Wendell Berry and Solitude
Solitude often gets a bad wrap. We think of it as a tactic of avoidance, a punishment for those who feed off of social activity, or as a time to flip through all of our social media accounts. But what if we allowed it to be a restful pause; a re-centering; a time to reconfigure our own humanness before trying to connect with another’s? If art and, well, all of life is about relationship and connection, we can’t neglect the relationship closest to us. Solitude is a time to disconnect from duty, from the pride of completing a task, and from the despair of failure in order for, as Wendell Berry describes, “one’s inner voices [to] become audible.” It is an encounter with the Lord who lives within us—the Divine Creator—and who made us in His image and likeness. It is a time of discovery and of becoming. As Berry states, “true solitude is found in the wild places.” Let’s return to the woods of solitude and rest.
For more thoughts and wisdom from Wendell Berry, check out this article that goes more in depth with his book of essays called What are People For?
