Solitude, Community, and "March of the Penguins"

“He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed” (Luke 22:41).

Last night Marnie and I took the kids to see March of the Penguins. The movie is a documentary about the long trek made by Emperor Penguins when it is time to mate and bring new little penguin chicks into the world. This isn’t something that they’ll do just anywhere. There is a nesting ground, a particular place that they instinctively know how to find – but getting there requires a very long walk, nearly 100 miles. This is amazing for an animal that, for all practical purposes, has no legs and takes steps by tottering back and forth from foot to foot.

To make the journey they join together, forming a massive community of black and white as they trudge toward their destination. At one point the little pilgrims formed an extended line that seemed to stretch out endlessly. As they moved across the barren and brutal terrain of ice and snow I wondered about Moses and the exodus out of Egypt. What did that look like?

Of the many beautiful and powerful scenes captured by the film makers, the parts that remain firmly lodged in my mind are the images that captured the critical role of the collective gathering while telling the story with pictures of a single penguin or one particular couple.

The journey that forms the plot of the film is one that cannot be made by a solitary penguin. One image showed an Emperor penguin, who through circumstance or weakness or old age had not managed to keep pace with the group. The solitary black figure continued to trudge across the expansive frozen wilderness. The vast emptiness of the scenery served to punctuate the loneliness of the image. The narrator, Morgan Freeman, explained that the fate of such a solitary traveler was to simply disappear into the whiteness surrounding it. Being separated from the community was a death sentence.

Once the eggs have been laid they must be carefully guarded from the cold by remaining hidden under a flap of skin between the father’s feet – a kind of fleshy pouch that envelops the egg until it hatches. Yes, the Fathers do this. Once the mother lays the egg, she transfers the egg to the male. The male guards and holds the egg for about eight weeks while the females make the 100 mile walk back to where they came from. There the females will feed, and return, making the walk yet again, to feed their chicks.

As the males wait, the days shorten, daylight all but disappears, and winter unleashes its nastiness. The only hope of survival is in the group itself. The males huddle, turning their backs to the harsh elements, taking turns at being in the warm center of the community. The film described this gathering as a new organism – hundreds of penguins forming a singular living entity for the purposes of survival.

My wife likes to jokingly remind me that in marrying me she saved me from the life of a monk. I won’t acknowledge it to her – but she’s right. She’s not very accurate because even monks live in community. In fact, community is at the heart of monasticism. But I know what she’s saying. She keeps my inclination to solitude in check. She loves a party, lots of people. She helps me by prodding me to at least go the parties. But more than that, together she and I have been blessed with a little community of our own. I can’t imagine my life without her and John and Anna. Not all people find community in marriage and family, but they’ve got to find it somewhere. What marriage and family save me from is myself. They puncture the lie that “life is a story about me.”[1]

March of the Penguins not only said something to me about my family, but it had powerful implications for the church and what the church ought to be. Life is not a journey that we can make in isolation from others. Moreover, the life of faith is not something we can do well on our own. The image of the isolated penguin and the picture of the huddled fathers both conveyed one message. To be alone is to die.

The spiritual life is peculiar in this way. It grows in solitude, but it shrivels up in isolation. Dallas Willard observes that solitude holds a place of primacy among the spiritual disciplines. Solitude gives us distance and perspective. In solitude we find freedom from “ingrained behaviors” that are set against God and life in his kingdom.[2]

But isolation has a way of eroding the life of the Spirit by turning the self in on itself. Isolation is nothing but self in which God shrinks and moves to the background while the self and all its quirks and fantasies and fears grow large.

On the night of his arrest Jesus did something that we would do well to imitate. Of course, we do well to imitate everything that Jesus did, but this is especially interesting. As he sought out solitude, he took three friends with him. The gospels tell us he was in anguish, and when you’re in anguish you need people around. And yet, you need the space of solitude. Jesus went out with the twelve. As Matthew tells it, he left them but took Peter, James and John. He asked them to “keep watch with me” and then he went a little further. Luke omits the presence of Peter, James and John, but he uses the vivid phrase “a stone’s throw.” In this scene in Gethsemane, solitude and community mingle. Both are necessary.

Emperor Penguins and Christian disciples; neither do well alone. We need others around us, even if “a stone’s throw” away. We need the rhythm of solitude and community – always careful that solitude not become isolation.

Marnie, John and Anna – along with my parents and my in-laws, brother and sister, and others whom God has given to me. And the Peachtree Presbyterian Church. After last night I see myself waddling and tottering like a penguin and I can’t imagine the journey without them.

______________________
[1] Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz, 182.
[2] Dallas Willard, Spirit of the Disciplines, 160-61.