Island Solitude: How to find it on the mainland.
“Creativity takes time and solitude; no one else will arrange either for us.” (from a Daily Calendar with no attribution).
I love islands. Actually, I love the “idea” of an island: the seclusion, the beauty, the peace.
This summer I visited Holy Island, an island in the North Sea off the coast of England, one of the Farne Islands. The tourist signs all stressed that this was a “tidal island” meaning: “Pay attention to the tides, or you’ll get stuck!”
As I read some of the literature that was in the island’s church, it became clear to me that the beautiful ruins of the priory had been built because of the tides. Remoteness and inaccessibility had allowed the monks to have twelve hours a day (six and six) of uninterrupted time, sheltered from those pesky visitors from the mainland.
I wondered about that.
Isn’t it usually the people and things we live with that tend to distract us from more spiritual, solitary, or creative pursuits? It’s not so much the unannounced visitor, but the dog who just got sprayed by a skunk (and the subsequent laundry), or the “ding” of a text message that pulls us away.
I read about St. Cuthbert (one of the island’s famous residents) who had decided back in the 600’s that even Holy Island with its tides was not solitary enough for him to worship as he felt he should. He had removed himself to a completely uninhabited island, Inner Farne, and built himself a shelter and a guest shelter, --- in case anyone found him.
It reminded me of Anne Morrow Lindbergh in her book Gift from the Sea where she describes going to an island for solitude, and how it enabled her to shed unimportant things and see what really mattered. One of the things she felt mattered was, “that one be for a time inwardly attentive.” (p. 50)
Earlier in her book, Lindbergh had asked herself what she really wanted out of life. It seems to me now that she and St. Cuthbert weren’t that different, for she concluded that what she wanted was, “to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life . . . “ She goes on to say,“I want, in fact – to borrow from the language of the saints – to live “in grace” as much of the time as possible.” She defines grace as, “an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated into outward harmony.” (p. 17)
Just this week, my younger son asked me what inspires me. I sat there, silent. He asked again. I realized I couldn’t put it into words, not right then. But, ironically, that is what inspires me, – words.
Not just any words. Words that come from a place of sincerity, of truth, or compassion. They inspire me; they always have. But, as we all know, words are not enough. Actions must accompany them, or they are hollow or, worse still, hypocritical.
Good writing has to come from a place of experience. Of having lived something, and then managing to put it into words so that others might feel it. Maybe that’s why it’s often so hard, and it is. It may also be why it has to be done in solitude. To, as Virginia Woolf puts it, “loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream.” (A Room of One’s Own, p.109) And that takes concentration and persistence. Things that are hard to find with others around.
“Yes,” you might be saying, “I get all that. What I don’t get is how to find that solitude in my life.”
“No one else will arrange either for us,” says the quote at the top of this essay. That is some of the most practical advice I have ever been given. It means that, if I want to write something, if it matters enough to me to put aside other demands and interests and feelings of guilt, then I must find the time myself. I must walk upstairs, close the door, turn off my phone and sit down at my desk. Then, I must work. I must be willing to return again and again to the task at hand, for it is utterly rare and precious to have the words come the first time through. And now I know that.
And that takes solitude. Solitude we are often afraid of, and avoid at all costs.
But, if it’s difficult, we have the poet Rainer Maria Rilke to guide us with this advice, “it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.” (Letters to a Young Poet, p.68).
And the benefits are enormous. Allowing ourselves to stop, to be alone, to think deeply, gives us the space we all need to discover. For creation is more an act of discovery than the pulling of a completely new idea out of thin air.
It’s like the faeries in a children’s book I just read where you had to have special glasses to see them. Glasses that tend to allow the better ideas to appear. The ideas that sit down next to our troubled, noisy, anxious thoughts and calmly tell us what we need to know, and do. That show us the path, and ask us to follow.
The reason all this matters is because finding our creative voice (being“inwardly attentive”) allows us to share what we have learned or still wonder about with others. It helps us to realize that, as Lindbergh says, “If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.” (p. 38) And to do something about it.
With that as our motive, we may just discover that the island we seek can be reached without a rowboat, but not without getting muddy.
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/lindisfarne-priory/
