Sitting at
home or far away,
Distances
don’t matter,
For this
loneliness to stay.
On terms
that scatter,
My
thinking’s indifferent—come what may,
Oh, what goes on up there; the
chatter!
As I look
over my prospects, my life,
Present
concerns remind of those gone,
And the
truth cuts like a knife.
Déjà vu is
reminiscing over a life so long,
Yet now
it’s half over and my history’s rife,
And hopes fail for the strength to
be strong!
But as I
wonder aloud just now,
A space
for breath appears,
So I can
allow my loneliness to endow.
When I do
somehow I can despatch my fears,
With that
strength I so wanted, I bow,
It’s for accepting and wiping away
the tears!
***
I pine, often, for those loneliest
times of my life thus far.
Strange, isn’t it, that we seek
after our core sadness as the vitality of connection with the Spirit is sought,
having once had it grip our lives like a tarantula? We all (in our feeling spaces)
like our sad, sombre music or films. It connects us to the Spirit within
calling us to the truth of our lack, and to our irreconcilable darkness, within
our psyches in this world.
Yet, back there, it was not at all
glamorous! We contemplated many a pitch black achievement. Strange rumblings
stirred. It was dangerous territory.
In the bowels of our loneliness we
cannot escape. We hate every reminder of that which we don’t have or no longer
have. We feel betwixt, betrayed, panicked, numb. Redoubling our anxiety is the
fleeting guilt of us feeling sorry for ourselves.
But our feelings of loneliness, of
course, are perfectly justified.
God is with us despite the
spiritual void we endure. And could God despoil our season of social madness by
inflicting upon us any sense of judgmental guilt? No, that’s of human making,
not of the divine.
There is a richness in the loneliness
that takes us ever close to God.
We don’t see it at the time. But
when things get better, we know we’ve lost something. Harrowing depths have
gone, yet so too has the intimacy with our self-strength—that which reaches
after God.
The bowels of loneliness teach us
about ourselves. In such a social dearth we find, ironically, God is ever
proximal. And as we recover, our intimacy with God dissipates. God favours the
lonely with his merciful Presence.
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.
Amen!!!
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