Eva-Maria Hogrefe: 03/01/2013

oil painting by Eva-Maria

We each come into our rightful heritage, "into the glorious liberty of the children of God."

all photos are taken by Eva-Maria, except the one of E-M

The great [person] is he who in the midst

of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness,

the independence of solitude.

  --Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Independence of Solitude

What does the heart say of solitude? Does it moan over loneliness? Or does it look into a stillness that says within, “Acquaint your self with me!”

I have not yet met a person who has not experienced solitude. Too often it is seen and interpreted as if we were forgotten, and therefore we feel lonely. But I’d say, look again.

I did because circumstances demanded it of me. In my greatest sorrows, I found the deepest insights into my Being. That is, I learned to understand my nearness to my own self as the Creator meant it to be. I also comprehended what it meant to be all-one with Him, and all-one with His power of Himself as Love and Life!

These insights played the most harmonious tunes, and ever since produce sweet music in my heart, and thus help me to distance myself from the fleeting: From misleading notions of friendships; of companying with a false belief that time could be a cause to rob one of well-being, of security, or of joy and peace. These misleading senses, false notions of life, wrong feelings of safety, all those and any erroneous notion, are fleeting! I've learned – ah glorious moments -- and now I know, how to wait on Love. It fills my stillness with spring tides of an inner joy, and a freedom from false dependencies in general.

I've learned to see, ever so clearly, how LOVE rules and blesses in the domain of the real and ---- is the ever-lasting “I AM!”

--Eva-Maria

O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell,

Let it not be among the jumbled heap

Of murky buildings: climb with me the steep,—

Nature's observatory—whence the dell,

In flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell,

May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep

'Mongst boughs pavilioned, where the deer's swift leap

Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell.

But though I'll gladly trace these scenes with thee,

Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,

Whose words are images of thoughts refined,

Is my soul's pleasure; and it sure must be

Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,

When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.

--Sonnet VII. To Solitude by John Keats

No coward soul is mine 

No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere 

I see Heaven's glories shine 

And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear

O God within my breast 

Almighty, ever-present Deity 

Life, that in me has rest 

As I Undying Life, have power in Thee

Vain are the thousand creeds 

That move men's hearts, unutterably vain, 

Worthless as withered weeds 

Or idlest froth amid the boundless main

To waken doubt in one 

Holding so fast by thy infinity 

So surely anchored on 

The steadfast rock of Immortality

With wide-embracing love 

Thy spirit animates eternal years 

Pervades and broods above, 

Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears

Though Earth and moon were gone 

And suns and universes ceased to be 

And thou wert left alone 

Every Existence would exist in thee

There is not room for Death 

Nor atom that his might could render void 

Since thou art Being and Breath 

And what thou art may never be destroyed.

-- Emily Bronte (1818-1848)

She wrote, “Only the faith in one's own solitary enlightenment, one's own insight, brings certitude, even after the struggles with despair and the allure of death. It is not God but ‘God within my breast’ that reveals itself, that animates, pervades, broods, changes, sustains, dissolves, and creates.”

Another set of factors in the making of Emily's character and solitude was her observation of people and the world. It is not only what Gerin observes, that "the conditions Emily hated were not the domestic conditions of her life but the human condition itself deprived of its spiritual dimensions." It was further that each experience with the world was a profound disillusionment for her.

Emily BrontÃ«, Poet of Solitude