A book on loneliness was released this past week, and I highly recommend it to you: The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other by Charlotte Boyd Donlon. If you and I are friends on social media you may have seen my post about it on Facebook or Instagram a couple weeks ago after I received a preview copy. I wondered then, before even reading it, how Donlon could have known while writing it in pre-Covid days that her book on loneliness would be released during the most lonely time in recent history. I'm grateful for the book's arrival.
Instead of spelling out "Ten Ways to To Beat Loneliness," Donlon, a spiritual director, instead models for us how to be curious about loneliness, and by being curious, to discover what there is to discover because of loneliness. Through curiosity, loneliness shifts from being something to avoid at all costs toward instead becoming a kind of wise companion on the journey of life. Through her meditations and stories, Donlon asks us to consider what loneliness is teaching us and to consider how God's grace supports us in our loneliness.
"Loneliness doesn't always teach me a nice lesson. Sometimes it offers me a chance to slow down and encourages me to reach out to my husband or a friend. Sometimes it asks me to grieve the loss of a relationship or the loss of what I hoped a relationship might one day become. At other times my loneliness is silent, with nothing to give—a child with her jaw clenched tight and her arms crossed, stubborn and refusing to speak. But I want to keep sitting with her whenever she shows up, because I never know when she might open her arms and pull me close. I never know when she might whisper some wisdom into my ear."
Charlotte Donlon also has a podcast you might be interested in: Hope for the Lonely
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When I finished reading Donlon's book, I thought about a poem I've long loved by the Persian poet Hafiz. Years ago I wrote it out on a card and have kept it tucked inside a daily notebook ever since.
Absolutely Clear
Don't surrender your loneliness
So quickly.
Let it cut more deep.
Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.
Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice
So tender,
My need of God
Absolutely
Clear.
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[Photo: taken on a recent walk. The leafless birch speak to many things, not the least of which are loneliness and also beauty.]