16-17)
"And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come." (Hebrews 13.12-14)
