This Loneliness Won't Leave Me Alone

 "This Loneliness Won't Leave Me Alone..."

…is a line from “Sittin’ On The Dock of The Bay” (by Otis Redding), as well as “Many Rivers to Cross” by Jimmy Cliff, and made even more famous in Joe Cocker’s version. Indeed, loneliness is an issue that won’t leave us alone; it won’t just go away, either. The UK government caused a stir of interest (and not a little derision) when, in 2018, it created the first Minister for Loneliness (Tracey Crouch, MP). This followed a commission report, published in 2017. (British lawmaker Jo Cox drove the U.K.’s initial work combating loneliness through a commission on the issue until she was murdered in June 2016.)  So, how is that working out? Seriously? How typical that a government should create a Commission - and even create a Ministry - around loneliness. As if it would be possible to legislate against loneliness! Some sort of an answer is given by Re-engage, whose report is quite informative. They note that “What is clear is that there are multiple ways that the problem is being addressed but that loneliness is still pervasive and intense for many people.”

"To live a spiritual life, we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of our loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude." Henri Nouwen

Sure: a lot of stuff has been done and, I work with a charity (CAN - Connections Across Norfolk) that matches volunteer befrienders with people flagged up as having loneliness issues. Nevertheless, we all know that loneliness is not something that any government can resolve, especially not ones that are narcissistic and systemically cruel. True to form, then, the current UK government's Tackling Loneliness Annual Report (fourth year) is typically bombastic, claiming "Since 2018 the government has been a world leader [sic!] in tackling loneliness." If ever “pride precedes a fall” were an apposite assessment, this must be a case in point.

 

For Wayfarers, loneliness can be par for the course. Jesus famously said, “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is narrow and the way is constricted that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” (Matt 7:13-14) “Many” contrasted with “few”; that sounds like a painfully familiar scenario! In these challenging times to walk The Way, we are going to find that we will have more companionship and fellowship with the “two or three gathered in My name...” than in bigger congregations, especially most “Mega-Churches”.

Being encouraged by the Holy Spirit to travel some of the road, at this time, with an Evangelical Fundamentalist group in my town is not doing my blood-pressure any favours, either! (I might share my survival story in due course...) But I have been alone – and often feeling lonely – for quite some time and so, I am wondering if God’s promise to give us solitary travellers a base, for a while, is not what’s happening here. (See Psalm 68:5-6 – “Father of orphans and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation. God gives the desolate a home to live in…”)

Through the practice of contemplative (or “centring”) prayer, I have grown comfortable in quietness and solitude. My own company no longer frightens or unsettles me. This is a work of Grace. In his small “Journal” of a book, The Inner Voice of Love (Doubleday 1996) Henri Nouwen writes: “You are called to live out of a new place, beyond your emotions, passions, and feelings.  As long as you live amid your emotions, passions and feelings, you will continue to experience loneliness, jealousy, anger, resentment, and even rage, because those are the most obvious responses to rejection and abandonment.” If that is not an inspired explanation for the widespread experience of loneliness (and jealousy, resentment, and rage) in our day, what is? It touches the heart of all the angst, stress, and loneliness that TV, social media, addictions, entertainment or social activism or clubs – including so-called “churches” cannot possibly heal.

I have been finding so much solace in Nouwen’s spiritually sensitive writings, lately. Elsewhere, in Reaching Out (Doubleday 1975), he compares loneliness with solitude. “Loneliness,” he writes, “is one of the most universal sources of human suffering. Psychiatrists and clinical psychologists speak about it as the most frequently expressed complaint and the root not only of an increasing number of suicides but also of alcoholism, drug use, different psychosomatic symptoms – such as, headaches, stomach, and low-back pains – and of a large number of traffic accidents. [People] are in growing degree exposed to the contagious disease of loneliness in a world in which a competitive individualism tries to reconcile itself with a culture that speaks about togetherness, unity, and community as the ideals to strive for.” (Emphasis mine.) After the surprising discovery of quiet, community, and neighbourhood during, and, for a brief moment after, the Covid pandemic, we can see how, even after some 30+ years since Nouwen wrote this, we have made little progress. A government Report, or a Minister for Loneliness, is a pretty pointless exercise in futility, faced with such a monumentally profound, spiritual malaise.

“To live a spiritual life, we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of our loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude…The movement from loneliness to solitude, however, is the beginning of any spiritual life because it is the movement from the restless senses to the restful spirit, from the outward-reaching cravings to the inward-reaching search, from the fearful clinging to the fearless play.” (pp 22, 23)

So, blessed Wayfarers, do not let us be afraid of our inevitable, deathly desert of loneliness, but embrace it and transform it – through the indwelling grace of the Holy Spirit – into the life-giving garden of solitude. Grace and peace to all.