A relentless hum

I read the above pictured words in the acknowledgements of a book I am just beginning called Still Life. The acknowledgments were placed at the start of this novel which is just the place I think acknowledgements should go. 

I adore the acknowledgements section of a book. It gives a glimpse into the blood, sweat, and tears it took for this book to be in your hands at this very moment as you are reading the names of the author’s editors and loved ones. These people are the reason, or at least a big part of the reason, you have read or about to read the (hopefully) carefully crafted words, imagined stories, fictitious characters who may very well become beloved by you. An author is not an author if not for the acknowledgements. No man is an island.

And Louise Penny ends her delightful acknowledgment section with a nod to her past which seems anything but delightful. And I wonder as you read her ending piece of admission and gratitude if you find yourself in the throes of loneliness, too.

Researchers might speculate that you likely do. There was a loneliness epidemic long before we had our current pandemic which has likely made the already lonely all the more so. 

And even those with relational intimacy—with partners or children or friends or family—still might feel the hum of loneliness.

In James Wright’s poem, A Blessing, he writes “They love each other,” which is swiftly followed with the line “There is no loneliness like theirs.”

Pádraig Ó Tuama, in his reflection on this poem, wonders if Wright is getting at the pervasive truth that even those in deep relational intimacy feel the pangs of loneliness. If perhaps to be human is to be lonely, even if life circumstances try to convince one it should be otherwise. 

Of course, this does little to help those in the midst of loneliness. It does not likely bring solace to the bed-ridden who feel prisoner in their own home. To the uninvited, those who can’t even begin to imagine who they could possibly bring as plus one. To the refugee. To the stranger. To the widow and to the married father of three who still has that ache. 

There’s a parable Jesus tells (which seems complex and relatable all at once) of a wealthy man who is hosting a wedding for his son. He invited all his friends, those who he felt should come, but they refused giving poor excuses. 

Can you imagine this being you? Can you imagine being the father? Can you imagine being the son? I think of the parent aching for the child who struggles to fit in and I think of the child wondering what it is about him that makes him so. Can you imagine the rejection felt? The loneliness felt?

Perhaps you can imagine without much effort. You have asked the woman you thought you clicked with to coffee several times, but each time she says she is busy. If you are to ask again you verge on appearing desperate. 

You thought the family from church with kids around your kids’ ages would love to have an evening together, but they keep putting you off. And why?

You have swiped right on too many faces to count, but no interest is returned.

You were blindsided by the willing or unwillingly loss of the one you wanted to grow old with. And how can you go on?

Or perhaps you have an abundance of relational intimacy and yet you feel ashamed at the ache of loneliness you still feel. 

I have no answers, nor strategies to rid yourself—-ourselves—-of this beast of loneliness. Only a blessing and perhaps some hope.

John O’Donohue’s blessings are beautiful and he has one for those experiencing loneliness and those longing for friendship, but in reading I thought the blessing for those experiencing an absence seemed appropriate. For loneliness can feel like just that. An absence.

May you know the absence is alive with hidden presence, that nothing is ever lost or forgotten.

May the absences in your life grow full of eternal echo.

May you sense around you the secret Elsewhere where the presences that have left you dwell.

May you be generous in your embrace of loss.

May the sore well of grief turn into a seamless flow or presence.

May your compassion reach out to the ones we never hear from.

May you have the courage to speak for the excluded ones.

May you become the gracious and passionate subject of your own life.

May you not disrespect your mystery through brittle words or false belonging.

May you be embraced by God in whom dawn and twilight are one.

May your longing inhabit its dream within the Great Belonging.

The wedding still happened and the banquet hall was full. The rejected father invited in the strangers and those who had never been invited in. Who never dreamed they’d be invited in. 

The rejection and the loneliness made way for blessing. May it be so in you.