On Thresholds, Solace, and New Beginnings.

A (mid)weekly blessing for your Innering.

“A moment of solitude.” (c) Almut Furchert 2025.

Dear fellow pilgrim,

It is my husband’s birthday.

And so I did what a wife should do on such an occasion: I sent him to the monastery.

He was genuinely happy about this “gift” — a gift of time, of solitude and contemplation.

Apparently, I needed this gift of solitude too. Because when he left for his overnight retreat, and with our child at school, I sighed a deep sigh of relief. The house was quiet and empty. The late morning sun came through the windows. I wandered into the garden, listened to the pond, trying to find my way back to my heart’s heart.

The paradox of being in communion — with our loved ones or whomever we share our lives with — is that we must also step out of it regularly. It is easy to get carried away caring for others, and just as easy to feel suffocated by the constant needs of this world.

In our first Moral Monday gathering with some of you, it became clear how weary we all feel in these troubled times. With so much noise — real and manufactured — it grows harder and harder to find pockets of solace and stillness.

And yet, while some carry their solitude heavily, mourning the loss of a loved one or missing kindred spirits, others need to be reminded to create such pockets, where one can, as the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote so profoundly, walk inside oneself and meet no one for hours.

“What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours––that is what you must be able to attain….”

— RM Rilke

I love this picture of my husband, standing in the waters of Lake Superior.

While he stands in solitude, he is not alone. Taking in the solace of the setting sun, and how her afterglow melts into the pastels of the water, he appears like a monk reading evening prayer.

Thus, dear friend, you do not really need a monastery to find solitude. Sometimes contemplating a sunset can suffice.

In his book Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us that in order to master life together, we need to learn how to be alone.

And the opposite is also true: to learn how to be alone, we need to live in communion.

Instead of trying too hard together, we sometimes need to give each other breathing space — so we can find our way back to our heart, and share it anew.

“Solace of a playing child”. © A. Furchert 2025

So, today, I offer you a few gentle questions for your own heart:

• Where do you find solace in the midst of the raving sea—amid demands, noise, and the expectations you feel you must meet?

• What place, gesture, or rhythm helps you return to your heart’s heart?

• How might you gift yourself (or another) a moment of solitude this week?

A Blessing

And now, as light returns from one heart to another, I offer back the blessing my husband wrote for my birthday at the beginning of this year —

as a blessing for him today and for his new year of life, and for you, dear pilgrim, wherever you find yourself beginning anew.

With great love,
Almut

**

A Blessing for Your new Beginnings

Now is your time to speak to the world.

May you be filled with God’s power to speak

From your brokenness

From the loneliness within you

From your foot-sore, halting, pilgrim way.

May your brokenness become an offering to others,

A well of compassion

And deep insight into our human condition

May your loneliness become the infinite longing

Of God for you, and for us, and for us all.

May your pilgrim way be itself an immovable

Foundation in God’s ever-changing

All-enfolding love.

And above all,

May you be and become yourself.

For now is your time to speak.

**

— — by

Chuck Huff

PS: If you can, leave a like, a word or a line which resonated with you in the comments, so we know you have been here :-)

“solitude and communion,” © A. Furchert

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More from The Cloister

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Previous (Mid)weekly Blessings

My Mother's last bouquet.

In Search of Solitude.

When Pain and Beauty mingle.

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From the On Being Human series

Hildegard of Bingen's vision for a better world, with a dash of cardamom.

About Cloister Notes

A letter for dancing monks and weary pilgrims at the intersection of psychology, philosophy, and spirituality. Contemplations on being human to deepen your path, nourish your heart, and build wisdom within.​

About The Existential Pilgrim

Almut is a German-American scholar and practitioner of existential wisdom teachings. A psychologist turned philosopher turned writer, she also walks as a traveler, photographer, retreat leader, and mother of a kindergartener. Her work engages with voices like Kierkegaard, Buber, Frankl, Yalom, Edith Stein, Bonhoeffer, and Hildegard of Bingen. A Benedictine Oblate, she lives with her family in a small college town in the American Midwest.​

Her Cloister Notes wish to offer a resting place along the way—a space for reflection, courage, and hope.​