Wednesday, January 30

What a night we had together last night at Yoga Roots! Celtic theologian and philosopher John O'Donohue led us through his reflections on loneliness, stillness, and solitude. For O'Donohue, stillness is absolutely vital to one's soul and offers itself to us as a life companion. In stillness, we are made ripe to meet and get to know ourselves. As Pascal once put it, "many of the major problems we have result from our inability to sit quietly with ourselves."

O'Donohue believes that the older we get, the more opportunity we have to be still and quiet with ourselves and to use that stillness as a space for solitude and self-knowledge. The problem, however, is that such stillness and quiet can make us feel lonely and vulnerable. So often we tend to run from that initial experience of loneliness and isolation. I know that I do.

O'Donohue shared a powerful story of a time during his student years in Tubingen when he felt horribly lonely, but he decided that rather than running from it, he would actually sit in a chair and "let loneliness in, let it have its way with me. I allowed myself to feel like the loneliest, most forsaken orphan in the world. I cried and I cried and I cried...But something amazing and unexpected happened. Once I decided to feel my loneliness, I wasn't so lonely anymore. Once I engaged and sat with my own loneliness, I befriended it until it became a natural part of my life, a companion." As one of O'Donohue's Gaelic friends put it, "Loneliness is a black, burned hole. But if you close it up, you close out so much that can be so beautiful for you as well."

This was the focus and essence of our meditation last night. We used the half hour of silence to engage our own loneliness, to let it have its way with us, to befriend us. We found, as O'Donohue suggests, that we need not be so afraid of our own loneliness. For if we engage it, it can do lovely things for us.

Join us next week, Tuesday, Feb 5, when we'll hear O'Donohue's reflections on the negativity in our lives, where it comes from and how we can transform it. All are welcome - 7:30-8:30 at Yoga Roots. 444 E. Mitchell St. in Petoskey. Contact tobyjones48@gmail.com for more information.

Peace