January 3, 2011

 Beloved,
A woman married 63 years took to sleeping in a twin size bed after her husband died.  “Trying to fall asleep alone, it’s like half of me is gone. The old bed was too big and too lonely.”  I think of her as my own husband packs for 3 weeks in Asia.  I’ll miss him bringing me morning coffee and calling me through the day, but mostly at night, alone instead of folded against him beneath the quilt.  

Every book I pick up lately concerns human aloneness.  In The Art of Pilgrimage, Phil Cousineau  writes of the inescapable fact that we are all strangers in this world. InCadences of Home Walter Brueggeman reframes our aloneness, as individuals and the the church, as divinely designed and intended - God given for God’s purposes.  

So God wants us to feel lonely?  Maybe. Brueggeman argues that God wants us to know where we truly belong, where our true home is and that what we call loneliness, or aloneness, is simply a homesick soul. The task is learning to live faithfully and usefully in the meantime.  Instead of resisting or avoiding the loneliness, we can lean into it and discover its peculiar lessons and joys.   We can also, always, be grateful too; for what community we do enjoy here and now. Family, friends, church, art, beauty, prayer; the glimpses and glimmers of our true home beyond the veil of the here and now.  

I pray this freezy day finds you warm in all things soulful.  ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette