I heard someone this week say that our modern use of smartphones has turned off our own inner monologues and replaced them with someone else’s thoughts and ideas. We no longer give ourselves space to simply be and think because we fill every silent moment with music or a podcast. Eventually, our inner monologue is replaced by an endless stream of other people’s views and other people’s creative expressions.
In full disclosure, I heard this on a podcast as I was on a walk using headphones which meant I could not hear the birds singing or my own inner monologue.
The truth is that we all need solitude. It is a condition of being human that we have systematically eliminated in our modern world.
To be clear, solitude is not simply being alone. Many people are alone these days, but when they are alone they are not truly alone, they are not in solitude.
Solitude is freedom from inputs.
Solitude means resting in the three inputs that are core to our existence: our own thoughts, our own emotions, and the still, small voice of God that speaks in our hearts. The voice of Jesus that calls us back to our true selves.
Scripture repeats over and over again that the fundamental sin - the error at the heart of every error - is forgetting who we are and who God is. The basic root of all sin is a shift from a focus on the Transcendent Reality of God to a self-focused egotism. To repent means, in part, to remember who we are in relation to who God is.
This is not easy to do in 2023.
Our attention has become the product of a whole industry that uses incredible scientific advances and an endless supply of capital to keep us focused on everything but those three basic human inputs.
A new career path was created for people who use their creativity and reach to influence our thoughts, feelings, and choices.
God once said that His thoughts are not our thoughts1. These days our thoughts are often not our thoughts. Lord, have mercy on us.
The 19th entry in the Brackwish Water Psalter is the closest to a Psalm of David that I have written so far. It is a prayer of petition and praise on all of these themes. It is an expression of my deep longing to be tuned into God in my daily life. It is a reminder to myself that all of the varied inputs in my life fall flat when compared to what God says and what God calls me to. It is my plea to God to help me remember.
I hope it resonates with you.
19. Replace my thoughts, dear Lord. Replace my thoughts, dear Lord. Fill my head with higher things that draw my eyes up and out beyond my scrolling ticker-tape woes to the horizon of Heaven breaking in. That Sunrise that is still surely beaming. That Light whose let there be is not bridled. Shine on my grey matter, Holy One, and resurrect my dead end daydreams. Call me again to the One Necessary Thing at the heart of all things: the crux of the world, that Man who stands still outside of business and email and worry and more! and offers to take up residence in the recesses of my heart to hallow the hollow chambers that empty and fill in time with a tune I didn’t start and I won’t conclude. Guide me into Your dance, Merciful God, that I may forget myself and think only You.
Isaiah 55:8-9