Terry Waite was a former envoy for the Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1980s, and successfully negotiated the release of numerous hostages in Iran, Libya and Lebanon.
But on the 20 January 1987, he was taken hostage in Beirut and held for 1,763 days, spending four of these five years in captivity in solitary confinement.
Released in 1991, Mr Waite has written and lectured on his experience of confinement and on the spirituality of solitude and silence.
His most recent book, Solitude, was published by SPCK in 2017, as a companion volume to Out of the Silence: Memories, poems, reflections published the previous year.
He has founded charities for international development and for the support of hostage families.
Steve Tomkins, Editor of Reform magazine, spoke with Mr Waite for the July/August issue, here’s an extract from that interview:
ST: I’m intrigued that someone who has been through such an ordeal of involuntary solitude, should these days talk so warmly about enjoyment of voluntary solitude as you do in your books. Have you always had that leaning? Or do you think it’s been fostered by your experience of captivity?
TW: I think there’s always been an element of it in me. I don’t think by any means that I am a total solitary, someone who wants to go off and live in the desert and never see another living soul. I just find that within one’s total make up there is space for solitude.
It was often said to me when I was younger: ‘You should get away and take some quiet away from the business of life.’ When I took that advice and went away, I found I couldn’t enjoy it. A thousand thoughts were buzzing through my head. In later life, I learned that if you are really going to enjoy solitude and get the maximum from it, you have to go through the discipline of learning how to experience it, how to get into it. It doesn’t necessarily come quickly or easily. But it is an important part of life, because it forces you to face yourself as you are, the positives and negatives of one’s character.
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