From Solitude to Isolation by Brian Sibley

I have been thinking a lot, lately, about the difference between solitude and isolation. In particular, my thoughts return again and again to the Christmas before last when I was savouring the solitude of being in my favourite city of Venice.

Almost devoid of the usual heaving throng of tourists, it was possible to wander its near-deserted streets and squares, interwoven with the labyrinthine network of canals that make this city built on water a place of refracted light and ever-shifting reflections.

For me, Venice in winter – a mystery; almost an illusion – invites a mood of unhurried contemplation denied me in my normally busily crowded life. It was during that visit that a story came to me that became my little book, Joseph and the Three Gifts: An Angel’s Story, published by DLT last Christmas.

Today, the Venice with which I am so familiar is very different from the city in which I found the solitude to write my book: as many of you will have seen from photographs and videos, it is a place as seemingly devoid of life as a lost city newly discovered in a distant desert or a far off jungle. The noble palazzi edging the Grand Canal are shuttered; only sparrows and pigeons populate the streets and squares; and the nine-hundred-year-old Basilica San Marco, the spiritual heart of the city, is closed and locked to the petitioning candles and prayers of the faithful. 

  

With a poignant irony, among the remaining 138 other churches whose doors are shut are those two famous places of devout worship, Chiesa del Santissimo Redentore (Church of the Most Holy Redeemer) and Santa Maria della Salute (Saint Mary of Health), both of which were erected by a grateful populace following salvation from the greats plagues that decimated the city in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

In the days of the 2020 plague of Covid-19, Venice is now a city where the possibility of peace and solitude has given way to a necessary and enforced isolation. And so it is, across the world: London, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, Athens…

Thinking of this painful transition from refreshment to be found in solitude to the anxiety of isolation, has led me to think anew about the Holy family upon whose story I reflected in my book.

I see the young Mary and the older Joseph isolated in their local community by the shameful awkwardness of Mary’s unexpected pregnancy; the isolation of Joseph, shouldering the responsibility of unsought fatherhood; the desperate isolation on the long journey to Bethlehem and the realisation, in a city teaming with people, that there was nowhere but a stable in which Mary could give birth to her child; and the fearful isolation of this little family of three fleeing to the far and alien land of Egypt in search of sanctuary.

 

And, from these thoughts, my mind moved on to the child-grown-up: Jesus, God-in-man, isolated in the wilderness of temptations; isolated among his fragile, wavering followers in the sorrowing solitude of the Garden of Gethsemane; isolated in the midst of the jeering mob massed before Pilate’s court in the praetorium; isolated among the mocking masses through which he struggles his way along the Via Dolorosa; and the ultimate moment of isolation – crying out in a sense of forsaken abandonment – from Golgotha’s cross…

And yet, through these mounting moments of desperate and harrowing isolation, God experienced and endured the depth and breadth of the universal agony of human suffering.

Right now, many of us find ourselves in isolation: locked up with countless cell windows opening out, via the wonder (or curse) of modern technology, onto a virtual world of wall-to-wall, twenty-four, rolling news coverage and an overwhelming abundance of diversions and entertainments with which to fill the void of normal life.

It is in this weirdly overcrowded isolation that we – or, if not us, than many whom we know and love – are left to grapple with the reality or the ever-growing possibility of sickness and death.

If we can hear above the deafening babble of fears without succumbing to their cries, there is that knowledge that our God has been imprisoned in the same prison as the one in which we now cower and tremble.

And, if we have the stamina, we can, perhaps, turn our enforced isolation into a solitude where we can, with some measure of calmness, attempt to reflect upon life, death and everything that lies between and ponder a new vision of hope for our shared world.

Let’s pray that when these fearful days have passed and we are ‘back to normal’, those of us who survive will have gained a sharper insight into what it means to be alone, apart, cut off, isolated and will have greater empathy and sympathy with the pain and anguish of the solitude of others.

Illustrations by Henry Martin; photographs by Brian Sibley

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Each day, we will post a short article by one of Darton, Longman and Todd’s amazing authors, offering a personal reflection on our current situation in life. Sometimes this will be written with reference to one of their books, and sometimes about how they are living in response to the COVID-19 coronavirus and our current world situation. We hope it will give you a taste of the depth and diversity of DLT’s list – books for heart, mind and soul that aim to meet the needs and interests of all.

Today’s post is by Brian Sibley, author of Joseph and the Three Gifts: An Angel’s Story. You can buy a copy of the book here.