I read this quote by Henri Nouwen this week: “Solitude in prayer is not privacy. And the differences between privacy and solitude are profound. Privacy is our attempt to insulate the self from interference; solitude leaves the company of others for a time in order to listen to them more deeply. . . . Private prayers are selfish and thin; prayer in solitude enrolls in a multi-voiced, century-layered community.”*

I was raised on John Wayne movies. In those movies you tend to learn that real heroes don’t need anyone. They just live their lives on their own terms. When I read about Jesus heading into the mountains for some private prayer time, it makes sense to me. Even Jesus needed to get away from the crowds of yapping people.

We do need solitude. If the only prayer time we get is when we are surrounded by a noisy group of middle schoolers, we are not going to be very strong spiritually. But solitude is not about shutting out the noise. It’s not about finding our “me time.” Solitude is about doing the hard work of prayer to line ourselves up with God so that we have something to offer the ones Jesus has sent us to minister to. It is about hearing from the King of kings so that we can touch the lives of his children with his hands.

If that is really solitude, I wonder how well we practice it. For me, it needs some work.

* Henri Nouwen, Christianity Today (April 5, 1985, page 32). Quoted in Mark DeVries, Family-Based Youth Ministry, revised and expanded. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004.