Spring 2022 · Vol. 51 No. 1 · pp. 126–128
Book Review
A Kind of Solitude: How Pacing the Cage with an Icon and The Book of Common Prayer Restored My Soul
Jamie Howison. Eugene, OR: Resource Publications, 2021. 79 pages.
Even though a steadily decreasing number of Canadians identify as religious, most people still know that when tragedy strikes—say, a cancer diagnosis, a miscarriage, mental health collapse, death of a loved one—you can go to your pastor; if you’re part of a liturgical tradition, you go to your priest. But who’s the priest to turn to when the bottom falls out? Who ministers to the minister?
Jamie Howison is an Anglican priest and the founding pastoral leader of Saint Benedict’s Table in Winnipeg. The tragedy for Rev. Howison was the abrupt and unexpected end of his eighteen-year marriage, a fact he states baldly in the first paragraph of his book. But his book is not a divorce memoir; only a few lines later he tells the reader, “I really can’t write about those stories. But I can write about my own restoration.”
A Kind of Solitude is Howison’s account of a five-week spiritual retreat with an Anglo-Catholic spiritual director in the chapel community at the University of King’s College in Halifax. The word “retreat” might evoke images of spa treatments, therapeutic massage, and peaceful meditation sessions, and so might not quite be the right term. Instead, with Father Gary Thorne, chaplain at King’s as his spiritual director, Howison submits himself to a rigorous, disciplined, ascetic practice. Instead of mineral baths and “me-time,” Father Thorne prescribes prayers four or five times a day, presiding at a Eucharist service every p. 127 Saturday, and solitary days in a monastic-style “cell” in a vacant wing of the college residence. He allows only a few carefully chosen books, encourages long walks and healthy eating, and forbids writing projects and alcohol. Father Thorne also asks if Howison would like to “write [draw and paint] an icon,” an image of Jesus as Pantocrator. “The only things I can draw are stick people and snowmen,” says Howison. Thorne’s reply: “Good. There is a student here who is an iconographer, and I will have him teach you.”
Howison arrives in Halifax six months after the beginning of his crisis and is warmly welcomed into the small worshiping community. He’s then sent off to the long boredom of days with very little to do, and plenty of time simply to be. Father Thorne cultivates a rigorous solitude for Howison, nested within the tight little worshiping and learning community. Howison spends a lot of the book describing the details of his days’ schedules, the rhythms of the liturgy, occasional meetings for confession and reflection, much of which sounds very boring, which is exactly what Father Thorne meant for him. “It will be difficult to find the boredom and inner chaos that can lead to a divine restless. Spending unproductive time in your cell is important.” For Howison, the founding leader of a lively, busy, thriving parish full of young, creative, thoughtful people, the practice of boredom is hard work. The sessions he spends writing an icon punctuate the boredom with an entirely different sort of challenge as the theologically minded, cerebral priest learns to inhabit his body in a new way, patiently following the instruction of his young teacher.
Besides the chapters that follow the corresponding weeks of his time at King’s, Howison includes an “interlude” chapter, where he confesses to some extra-curricular reading (and a couple martinis.) He’s well-read and can speak of classic spiritual texts of the fourth-century church fathers, more recent spiritual writers Charles Williams, Graham Greene, and C.S. Lewis, and contemporary authors Rowan Williams, Anne Lamott, and Kathleen Norris. But he also finds meaningful spiritual reflection in the life and work of Bruce Cockburn, Bruce Springsteen, Brian Wilson, John K. Samson, and Bjork.
A Kind of Solitude is an antidote to the proselytizing of self-help celebrities and their goop-style advice that promises us we can “best life now.” Howison’s book is less Eat, Pray, Love, and more Sit, Struggle, Wait. The spiritual practices to which Howison submits himself do not promise solutions, resolution, tranquility, or balance: by the end of his time at King’s, Howison says, humbly, “I began to be free.” Began. Because after the retreat—after the story he tells in the book—there’s still rest of the story: the return to Winnipeg, the house of his dissolved p. 128 marriage, the pressures and responsibilities of parish life, the tedium of the everyday.
The postscript is a photograph of Howison holding the icon he worked on during his stay. His icon is modest and humble: “It is not of a quality that would land it in an Orthodox church,” he admits. But in the image, he says, “I can see written in the face of Christ all that I was working through over those five weeks.” In the photo, Howison holds his icon low, his hands in a position that reflect a gesture of penitence. His hair looks slept on; he looks tired. His face is turned to the side, his eyes on something beyond the camera. Instead of himself, he is presenting the icon, the image of Christ as Pantocrator, The Almighty, the One who has gone before him, the One who goes before us.
The photo is an apt visual summary of the book and why it manages to be personal but not self-indulgent. Just as an icon is presented as an object to pray through, so Howison points to something other than himself. It is a brief, brave account of the hard work of being amid suffering, a powerful story of stewarding grief and loss for the sake of the gospel.
