Sunday before last, before the service, I was talking to one of our pastors about Italy, and I said, "Tuscany just got into my soul." But then his sermon happened... his sermon was about solitude as one of the spiritual disciplines and he used a quote by Henri Nouwen that has clung to me ever since, "Solitude is the furnace of transformation."

The lightbulb went off and after the service I said to him, "I need to make a correction, Tuscany didn't get into my soul, solitude did." That was why I was having such a hard time after coming back from our trip. I didn't understand what I had experienced and I thought I had to go back to Tuscany to experience it again.

There, like maybe never before, my soul had rested from distraction, it was quiet, my thoughts could be examined, I could be present to the stunning beauty all around me. I learned that to pray without ceasing is more about a connection, an ongoing awareness of God, than it is to have words of prayer constantly swirling in my head. Solitude is about quieting the heart and mind so that you can 'hear' the movement and the whisper of God. I don't mean literally, audibly hearing His voice of course, but I don't know how else to explain it.

I had a chance this weekend to test drive solitude again and I was right, it was solitude that got into my soul, not Tuscany and we just had to go a few hours up the road. We decided to head back to Roan Mountain. We loved it there last year and since it was my first hike after breaking my ankle, I wanted to go back and finish it. But I said to Scott, "Let's get up early and watch the sunrise from the top of Round Bald." So we set out at 5 a.m. There were a few people out and about, but mostly campers and a few who had the same idea as us.

The experience was breathtaking. We watched a full moon set on one side and the sun rise on the other. It was quiet, there were no crowds, there were no distractions, except the beauty all around us. It was the experience of Tuscany all over again.

But how does solitude happen when I'm with Scott and others are around? I love this quote by Richard Foster, "In our day God is using the spiritual discipline of solitude as the great liberator. Solitude liberates us from all the inane chatter that is so characteristic of modern life. It liberates us from the ever-present demands that are put upon us; demands that in the moment feel so urgent and pressing but that in reality have no lasting significance. In solitude the useless trivialities of life begin to drop away."

Scott and I don't do a lot of talking on these long hikes, we don't fill the time with chatter, it's just about being together and experiencing it together. It's about removing ourselves from the things that never let our souls rest. It gives us plenty of time to be quiet and to listen to those thoughts and whispers. I love having these times with him. There's something so bonding about fighting through a physical challenge and experiencing such breathtaking beauty and quiet together.

And I can't say enough about being out early. We were finishing as the crowds started coming in. At 10:30 a.m. people would pass us and say good morning and we were chuckling, "isn't it afternoon already?" We saw things I never would have seen, the dew on the flowers, the way the light seemed to be a spotlight on certain flowers, the way the clounds hung in the valley. The crowds would have pushed us to move more quickly, but in the early hours, we could slow down and really experience all that was around us.

Scott is relieved that the answer was solitude and not Tuscany and it's just a short drive to another spectacular hike, a place to be removed from the tyranny of the urgent. And thankfully, he loves to hike, in fact, the first official hike I ever did, was with him. It took a long time for those seeds to really take root, but I see some more 4-5 a.m. drives in our future! And thank you to our pastors who teach us so much! I learn from them every week. The pictures I've included are the ones that seem to best capture the experience of solitude. There might be another post or two later this week about a couple of things I learned in the quietness.