Kiranada's Solitary Retreat

WHAT?

I will again be on solitary for 365 days, from mid-July 2019 until mid-July 2020. It was helpful before to think of this as three one hundred day retreats (and a bit more), rather than twelve months, because, truly, it is a very long time to be alone. It will come in my 75th year and I will quietly note that birthday just after the July full moon. After yet another concussion and a PTSD incident upon return from New Zealand, I have chosen this Kentucky retreat location closer to home, with a softer environment though I do yearn to be on the crest of some mountain in Spain.

I expected that the daily retreat structure would follow what I have discovered in my other solitary retreats: a lot of time for meditation, both on the cushion and walking meditation (about 6 – 10 hours a day), some cooking time, some cleaning time, some study and some hours of reflection or art. I expected to get up with the sun, and go down with it as well. I will be in a heavy forest so will have to walk out for some welcomed sunshine daily.

I am an artist, by nature and look forward to this quiet, reflective time of retreat, knowing that the creative juices that run through me will blossom in various ways. Besides some collage and quilting there may be some watercolors and stitched pieces that show up, but I don’t set this as a goal. Art process is a natural and welcomed flow. Perhaps I will share these images in some way upon return in a small exhibition.

‎Words from the Wise:

In Scetis, a brother went to see Abba Moses and begged him for a word. And the old man said, “Go and sit in your cell and your cell will teach you everything.”

The work of the solitary life is gratitude.
— Thomas Merton

Vocation to Solitude—To deliver oneself up, to hand oneself over. Entrant oneself completely to the silence of a wide landscape of wood and hills, or sea, or desert; to sit while the sun comes up over that land and hills that it silences with light; to pray and work in the morning, to labor and work in the afternoon; to sit still again in meditation in the evening when night falls … there are few who are willing to come completely to such silence, to let it soak into their bones, to breathe nothing but silence, to feed on silence ….
—Thomas Merton

One of the first fruits of a solitary life is the sharp awareness that what I assume to be “me” is not singular. Being alone is like being in a large family that is never quite at peace with itself.
—Fr. Gregory Mayers