He Walked Away
“Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life.”
Henri Nouwen was a Dutch Professor who taught at Yale and Harvard, then left both to live alongside people with disabilities. He knew something about walking away from applause. His line isn’t an invitation to become a hermit. It’s a warning that a life lived entirely in public eventually has nothing underneath. It is wonderful to live in the applause, it tends to put a false sense of satisfaction and identity in us.
Look at Jesus at His peak. The news about Him spread and crowds gathered to be healed, and then, in the same breath, He “would withdraw to desolate places and pray.” After feeding thousands, the crowd wants to make Him king by force. His response is to withdraw to the mountain by Himself. He had a multitude facing him, but He chose to turn away and be himself. He chose. It is a choice, it isn’t what life offers, it is something we have to choose, continuously and consciously.
Fame, followers, a movement, even a throne offered on a plate, and He leaves. Not because He was shy, but because He knew who He was without the crowd. The crowd could neither give Him His identity nor take it away. He knew, what He was, Who He was had nothing to do with the applause he was receiving. It had everything to do with his relationship with His heavenly father. He knew that full well. That knowledge, that depth of relationship is what makes us choose Him every time in solitude. When that relationship gets deeper and intimate, we would not want to have the world and the people and the fame and the noise it brings, because what truly excites us, becomes the alone time we have with the Father.
That’s the secret. We chase visibility because we’re quietly asking, “Do I matter?” Jesus had already heard the answer at His baptism, before His public ministry began: “You are my beloved Son.” Everything He did came from belovedness, not toward it. Solitude is where you remember that. It’s the place you go to get your name back after a day of being called everything else. The world sees us as many different things, it sees us for our success, for our failures, for our skills, for what we can give them but in solitude, I don’t bring my fame or my noise, I bring myself. Just as I am, just like how He likes us. Without the facades and the burden of fame.
Walking away isn’t failure. Sometimes it’s the strongest thing a person with a following can do.