Rich Mullins on Loneliness

So, what is hard to understand then is this: If we are not islands, why do we feel so alone?  If we are "part of the main," why are we so often in a condition of isolation?  Why is it that in spite of -- or sometimes, more tragically, because of -- our most gut-wrenching efforts to experience a sense of belonging and to participate in the sharing of camaraderie or friendship or love, we experience a deep, disturbing alienation?  The sense of aloneness permeates our existence.  Sometimes it subtly, almost imperceptibly crouches in the shadows -- sometimes it dominates, ruthlessly marching like Sherman across every front of our lives.

Why?

Or more important (and more disturbing), why would any answer to this question give us little or no consolation?  Why does "knowing why" offer so little relief?  Why is it that we were created with a need for explanations that pales beside our need for belonging?  Why are all the answers -- so easy to get, to give, figure out, or make up -- so unsatisfying, and our need for intimacy -- so hard to give, to find, to share, so impossible to take -- so necessary for a satisfying life?

...So, let us love one another, enjoy each other's company, share in the common work, endure each other's failures.  This will not cure our aloneness, so let's not ask that of each other.  Let's learn to not be afraid of a very necessary aloneness.  With others and without them we are at home.  In both their company and our solitude we will meet God.

--Rich Mullins, "Never Alone."

I first read the compiled book of Rich Mullins essays, "Home," while on a Greyhound heading from one part of Minnesota to another.  It was a several hour trip, and I enjoyed the chance to savor those essays, to read bits and think and reread and eventually integrate the ideas into my own philosophy.  Sometimes I would just cherish the sheer beauty of the words.

The essays touched me, challenged me, inspired me ... changed me in many ways.  But none of them disturbed me.  Except this one.

I see the Christian world giving two contradictory messages about the role our relationships and connections and intimacies plays in our spiritual journey, and the broader world doesn't seem to realize the contradiction (the world that speaks to me in sermons and homilies and devotionals and informs those who teach me or give me advice).

There are quotes like the one I typed in full above.  Sometimes I'll just use the line "our need for answers pales next to our need for connection," because that's so incredibly true.  Taken out of context that way, though, I'm using it to say almost the reverse of Rich's idea -- the idea that there is a loneliness that is part of the human condition and we should not expect to have cured.

The secular world says "love yourself.  Don't be afraid of yourself."  As if enough self-love could make loneliness easier -- to me, that seems absurd in the extreme.  I had one person tell me, a long time ago, that she hoped that I could take all these cute little craft projects I made for other people and do that for myself.  The last thing I need is more trinkets for my cats to destroy -- the point isn't the gift, the point is the otherness of the maker (small "m" in this case) who saw something in me or in the world that I didn't, could not, see, and expressed it creatively through art and gift.  Doing it for myself would be pointless.

The Christian world seems to say, however, "trust in God alone.  We find God in our solitude."  There's a fundamental truth there.  Distilling all the different contradictory things people say using the same words, the message -- as I understand it -- is that God is sufficient, and if we make a friend or two along the way that's wonderful, but our need for intimacy is fulfilled first and foremost in God.

I just ... don't understand how that works.  For one thing, the only frame of reference I have to imagine God is the way that I see important people in my life.  I imagine Him taking care of me with joy in the same way I took care of some of my "Xena" friends.  I've been recently able to step out of that a bit, to understand and imagine some of the qualities that God has that human beings don't.  It's still very rudimentary.

That's not even the root of the contradiction, though.  The root of the contradiction is that if I put up walls against intimacy with other people, those same walls are going to keep God out.  Like Rich said, intimacy is a difficult thing.  It takes practice and courage.  But if I don't put up walls against intimacy, then I long for it with an ache that cannot be satisfied by the invisible and intangible.  There's also the question of how well I loved -- how well I was God's hands and feet in the world.  Like the famous chapter in 1 Corinthians says, I might give all I have to the poor and my body to the flames, but if I don't have love, it means nothing.  I don't think it's possible to love without being able to get hurt.  In my experience, the worst kind of pain is the loss -- in opening up a very specific and defined part of my heart to someone else, and then having to resign myself to locking the doors and barring the windows because that particular part of my heart will never again be filled.  It's an ache that will never, ever, go away.  But the only way to not have it is to not love.

Maybe I'm missing the point of the passage.  Maybe what Rich meant was that the pain of loneliness is a necessary part of human life -- not that we need to pretend and pray and lie that ache away.

I have spent so many years trying to reconcile the above passage with lines like this:

If I was moved, you would never guess it by the look upon my face ... it's a matter of doubt, it's a matter of sin, it's a problem of too much pride, and I, now I'm opening up wide, You spread my feathers out beneath me and You're teaching me to fly, and for the strength that comes from friendship, for the warmth that comes from hope, for the love time can't diminish, for the time love takes to grow, for the faith that brought to finish all I doubted at the start, Lord I give You praise for all that makes for the hatching of a heart.

--Rich Mullins, "Hatching of a Heart."

In the end, like Rich said too ... I just don't know.  I don't understand how it all fits together.