Soul Care: Embracing Solitude, Silence & Stillness

Coping

Summary

Kevin and Kathy discuss the concept of 'soul care' and practices to nurture one's soul. Their discussion explores the importance of solitude, silence, and stillness as means to connect with one's inner self and find peace amidst the distractions and noise of daily life. Interspersed are helpful personal anecdotes, practical tips, and a poem that encourages slowing down and appreciating the present moment.

Kevin

Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode of Coping. We took off a few weeks ago, giving you all a vacation and we also took a vacation ourselves.

Kathy

Yes, and we thought it was a great time to begin a new series we're calling Summer Soul Care. I wonder, Kevin, what comes to your mind when you think about soul care?

Kevin

Well, I work in a hospital, and our department is called the spiritual care department. So I actually spend a lot of time thinking about spiritual care, soul care, and how to do that effectively, especially for those who are sick and in the hospital setting. So the first thing that comes to mind for me is something that's active, to make sure that when you care for either your own soul or somebody else's soul, it's an action that you do, a practice that you take, something that you offer that's tangible.

Kathy

Hmm. Yeah, that's a good and easy, practical way to think about it. And especially as we're thinking about our souls, we can link it to something that we'll be doing. So let's get started.

Kathy

So one of our favorite podcasters and authors, her name is Ruth Haley Barton. She writes this quote, I really love this thought provoking quote. She says, "losing your soul is sort of like losing a credit card. You think it's in your wallet or purse, so you don't give it much thought until one day you reach for it and you can't find it.

Kathy

The minute you realize it's gone, you start scrambling to find it, trying to remember when you lost it or last used it or at least had it in your possession. No matter what is going on in your life, you have to stop and look for it because otherwise there could be major damage done.

Kathy

Some of us know that we are losing bits and pieces of our souls every day and we are scared to death that we might be very close to going over an edge." So as a chaplain, how have you experienced this with those you serve?

Kevin

Yeah, this is something I help patients wrestle with on a daily basis. The reality is most people don't give a lot of thought to their spiritual life, to their souls. It's only when we are sick, when we are ill and in pain, that we look for strength and often look inward for that strength to be able to push through and to cope with whatever we're going through.

Kevin

And so what happens, like that analogy that's so vivid and so true about the credit card, if you haven't been investing into that fund, you don't have the funds to tap into on that card and that soul, then you find yourself not being able to use it when you need it most.

Kevin

And, you know, my belief is that we never lose our soul, we never go to a point where we don't have it. But if we're not investing in it, then it's certainly not going to be valuable to us when we perhaps need it most. And so when we encounter somebody who has deficient funds on their card or in their spiritual life, it's a chaplain's job to come alongside them and to help them tap into their strengths in their life, to help them connect to their faith practices, their rituals, the things that give their life meaning so that they could begin to cope with their illness and then find a pathway to healing that encompasses not just their physical body, but their emotional, spiritual mental selves as well.

Kathy

Yes, that sounds very practical and helpful. And like you said, it often doesn't happen until the body begins shutting down. A part of ourselves is not working, that we then begin to think about that.

Kevin

For sure that's exactly it. Whenever one part of ourselves feels deficient we tap into the other parts of ourselves to find what we're missing. I wonder for you as a coach where do you see this in the lives of your students?

Kathy

Well, I think they're like most people not thinking about their souls, like they don't have time to or they don't know what that looks like or what that means. And so if there's no awareness about soul care and practices, then you can't move forward. You can't, like you said, you won't have anything to show in those times where you need it the most. And so today we want to discuss the first three S's of soul care in hopes of beginning this discussion.

Kathy

So the first S is solitude. And we're going to define solitude as uninterrupted alone time in a distraction free environment. Uninterrupted alone time in a distraction free environment. It's kind of a joke where we think, what? Which environment is distraction-free these days? But what are your thoughts on solitude and how do you think that we can find this in the busyness of our world?

Kevin

Yeah, what you pointed out in that definition is what stood out to me is the distraction free environment. I can't think of an environment that is distraction free. Likewise, we fill our lives with a lot of positive distractions as well, friends, family, hobbies, things that we like to do.

Kevin

But solitude is that practice that we are intentionally letting go of those things that keep us busy, that keep us distracted from what's actually going on inside. And it becomes the way that we cope with our pain and our lives being the way that they are so hectic and crazy is by continually moving from one thing to the next to keep our mind busy so it's not flooded with those deeper, harder feelings that are conjuring inside. And so it's definitely a hard one. But something that comes to mind is the need to sacrifice something to find that solitude often will require saying no to things or to people and creating that intentional space for that solitude.

Kathy

And in our community, what we talk about that might be helpful is to actually schedule in times of solitude. One homework assignment – and our listeners can do this – this week is to schedule a soul date for themselves where they can enter into the solitude. I would say that doesn't have to be long. It can be 20 minutes. It doesn't have to be, oh, I don't have an entire day. It can be a short period of time. It could be 20 minutes. And the best thing about entering into solitude, the best benefit we have from solitude is that it allows us after we've been in solitude to be more present.

Kevin

And that leads us well into our next S of soul care, is silence. And so we define silence as abstaining from speaking, reading and noise in order to be quiet. Gosh, I'm thinking about how noisy my work is, how noisy the world is, the freeways are, the news is, my phone can be, gosh, Kathy, how do we find silence in this day and age?

Kathy

Another good question, the first thing I would say is I think everyone needs to stop and think about how they feel about silence. Does it make you nervous if things are too quiet? Are we okay with there being no noise or background music or background TV? We turn on all of these things to avoid the silence, so I think it's important to have a little conversation with ourselves to determine how we feel about the silence, and if we're giving ourselves permission to enter the silence, then silence practices will be beneficial to us.

Kevin

That's so true. And I think just from personal experience, learning to be comfortable with silence. For most people, I think they're adverse to being in silence because the silence isn't silent. When you're starting off trying to be silent, that's where all the noise comes up with your thoughts, your feelings, all of those fears and concerns, the worries, the to-do list, everything starts to rush in when you create that space and that silence. And so if you find yourself struggling to find that silence, even when you're being intentional about it, my encouragement is to keep trying.

Kevin

Keep creating that space for silence. You can keep a pad of paper next to you so that if thoughts and things that you need to remember flood in in those moments of silence, write them down and then move back to your silent place again. It's so important that we continue to practice silence, knowing that it's a hard thing to do and continue to go back to it again and again because after we move through all of that noise that floods in when we are silent, on the other side of that is that peaceful silence that I think that we're all craving.

Kathy

100% true. And yeah, the notebook is a really good idea. And then if you like to be active when you're trying to enter the silence, this is one that I do often is you can go on a walk without any music. But what you can do is listen to the sounds that you hear on your walk. You can start counting them. You can start cataloging them. Really what you are doing is you are entering silence, even though it sounds like you're not because you're hearing noises, but you're allowing the natural sounds to enter in instead of what we typically have are the distracted noises of the world entering in.

Kathy

So if you're going on this walk, it's a very good way. Maybe it's like a bridge to entering silent places. This is like a really good way to do it as well. And the main benefit from entering into silence when you do these practices is that then we're actually attuning our ears to listen.

Kevin

And attuning our ears to listen to self, all of those things that we push down and we're moving away from, those difficult feelings and thoughts. But when we learn to listen to self, we then are better able to listen to others and what their experiences are and be present to them in their pain and their story. And that leads us into our last S for this episode. And our third S is stillness. How are we defining stillness?

Kathy

Stillness is defined as "to stop, cease, desist, and disconnect from the outside world".

Kevin

Man, these are getting harder and harder, aren't they? They seem to also be building on one another. How do we get to this third S of stillness?

Kathy

Well, there's I think something that's been the theme of our discussion today is that there needs to be a lot of intentionality around this practice. So believe it or not, you may or may not know about this feature on your phone. It's called Do Not Disturb. And guess what? We can turn it on. And one practice that you can do is to turn it on on your phone for an hour a day. Put on Do Not Disturb on your phone and allow the stillness to come in as you disconnect.

Kathy

It doesn't mean that you're just going to be still during that time, but you're disconnecting from that usual hustle, bustle, chaos, noise. You could do something else in the stillness. It's not that you have to sit still. Notice that's not what we said. But the major benefit from entering into stillness is that we can become better engaged after being still.

Kathy

So out of these three, solitude, silence, or stillness, which one do you think is easiest for you?

Kevin

Gosh. I've had a lot of practice with silence, learning to be silent, and to tune into that silence. So I think that that's probably the one that's easiest for me. It's the hardest to find, but when it's there, I feel very comfortable with it, if that makes sense. What about for you?

Kathy

Uh, the easiest, and again, these aren't easy, but they come more naturally if you keep practicing, um, I would say is solitude because I really now look forward to times when nobody is at home, like, um, I think it was an hour today of no one being here so that I can enter into the solitude.

Kevin

Right. And which one's difficult for you?

Kathy

I think stillness is still hard for me. I'm the one telling you to put on do not disturb. The reason is, is I am such a breaking news type of person that, and especially these days, we've had a lot of breaking news that has been very important to our world that I don't want to miss out. It's the FOMO, that's terrible. But like, you're gonna miss out on hearing something or a text message or someone was trying to call you, but in the days when we didn't have technology, we all just waited.

Kathy

I lived during that time period. It was totally fine that we didn't find out for three hours about the breaking news or whatever it was, nothing happened. And it was actually all better because then we were all more, we weren't on this 24 hours a day, seven days a week, nonstop, chaotic, stressful rollercoaster of what we all are living on right now.

Kevin

And so to end our podcast today, we'd like to invite everybody to take a moment to do their own soul check-in. And so I'm going to hand it over to Kathy, who will lead us through that.

Kathy

Yes, I just invite you now to think about the words of this poem and check in with your soul. It is called "On Time" and it's by Ruth Haley Barton.

There have to be times in your life when you move slow. Times when you walk rather than run, settling into each step. There have to be times when you stop and gaze admiredly at loved ones, marveling that they have been given to you for this life.

Times when hugs linger and kisses are real. When food and drink are savored with gratitude and humility, rather than gulp down on your way to something else. There have to be times when you read for the sheer pleasure of it, marveling at the beauty of words and endless creativity in putting them together.

Times when you settle into the comforts of home and become human once again. There have to be times when you light a candle and find the tender place inside you that loves or sorrows or sings and you pray from that place.

Times when you let yourself feel, when you allow the tears to come rather than blinking them back because you don't have time to cry. There have to be times to sink into the soft body of yourself and love what you love simply because love itself is a grace.

Times when you sit with gratitude for the good gifts of your life that get lost and forgotten in the rush of things. Times to celebrate and play, to roll down hills, to splash in water or make leaf piles, to spread paint on paper or walls or each other.

There have to be times to sit and wait for the fullness of God that replenishes body, mind and soul. If you can even stand to be so full, there has to be time for the fullness of time or time is meaningless.