I spend a fair amount of time alone. Too much, probably. It's frustrating, to say the least. A little depressing. And very, very lonely sometimes.

I left my job in South Dakota so I could find something that I thought would be more suited to me back in my home state of Oregon. I had some friends in SD, but I didn't really have any good friends there, and my job was less than wonderful, so I left. I covered a 1550 mile drive within a span of 32 hours and arrived in Oregon, only to discover after a short while that in 6 years, there weren't a whole lot of friends left. I knew a fair number of people, but they were just people I knew or friends of my parents. I quickly went from a few okay friends to hardly any friends at all. I was suddenly very alone.

I've never been terribly good at making friends. It seems to me that those friends that have really meant something to me in my life have been those that weren't people I sought out, but people that I somehow stumbled onto. Even after two months of living back in Oregon, I could count the number of friends that I had on the fingers of one... er... finger. And she was engaged, so you know how much attention I got. I simply couldn't find people or places that I felt particularly comfortable with.

I imagine that everybody is alone sometimes. It probably drives the extroverts of the world insane, but being very strongly introverted, I've discovered that it'll drive the introverts insane as well.

Or maybe it won't.
It all depends.

Strangely, the best time that I have had since coming back to Oregon was not when I was with that one friend. I was alone. I went to my favorite place in all the world, the Columbia River Gorge, and I just hiked around the waterfalls and took in nature. Perhaps it was there that I first began to find my wal.

I first came across the concept of the wal in a novel, and I didn't put much thought into it. After all, how much in a fantasy book can you really make use of in real life. So far, despite a lot of looking, I haven't found any dragons, I haven't mastered the broadsword, and I can't light a candle by casting a spell. Fantasy is not known for being applicable. But I think there was something to this one concept. The wal; "it is that secret center of your being, the perfect place of peace within. Once you reside there, you are safe from all harm. Your flesh may suffer, even die, but within your wal you will endure in peace." (Feist, Raymond, Magician: Master)

That description may be somewhat extreme. Perhaps it isn't. Heaven knows I'm no expert on the matter. Regardless, it's a place to start.

Henri Nouwen, in his book, Reaching Out, delineates the struggle between loneliness and solitude. Solitude is a comfortable place. Loneliness is frustrating. Solitude brings strength. Loneliness, weakness. There is peace in solitude. Depression comes out of loneliness. I believe that people must have solitude of heart to find their wal. And I believe that loneliness will pull them out from it.

In solitude, the closer you come to your wal, the closer you come to your identity. The closer you are to your wal, the less you can hide from yourself, and the more honest you must be. To truly be in solitude, you hide nothing from yourself, and you are not afraid of what you see. You may not like it, but you accept it. You may wish to change it, but you are content with it as well. There may be a burning desire to change, but there is a no desire to sweep the dirt under the rug. To be within your wal, you stand naked before yourself.

Another issue that Nouwen deals with is the results of living in loneliness and living in solitude. In loneliness, there is a desperate need to fill the emptiness. It's been said that there's a vaccuum in everybody's life, and only God can fill it. Unfortunately, I can point to thousands of Christians that usually don't feel filled. They keep trying to draw more into that vaccuum. Now, I don't deny Pascal's thesis; only God can fill that vaccuum. But loneliness causes us to try desperately to use other things. Were God truly fit within that space, we wouldn't be lonely. Still, a friend who worked in psychological services once told me that the number one issue she sees is loneliness, regardless of whether the person knows God or not. We continue to try to pull in other things to fill that void.

In solitude, we recognize that emptiness, and we don't try to fill it so much as let it be filled. Jesus said that in order to find life, you must first lose it. Perhaps the only way that void will be filled is to empty it first. In solitude, within the wal, you are free to give yourself away. There is no need to draw into yourself. You do not drain everything around you, but you give what is within you, and somehow, with the hand of God working, the void becomes filled. Lonely people drain those around them eventually. Sometimes two lonely people can draw from each other to sustain themselves for quite a long time, but eventually they will run each other dry. People who know solitude, on the other hand, are free to give to those around them.

Some may think that this stinks of eastern mysticism. Perhaps. I won't deny the fact that there's a little mystic in me, but there was a big mystic in Teresa of Avila, Saint Antony of Egypt, and numerous others throughout Christian history. Mysticism isn't always un-chrsitian. I also won't deny truth simply because it comes from a secular source. The Bible is my foundation for truth, but I find nothing within the Bible that contradicts any of this. There are even bits and pieces that support it, though not in the same words.

How do you find the wal? I don't know. I imagine it's different for every person. But I believe that Nouwen holds the key with the words, "solitude of heart." Not loneliness. Not isolation. Simply solitude. That, I think, is the beginning. I see quite a number of people building walls. Perhaps they need to tear down the walls and find the wal that is already there.

- Matthew R Green 06/23/01