A Series On Loneliness

Thou wentest forth in the Spirit of power, fresh from the baptismal wave, into the desert, that a pattern of the solitary life also might not be wanting in Thy Person. Loneliness, forty days’ fast, the sharp tooth of hunger, temptations from the deceiver-spirit,—all were borne by Thee with even mind, that thus all might by Thy working be made bearable to us.

–Ninth Meditation of St. Anselm, On the Humanity of Christ

Some thoughts on loneliness have been percolating in my mind lately, and I’ve decided that this will have to be a series of reflections, rather than just one or two posts. How to positively respond to loneliness seems to me to be the big challenge of life today for everyone, not merely the folks who’ve chosen the single life in response to their attractions to the same sex.

I’ve found great inspiration in this regard in the writings of Henri Nouwen, so I’ll be relying on much of his writings on the subject as a springboard for my reflections.

I’ve been rereading some of my favorite passages of his as I’ve been thinking about what I might write, and the opening lines of his excellent book Reaching Out seem to sum up the situation:

It is far from easy to enter into the painful experience of loneliness. You like to stay away from it. Still it is an experience that enters into everyone’s life at some point. . . You might have felt it as a young adult in a university where everyone talked about grades but where a good friend was hard to find . . . you still might feel it day after day during staff meetings, conferences, counseling sessions, during long office hours or monotonous manual labor, or just when you are by yourself staring away from a book that cannot keep your attention. Practically every human being can recall similar or much more dramatic situations in which he or she has experienced that strange inner gnawing, that mental hunger, that unsettling unrest that makes us say, “I feel lonely.”

He writes “loneliness is one of the most universal sources of human suffering today,” and that “too often we will do everything possible to avoid confrontation with the experience of being alone, and sometimes we are able to create the most ingenious devices to prevent ourselves from being reminded of this condition.”

(Isn’t this one reason Facebook and social media have had such resounding success?)

Henri Nouwen continues:

Our culture has become most sophisticated in the avoidance of pain, not only our physical pain but our emotional and mental pain as well. We not only bury our dead as if they were still alive, but we also bury our pains as if they were not really there. We have become so used to this state of anesthesia, that we panic when there is nothing or nobody left to distract us. When we have no project to finish, no friend to visit, no book to read, no television to watch or no record to play, and when we are left all alone by ourselves we are brought so close to the revelation of our basic human aloneness and are so afraid of experiencing an all-pervasive sense of loneliness that we will do anything to get busy again and continue the game which makes us believe that everything is fine after all. John Lennon says: “Feel your own pain,” but how hard that is!

I’ll be reflecting on these sorts of thoughts over the course of who-knows-how-many posts. Fundamental to a healthy approach towards finding fruitfulness out of loneliness is that last line of Nouwen’s: we need to first confront, head on, our deep loneliness. That’s the first step, it seems to me: honestly acknowledge how painful our loneliness is to us.

Guiding all of these considerations though, will be the theme of that great quote from St. Anselm: Christ suffered great loneliness too, for our sake, so that by his working, it will be made bearable to us.

So stay tuned. I have a lot to say, because, well, I have felt a lot of tremendous loneliness in my life. These thoughts won’t be hypothetical–they’ll be what has made sense of all of the loneliness in my life.

Hopefully they might help someone else in some way. In the meantime, here are all the other posts I’ve written on loneliness.

(Alex, this is for you!)

Some Thoughts On Redemptive Suffering

Lately, I’ve been going through some old writing of mine. This was something I wrote about suffering about five years ago. It was before I knew that I’d soon be Catholic, and was in the midst of the tail end of the journey that led me back to Rome. I was in the middle of a lot of painful things in life, so suffering was always on my mind, particularly the poignant suffering of loneliness and lost dreams and hopes which resulted from lots of things, including my desires for men, and the lost relationship with a woman who I believed I could have shared my life with. Five years on, I’m glad everything happened as it did, but back then I was a wreck most everyday. And to that, I say thank God I went through it all!

A good friend of mine had surgery today to remove a cancerous prostate. He and his wife have been in my thoughts quite a bit throughout the day. Sadly, I don’t think the surgery was the most painful thing today. The death of a dream and hope of having children is the most painful wound of all for both of them. It makes it so clear to me once again that suffering is not far removed from any of us.

On Loneliness

I recently had a priest write me an email about a parishioner of his who is feeling loneliness quite acutely.  This person used to be in a relationship, and now, as she has chosen to follow the teachings of the Catholic Church on sexuality, she misses the intimacy of her past relationships.

We know from Genesis that “it is not good for man to live alone,” but as has often been said, there are worse things than loneliness.  My favorite quote from C. S. Lewis often comes to mind when I find myself in the dumps because of loneliness:

If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it’s not so bad.

Loneliness is the biggie–the one aspect of living out the call to chastity that is oh, so difficult to bear.  The sex can be lived without, though naturally with difficulty.  It’s the lack of companionship that’s the really difficult part.  What I have found necessary is tolive my life on a daily basis.  As Christ said, why worry about tomorrow, for today has enough troubles of its own?  I find that living the single life, on a daily basis, can be quite rewarding and fulfilling.  It’s the contemplation of a looming, long life of perpetual singleness that overwhelms one so easily, so when the temptation comes of thinking about myself as a single octogenarian, I try to settle down focusing on what today brings.  (And then I try to imagine myself in light of one of my favorite great uncles who was a bachelor his entire life.  As an octogenarian, he was one of the most joy filled people I’ve ever met in my entire life.  Being like Uncle Arvid is the goal.)

In the meantime, as an early quadragenarian, just a little over halfway to reaching my uncle Arvid’s age, loneliness is a poignant reality I live with to a varying degree each day.  I have found the worst thing that a lonely person can do is to sit about the house, moping.  I’ve been known to spend an entire day in bed (and this can still happen from time to time), but over the years, I’ve learned the obvious: this isn’t ever helpful or productive.  When I get in a funk, I make a concerted effort to get out of the house, usually calling up some friends to go grab a beer or a cup of coffee.  (OK…usually beer).  Thankfully I have a large network of friends so it’s a rare moment of loneliness where I’m forced to be by myself.  In such times, getting out of the house, whether walking my dog, or going to a favorite bookstore, or walking about taking photos, (one of my instant happiness producing activities) generally helps the intense feelings of loneliness be more tolerable.

From a spiritual standpoint, I’ve tried to view loneliness as a strange gift from God.  I choose with my will to view it in this light, and it has helped loneliness be more palatable to me.  Henri Nouwen, who we now know lived with attractions for other men, wrote remarkable words on loneliness in his book, the Wounded Healer:

But the more I think about loneliness, the more I think that the wound of loneliness is like the Grand Canyon–a deep incision in the surface of our existence which has become an inexhaustible source of beauty and self-understanding.

Therefore I would like to voice loudly and clearly what might seem unpopular and maybe even disturbing: The Christian way of life does not take away our loneliness; it protects and cherishes it as a precious gift. Sometimes it seems as if we do everything possible to avoid the painful confrontation with our basic human loneliness, and allow ourselves to be trapped by false gods promising immediate satisfaction and quick relief. But perhaps the painful awareness of loneliness is an invitation to transcend our limitations and look beyond the boundaries of our existence. The awareness of loneliness might be a gift we must protect and guard, because our loneliness reveals to us an inner emptiness that can be destructive when misunderstood, but filled with promise for him who can tolerate its sweet pain.

When we are impatient, when we want to give up our loneliness and try to overcome the separation and incompleteness we feel, too soon, we easily relate to our human world with devastating expectations. We ignore what we already know with a deep-seated, intuitive knowledge–that no love or friendship, no intimate embrace or tender kiss, no community, commune or collective, no man or woman, will ever be able to satisfy our desire to be released from our lonely condition. This truth is so disconcerting and painful that we are more prone to play games with our fantasies than to face the truth of our existence. Thus we keep hoping that one day we will find the man who really understands our experiences, the woman who will bring peace to our restless life, the job where we can fulfill our potentials, the book which will explain everything, and the place where we can feel at home. Such false hope leads us to make exhausting demands and prepares us for bitterness and dangerous hostility when we start discovering that nobody, and nothing, can live up to our absolutistic expectations.

Many marriages are ruined because neither partner was able to fulfill the often hidden hope that the other would take his or her loneliness away. And many celibates live with naive dream that in the intimacy of marriage their loneliness will be taken away.

Viewing loneliness like the beauty of the Grand Canyon isn’t very popular, but I find Nouwen’s view of the subject inspiring.  Thomas Merton’s view of the Israelites time in the desert in his book Thoughts in Solitude has also helped me come to terms with the loneliness I feel from time to time:

The desert was the region in which the Chosen People had wandered for forty years, cared for by God alone.  They could have reached the Promised Land in a few months if they had traveled directly to it.  God’s plan was that they should learn to love Him in the wilderness and that they should always look back upon the time in the desert as the idyllic time of their life with Him alone.

I have a dear friend who is a consecrated virgin.  She and I have talked about the loneliness of the single life, and as someone a few years older than me, I find her insights from walking the journey ahead of me invaluable.  I still remember distinctly a conversation we had about her view of her relationship with God.  It is a very personal and intimate relationship with God, in a sense of Christ being her constant companion and friend.  She literally plans her day, talking with Jesus with an assurance that He’s there beside her all the time.  To an outsider looking in, they might assume she’s crazy when she says, “OK, Jesus, what should we do today?”  Personally, I like the idea of going grocery shopping with the Messiah.

That being said, obviously there is a lack of the physical comfort and presence of another human being.  No matter how close we may feel with Jesus, I can’t get a hug from him when I’m down.  I often think of C. S. Lewis wrote in one of his letters:  “It is quite useless knocking at the door of Heaven for earthly comfort:  it’s not the sort of comfort they supply there.”

Certainly others can be the “hands and feet of Christ,” but no one can really salve the pain of loneliness of the single person.  Or, for that matter, the married man or woman who feels loneliness within his or her marriage. As Mother Theresa said, “the most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.”

So the question, naturally, is what is our response to loneliness?

Well, besides the obvious, (drinking craft beer with friends), I’m still trying to work that out.  These books have been invaluable for me in trying to figure out a healthy and creative response to the suffering of loneliness:

Elisabeth Elliot has catapulted herself into the pantheon of my favorite authors. She’s definitely in the top ten for me, and has to be listed as one of the most influential writers who have shaped my thinking.

Here’s a favorite passage from one of her books, with an admittedly lachrymose title: The Path of Loneliness.

Acceptance of discipleship is the utter abandonment of the disciple, the surrender of all rights, to the Master. This abandonment, in all cases, will mean pain. Christ listed some of the troubles His followers could expect, so that they would not be taken by surprise and thus discard their faith in Him. He didn’t offer immunity. He asked for trust.

As we have noted, Jesus published no false advertising. He was offering the kingdom of heaven–bliss, eternal life, fullness of joy. But He spoke of the small gate and the narrow road. He promised suffering, not escape from suffering. You cannot take up a cross and at the same time not take up a cross, or learn how to die and how not to die.

And another passage:

There are many things that God does not fix precisely because He loves us. (Emphasis is Elliot). Instead of extracting us from the problem, He calls us. In our sorrow or loneliness or pain He calls us—“This is a necessary part of the journey. Even if it is the roughest part, it is only a part, and it will not last the whole long way. Remember where I am leading you. Remember what you will find at the end—a home and a haven and a heaven.”

As Lewis said, “we’re like blocks of stone, out of which the sculptor carves the forms of men. The blows of His chisel, which hurt us so much, are what make us perfect. The suffering of this world is not the failure of God’s love for us; it is that love in action.”

Elliot says later that, “It is possible both to accept and to endure loneliness without bitterness when there is a vision of glory beyond.”

I feel that this misses the mark in some ways, despite how valuable I think her writing is. For me, the most compelling reason that makes suffering endurable is not the “glory” that might or might not come, but the fundamental belief that suffering is an invitation to love. Any later glory is ultimately irrelevant to a flesh and blood man whose only basis for belief in our coming glory is rooted in faith. My neighbor is someone I don’t need faith to believe in–I can shake his hand and help dig his car out of the snow. A faith that believes that our suffering, whether it be loneliness or something else, is something that can be used to gain salvation for those we love, as Colossians 1:24 tells us, is the strongest reason, and also I believe the most beautiful reason, for accepting, enduring and embracing suffering.

Interior Freedom by Jacques Phillipe has also been very, very helpful for me.  A friend felt led by God to send that book to me several years ago, and though it is a short book, it is dense with wisdom and I took a long time to read it.  It has helped me immensely.  One of the best sections from the book is this:
It is natural and easy to go along with pleasant situations that arise without our choosing them.  It becomes a problem, obviously, when things are unpleasant, go against us, or make us suffer.  But it is precisely then that, in order to become truly free, we are often called to choose to accept what we did not want, and even what we would not have wanted at any price. 

There is a paradoxical law of human life here:  one cannot become truly free unless one accepts not always being free! To achieve true interior freedom we must train ourselves to accept, peacefully and willingly, plenty of things that seem to contradict our freedom.  This means consenting to our personal limitations, our weaknesses, our powlerlessness, this or that situation that life imposes on us, and so on.  We find it difficult to do this, because we feel a natural revulsion for situations we cannot control.  But the fact is that the situations that really make us grow are precisely those we do not control.  There are many examples.

I think this applies so clearly to the loneliness of life, and to all those aspects of human suffering over which we have no control.

I’ll have to finish my recommended book list tomorrow.  But I’ll close with another quote from C. S. Lewis from another letter of his:

Well, thank God (for there is still part of me, a tiny little infantine voice somewhere amidst all the strong, confident natural voices, which can just thank Him, or perhaps only thank Him for being able to wish to thank Him) we shall not be left to the world.  All His terrible resources (but it is we who force him to use them) will be brought against us to detach us from it—insecurity, war, poverty, pain, unpopularity, loneliness.  We must be taught that this tent is not our home.  And, by Jove, how terrible it would be if all suffering, including death itself, were optional, so that only a very few voluntary ascetics ever even attempted to achieve the end for which we are created.  A propos—dare we gloss the text ‘Strait is the way and few there be that find it,’ by adding “And that’s why most of you have to be bustled and badgered into it like sheep—and the sheep-dogs have to have pretty sharp teeth too’!  I hope so.

Thoughts on Falling in Love

There is an interesting phenomenon going on in the blogosphere right now amongst those who adhere to the teachings of the Church on human sexuality, and who embrace chastity, and yet label themselves as gay.  These folks collectively accept the moniker of gay or lesbian, embrace a notion of “being queer,” and of celebrating their homosexuality.  Aside from the fact that I think this is opposed to the language the Church uses about man, I think this results in a slippery slope.

I wrote the following in response to a blog entry I read, which had the following paragraph:

“What they don’t realize is that while the homosexual inclination is itself objectively disordered, the overall experience of the homosexual, even including falling in love, is not objectively disordered.”

Surely “falling in love” becomes something other than than the “disinterested friendship” the CCC teaches us about.  I notice on the part of the “gay identity” crowd that there is much parsing of the language of the CCC (in ways which no other section of the CCC is parsed out). Falling in love is not truly friendship, by any stretch of the imagination. It moves outside the very realm of friendship and moves from philia into Eros. I would submit that the only appropriate modes of love between members of the same sex must be confined to “friendships,” and the aspects of love which are appropriate to friendship are forms of storge, philia and agape.

When we fall in love with another person, romantically, we move towards the realm of that which is objectively disordered. I know that you all disagree with this, but when one “falls in love,” it is no longer a disinterested friendship, even if one believes that such a romantic relationship can be ennobled.

In my own life, I have made a conscious decision to avoid becoming close to men for whom I might become romantically drawn towards. I think this is prudent, and I think adheres to the wise counsel of the Church in focusing on “disinterested friendship.”

This comes from a long history of having crushes on other men, and realizing that in embracing these feelings of romance towards other guys, I no longer can see them objectively as merely friends. They become objects of my affection which contaminate those friendships, and besides, they can easily lead to occasions to sin. When one has “fallen in love” with another man, one delights in the memory of him, the coming of him at his next visit, in a way that I believe God has not ordained for same sex friendships. It is not that friends who aren’t romantically attached don’t long for the next visit, but the longing obviously comes from a very different emotional place. I think the totality of the disordered inclination ALSO includes this “falling in love” aspect of relationship, which moves us beyond the realm of “disinterested friendship.” Once we allow ourselves to “fall in love” with a member of the same sex, we have set up a pseudo relationship rooted in Eros, which I believe is counter to our good, and counter to God’s plans for our lives.

What is the fulfillment of a romantic love, felt for another man? If one begins to accept that falling in love with another man is objectively ordered, how does that play itself out? Are you no longer “getting together to hang out,” or are you now “going on a date?” Do you hold hands in the car or in a movie? Do you cuddle on the couch, watching a movie? Do you stare into each other’s eyes over a candle lit dinner in Paris? Do you linger in a hug, in the same way a man and woman linger in a hug? Do you caress the face of your beloved, in the same way a man caresses a woman’s face?

There is a great difference between the joy of friendship, that say, Lewis and Tolkein felt for each other, and the joy of “friendship” I have felt in the past when I’ve had my own “beloved.” Lewis and Tolkein I doubt ever fantasized about the emotional high they felt in each other’s presence. And that’s what romantic love is so often about, particularly in the first stages. Any study of the Inklings showed that their friendship was completely disinterested, which is what made it so rich. They experienced what Lewis calls the “What? You too?” phenomenon, which is very different than the notion of “falling in love.” My views of my friend, where I without a doubt “fell in love with him,” were doomed to disappoint. There is no appropriate method of fulfillment with a romantic love between two men or two women. There IS an appropriate mode of fulfillment between two men and women who love each other, strictly as friends, and that fulfillment is the great gift of the brotherhood of commonality and enjoyment of the person. When romantic love enters into a same sex friendship, at that point, I’m convinced this falls into the rubric of no longer being a disinterested friendship.

So too with a married man or a married woman who become friends, and have a “romantic” relationship with each other, even if it is physically chaste. There is something very self-indulgent when a married person becomes too close to a member of the opposite sex. When these friendships are pursued, they serve one purpose: to make us happy, and for the warm feelings the contemplation of the “beloved” brings. It is self-interested, it is self-motivated, it is self-indulgent. A married man or a married woman can have wonderful, and even close friendships with a member of the opposite sex, but they are wise to understand that the boundary must be the same one which we who are same sex attracted must recognize: it must be disinterested, and devoid of any sort of romantic feelings. Indeed, the canary in the coal mine is the first flush of romantic feelings. In my own life, the joy I felt with certain men when I felt romantically towards them was merely self-indulgent, no matter how ennobled I believed myself to be in my desire to love them “with a Christ like love.” Ultimately, any romantic feelings that I had for another man I think were narcissistically motivated, and I think this is the case for any romantic feelings between the same sex. For me, what this means in my life is that I consciously avoid becoming close to any man for whom I might be tempted to “fall for.” Why? Because I want to see him for the man he is, not as the man of my dreams, or the man who makes me happy when I contemplate him. For me, I have come to realize that my past contemplation of a male beloved are self-indulgent fantasies, escapist in nature, in the very same way that a married man fantasies about another woman to help ease the dissatisfaction he feels in his own marriage. The legitimate, and very real dissatisfaction that a same sex attracted man feels is loneliness, but the wrong path to ameliorate that pain is the path of “falling in love.”