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Solitude and Communiy by Henri Nouwen‏

    Solitude is not a private space over against the public space
    of community, nor is it merely a healing space in which
    we restore ourselves for community life.
    Solitude and community belong together; each requires the other
    as do the center and circumference of circle.
    Solitude without community leads us to loneliness and despair,
    but community without solitude hurls us into a "void of words
    and feelings"

    Solitude is essential to community life because in solitude
    we grow closer to each other.
    When we pray alone, study, read, write, or simply spend quiet
    time away from the places where we interact with each other
    directly, we are in fact participating fully in the growth of
    community.
    It is a fallacy to think that we grow closer to each other 
    only when we talk, play, or work together.
    Much growth certainly occurs in such human interactions, but
    at least as much growth can take place when we enter
    into solitude.

    We take the other with us into solitude, and there
    the relationship grows and deepens.
    In solitude we discover each other in a way which
    physical presence makes difficult, if not impossible.

    It is in solitude that compassionate solidarity grows.
    In solitude we realize that nothing human is alien to us,
    that the roots of all conflict, war, injustice, cruelty, hatred,
    jealousy, and envy are deeply anchored in our own heart.
    In solitude our heart of stone can be turned into a heart
    of flesh, a rebellious heart into a contrite heart, and a closed
    heart into a heart that can open itself to all suffering
    people in a gesture of solidarity.

    Solitude is inseparable from community because in solitude
    we affirm the deepest reality of our lives together, namely,
    that as a community we are like hands pointing to God
    in prayer. We might even say that community life itself
    is, first of all, a prayerful gesture.

    People do not form community when they cling to
    each other in order to survive the storms of the world,
    but they do form community when together they
    erect a living prayer in the midst of our anxiety-ridden
    human family.

    All this suggests that life in solitude is a life in faith.
    By leaving behind, from time to time, our many
    self-affirming actions and becoming useless in the presence
    of God,
    we transcend our inner fears and apprehensions and
    affirm our God as the one in whose love we find
    our strength and security.

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