Loneliness leads to Loveliness

Many hours I'd spend riding the train in Chicago, above ground, viewing the brown and rusty red brick overtones of the city, or darkness through it's windows underground. I'd sit with loneliness and wonder when and if that pang in my gut would ever end. Desiring an affirmation from a friend amidst my restlessness to save me from myself. ("Save me from myselllllllf!"-Austin Powers Goldmember)

The pang got worse. I laid in the darkness in my room one night with the words of my dear friend Gina ringing in my mind as I repeated them like a mantra: "You are never alone. I am with you and I love you."

I realized I was actually utterly alone, and that scared the crap out of me. All I could see was darkness. Eternal hopelessness, and it lasted for maybe a half an hour. So... I waited it out. That 30 or so minutes revealed some truths which I think were necessary to realize eternal love. There is a LOVE that surrounds us so well that we are held, through loved ones and God. It's IN us too though.

In this life we are in a sense alone. However, God gives us people like Gina and others who are "flickers of light in the darkness" (new NKOTB lyric!). It's like they are camera flashes which linger in our eyes even when we close them. They are lightning bugs in a dark Summer sky. They are the panacea for the pang. They are God too. (Don't worry, I almost quoted Jewel's song Hands but then stopped myself.) We too are those lighting bugs for other people. Yes, you too, are a lightning bug.

      Well, the pang got a little better.

                                                         The pang got a lot better.

                                    The loneliness never went away.

                                                                                           But the pang went away.

I look back to recent times in NYC sitting in my bedroom on the 3rd floor of Maryhouse searching to find ways of feeling innately joyful and less-restless. Sometimes I'd dance, sometimes I'd look to see if Dan's light was on in his apartment building behind our house. Often I'd quell this nagging by reaching out to friends. Sometimes but not often enough I'd pray, sit in silence and meditate. More than sometimes I'd watch Dirty Dancing, then would miss Patrick Swayze and that is a whole different kind of loneliness.

When I feel lonely now I think of how God actually uses these moments to sanctify us. Bleak as they are. If I were never lonely would I look to the Saints, Therese of the Little Flower in her sensitivity and little loving way, Dorothy Day in her radical love, my best friends in their commitment, strength, and understanding? Would I dance? Would I sing? Would I mean it?

Would I reach out to God in my poverty? Would my own poverty help me know empathy for the women who are experiencing poverty on the Lower East Side of Manhattan? Would I EXPERIENCE how much God loves the poor because I too am the poor?

Doubt it.

We just never know what the darkness will bring. God shows us through resurrection that there is more than meets our little human eyes. I'll try to remember this next time I feel lonely, which will probably be a moment not unlike this very one.

And it is somehow lovely.