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An Island to Myself: Invitations in Solitude


 

Michael McGregor, in his 20s, decides to go to a Greek island, step into solitude, and write a novel. He chooses Patmos, then, in the 80s, decidedly off the beaten tourist trail, and to make assurance doubly sure, he goes in winter.  Setting himself some ground rules - no alcohol, writing six days a week, no television or radio, etc.- he finds a place to stay, a little cold and austere as it turns out, and begins his experiments in solitude and in writing.

So, this thoughtful, reflective book begins, and takes us on a journey to epidsodes of solitude experienced in multiple dimensions - in the isolations of childhood and refuge in libraries, as part of a spiritual retreat at the ecumenical community in Taize, snatched amongst the travails and joys of being a tour guide and in the context of an unfolding writer's life, both as a single man and a happily married one. 

In each of these contexts, solitude unfolds its offerings to thought and experience. The challenges of letting go of the habits of distraction, the joys of being simply present when the world renews its colours, the need for solitude not as an escape from the world but as a renewing entrance into it. All enhanced by Michael's vivid descriptions of context and place, and the inner contours of his experience, not all of which is pleasant. Solitude reveals our fears and fantasies, as well as our renewing, imagined possibilities.

The virtue of the book is in how these lessons unfold in varying contexts of solitude planned for and of solitude found, and how we can indeed make use of solitude to better orientate our lives, not least in helping us relearn the pleasures of being, when life ceases to be useful and is simply lived.

The book also carries evidence of McGregor's faith - though lightly - and shows both how that faith was deepened and widened in silence, but also how it is not necessary to taste solitude's fruits - though its glimmerings may enhance the flavors (but that is for each of us to find and acknowledge, or not, as the case may be).

It offers too glimpses of other practitioners of solitude in the judicious use of quotations that sprinkle the book with their luring invitations - and more extensively the lives of two of its more intense devotees - Thomas Merton and his friend, the poet, Robert Lax. One of the 'ironies' of his first trip to Patmos is his choice of Merton's Seven Storey Mountain as a book to read, where he hears of Lax for the first time (of whom he will become a friend and biographer), who, of course, is an inhabitant of the very island he has 'chosen' for his sojourn! God is nothing if not a trickster!  https://ncolloff.blogspot.com/2015/10/pure-act.html

It is an accomplished book and a wonderful invitation to solitude - for practitioners new and old.


P.S. I, who have never been to Patmos, cannot help but notice how often it inserts itself! Whilst Michael is visiting, first, in the 80s, two of my oldest friends spent every May there, on nodding acquaintance with Lax, of whom, like so many, I had learned by way of Merton. Meanwhile, my friend and mentor, Bishop Kallistos Ware's 'official' monastery (every Orthodox bishop should have one, even if, in his case, he had never lived there permanently), was St. John's on Patmos. Just the most obvious examples ... well, maybe one day... 

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