The world is full of noise.
You were made to be the calm in the chaos.
An imperturbable calm.

This is a formational invitation into solitude, silence, and stillness, the wilderness Jesus withdrew to, and the place where we are returned to ourselves and to God.

Solitude is not isolation. It is intentional presence with the Father, without distraction.

It is the first discipline by which we make space for God. It has to start here.


The Eremos Practice is an invitation to step, gently, into the same kind of wilderness Jesus sought before every significant moment of his ministry. Not to escape your life, but to return to it from a steady center.

"Rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed."

— Mark 1:35 (ESV)

Eremos (ἔρημος) · érēmos · desert, wilderness, quiet or lonely place

Silence, Solitude and Stillness

In the New Testament it is the word used for where John the Baptist preached, where the people followed Jesus to be fed, and where Jesus himself withdrew, again and again, to pray.

“But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.”

— Luke 5:16

Why the wilderness

"The desert is a fitting place to face weaknesses, it strips away illusion and pretension, and enables us to recognize our absolute need for God."

-Gerald Sittser


The same three temptations Jesus faced are the ones shaping you now.

Henri Nouwen named what most of us already feel but cannot articulate: that the inner life of a modern person is being slowly bent by three pressures. They are not sins of weakness, but the temptations of the capable. At the very beginning of His ministry, Jesus entered into the same struggle and temptation of sin that started in the garden, that every prophet, priest and king before could not overcome. Not only did he defeat sin here, but He showed us how we can too. These temptations represent our greatest challenges today:

Temptation 1
to be relevant
"Turn these stones to bread."
The pull to be useful, productive, indispensable. To prove your worth by what you produce. The wilderness undoes this by reminding you that you are loved before you are useful.
Temptation 2
to be spectacular
"Throw yourself down."
The pull to be seen, applauded, admired. To make the inner life a performance. The wilderness undoes this because no one is watching and that is the gift.
Temptation 3
to be powerful
"All these I will give you."
The pull to control outcomes, manage perception, hold the wheel. The wilderness undoes this by inviting surrender — the slow practice of letting God be God.

"Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her."

— Hosea 2:14 NIV

Three unhurried movements.

Across our time together, you will be invited into three deepening postures, each one a different way of saying yes to the same God.

Movement 1
Solitude
Solitude is the practice of being with God without anyone else in the room — physically, mentally, or in the form of an audience inside your head. It is harder than it sounds. Most of us, even when we are by ourselves, are still curating ourselves for an imagined observer.

Solitude undoes the temptation to be relevant. In solitude, no one needs anything from you. No one is watching to see whether you are bringing value. The voice inside that says "You are what you produce" has nothing to feed on. It will protest. Let it protest. Eventually it will quiet, and you will discover an older, truer voice underneath.
Movement 2
Silence
Silence is what comes when you have been alone long enough that even your own commentary begins to settle. It is not the absence of sound. It is the absence of self-talk that has been mistaken for prayer.

Silence is permission for God to speak first, and for you not to immediately translate what he says into a use case. Silence undoes the temptation to be spectacular. In silence, there is no one to perform for. There is no platform. There is no record of what happened. What happens between you and God in silence cannot be posted, repurposed, or proven.
Movement 3
Stillness
Stillness is the deepest of the three. A person can be alone and not in solitude. A person can be quiet and not in silence. And a person can be both alone and quiet, and still be churning underneath. Stillness is the gift that arrives when the churning stops, when the body has surrendered, the mind has surrendered, and the will has surrendered, and what is left is simply being held.

Stillness undoes the temptation to be powerful. In stillness, you are not running anything. The world is not depending on your watchfulness. God is God, and you are not, and this is unspeakable relief.

"Be still, and know that I am God."

— Psalm 46:10 (ESV)

Invitations. a discipline.

What follows is a series of practices arranged from smallest to largest. Take one. Stay with it for a season. Add another only when the first has become natural.

  1. The Twenty Minutes. Before the all the inputs (phone, news, before the family begins to stir) twenty minutes in a chair, with God, with nothing in your hands. No scripture, no journal, no music. Just being present, returning gently when you drift. This is the foundational practice. Most of the others rest on it.
  2. The Beloved Prayer. A three-part meditation, Sit relaxed and at ease. For the first ten minutes, say the following words slowly: Jesus, You are the Beloved. Then to the next ten minutes, say, Jesus, I am the Beloved. Then go on to the next ten minutes. esus, we (all) are the Beloved. Let people come into your heart: a neighbor, a friend, a relative. The important thing is not to exclude anyone. Your heart will bring to the surface the ones you need to give attention to. At the end, simply conclude with a word of thanksgiving, or the Lord's Prayer.
  3. Benedictine Prayer. Also known as the Liturgy of the Hours, these are the traditional prayer periods throughout the day, dividing the day to sanctify every moment through psalms, scripture and reflection. Schedule alerts on your phone as a intentional interruption for presense.
    - Vigils: Nighttime or early morning (4:30 - 5:30am)
    - Lauds: Dawn/sunrise, praise for a new day
    - Prime: Early morning, observed at the start of the workday
    - Terce: Mid-morning, invoking the Holy Spirit (9:00am)
    - Sext: Midday, a pause to refocus on God (12noon)
    - None: Mid-afternoon, prayer for daily perserverance (2:00-3:00pm)
    - Vespers: Sunset, evening thanksgiving and examen of the day
    - Compline: Just before bed, prayer to seek peace and protection
  4. The Threshold Pause. Before you walk into a room, your office, your home, a hard conversation, pause for sixty seconds at the door. Breathe. Surrender the room you are about to enter. Refuse to bring the previous room with you.
  5. The Dry Walk . Walk twenty minutes without a podcast, audiobook, or call. Let your thoughts settle the way silt settles in a still glass.
  6. The Sabbath Silence . One half-day a week, set aside as a true silence. No screens, no input, no output. Take a long walk, sleep, sit by a window, pray when prayer wants to come. If silence makes you anxious, that is information. Stay with it.
  7. The Desert Day. Once a month or season, a full day apart. Drive somewhere quiet, walk a long trail, sit in a chapel, wherever you can be alone with God for an unhurried stretch. Bring water and a notebook. Do not bring an agenda. Let the day be what God wants it to be.
  8. BONUS: The Annual Retreat. Two to four nights a year, in a place set apart, a monastery, a retreat house, a borrowed cabin. Not for content production. Not for goal-setting. For the kind of recalibration that only sustained quiet can do.
When you begin

What tends to surface and why it is a sign you are on the right path.

Solitude is rarely peaceful at first. The mind that has been managing everything does not stop managing the moment you sit down. These are the most common resistances and each one is, in its own way, an invitation.

  • "I don't have time." The hours exist. The question is whether you will give them to your soul or to the next thing. Most people find, after a few weeks, that twenty minutes of silence buys back two hours of scattered, anxious work later in the day.
  • "It's boring." Boredom is a threshold the modern nervous system has lost the capacity to cross. Stay. The boredom is not the problem; the boredom is the surface tension that breaks once you stop reaching for the phone.
  • "My mind won't stop." It is not supposed to, at first. The practice is not to stop thinking; it is to stop clutching the thoughts. Let them pass. Return to your breath, to the name of Jesus, to the simple fact of being held. You are not failing the practice when your mind wanders. You are doing the practice when you return.
  • "I felt nothing." Good. Feeling is not the unit of measurement here. The work happens below the felt sense. Trust what you cannot see.
  • "Hard things came up." They will. The silence surfaces what the noise has been suppressing: grief, anger, half-buried memory, accusation. This is not a malfunction; this is the protocol working. Bring these to your spiritual director. Do not try to manage them alone.
  • "I want to optimize this." Notice it. Smile. Return to silence. The temptation to turn the quiet place into a productivity tool is the exact temptation stillness is designed to undo. The work is not to defeat the temptation; the work is to recognize it, and not act on it.

    • "Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life...We do not take the spiritual life seriously if we do not set aside some time to be with God and listen to him."

    — Henri Nouwen, The Spiritual Life: Eight Essential Titles

The three disciplines to make space for God.

Henri Nouwen’s foundational spiritual framework proposes that solitude, community, and ministry are three interconnected disciplines we must practice to create space for God. He emphasized that these must be approached in a specific order: first solitude, which naturally births community, leading ultimately to authentic ministry. It can also be partnered with Desert Father Evagrius's Three-step Path of discipleship: Asceticism, Apatheia and Agape but we will just start here:

Solitude
true to Christ | alone with God
Solitude is the starting point and the foundation. It is the act of stepping away from the noise and demands of the world to sit quietly with God, where you are reminded of your identity as His beloved child. Rather than emptying yourself, this discipline is about letting God fill your inner space.
Community
kind to others | gathering
True solitude always calls us into community. Spending time alone helps you realize you are part of a broader human family, sharing in mutual vulnerabilities. According to Nouwen, authentic community is built on two pillars: forgiveness and celebration.
Ministry
serving the world
Ministry is the overflow of solitude and community. It is the act of going out together with others to heal the brokenness of the world, proclaim the good news, and serve the poor and suffering. Nouwen warns against trying to do ministry in your own strength, advocating instead that true healing power comes only when you live from a deeply rooted, God-centered place.

Want to go deeper?

Start with a complimentary 30-minute discernment call
to meet, understand where you are, and discern whether this is the right season for this work.

Submit an intake form

A Note from me. Our God is not impatient with you. He has been waiting for a long time. He is willing to wait longer.

The invitation is simply to come into the place where there is room for Him to be God and for you to be His and to come back, and back, and back, until the coming back becomes the architecture of your life.

This all comes from a personal decision to go into the eremos with Him, it is not fast, and it is not easy, but you will come out of it stronger, and will find yourself running back because it is Him who meets you there. I am honored to walk with you in this season. Come as you are.

Resource Acknowledgments:

Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership
Henri Nouwen, The Selfless Way of Christ: Downward Mobility and the Spiritual Life
Henri Nouwen,“The Spiritual Life: Eight Essential Titles”
Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart: Connecting with God Through Prayer, Wisdom, and Silence
John Mark Comer, Practicing the way Podcast, “Into the quiet”
Gerald Sitter, Water from a Deep Well