To the Lonely

To be human is to face struggle. For me, this most often means loneliness. All throughout my life, the experience or feeling of being alone has been my Achilles heel. It began weeks before my 4th birthday, when my dad was killed in a gruesome truck accident.

The feeling of being fatherless.

That ping doesn’t leave the heart, and it often sneaks up and bites into my being at unexpected times and moments.

Within this pandemic it seems that giant decisions need to be made …

all

the

time.

This week has been no exception, and I feel woefully inadequate and ill equipped to make so many of them. And when a number of these decisions affect so many other people, that weight can feel suffocating.

I love teaching, but in this pandemic my work is largely done staring at a camera, which can feel … lonely. I love seeing people, inviting souls to intermingle in conversations or responses to what was taught. In the nod of a head or a stretch of a smile… or even in a furrowed brow. It’s connection and engagement and listening.

This day and this week have felt … lonely. There have been moments of not being heard or of being misheard. And there were moments when I heard and I’d rather have not heard, and now I simply want the ability to unhear.

I buzzed out yesterday to record a video with a friend and then drop some books to some folks, which are really excuses for just needing to be with people, even from afar and from behind a mask. I just wanted to say hi and ask how people are doing. One of my book drops took me right around the corner from the cemetery where my dad is buried. So I stopped. And I stood. I stared. And I wept.

The meaning of Advent has me starved for Presence, which is what this season is all about. Waiting and anticipating the flesh and blood presence of the Divine. The reminder that the Divine is with us … wherever we are … however we are.

To reflect on the life and love of Jesus, is to hear the eternal whisper, “Me too.” In the loneliness and lack, Jesus whispers, “Me too.” I don’t have any scientific or mathematical proof, but I have experienced the mystery found in a soul squeeze. It’s an embrace which couldn't be more real, or more needed. Because there is the ink on the page, and then there is the mystery of presence that hovers over, under, and all around the ink.

Maybe, like me, you need to hear that whisper and feel that embrace. May it be so for you as it has been for me.