My greatest fear

From Revelations of a Single Woman by Connally Gilliam:

"Maybe this splintering wouldn't be problematic if the people around us were a constant. It would be one thing if you were the only one spinning around, expressing facets of yourself while the social structures stayed the same. But it's you and me and a whole bunch of other people. Actually, the very social structures we latch on to as we spin seem to be rife with other spinners. This is most clearly felt in young adult singles' networks.

The pattern goes something like this: You live in a city for a while and make a group of friends, normally a group of peers from the workplace, a church or synagogue, or perhaps a network of college alumni. After a few years, however, those friends slowly begin to marry off, move away, or busily spin into other circles. Unlike the TV show, friends don't always stay around for ten seasons. But because they matter to you nevertheless, you mean committed to some of the scattered ones via e-mail and cell phone. Still, you need to make some new friends to fill the gaps, though this time perhaps you have a little less energy to pour out. Inevitably, however, they too marry off, move away (or you do), or busily spin into other circles. Again, you stay tangentially connected to a few. But Saturday nights continue to roll around with daunting frequency, and if you don't want to watch Nick at Nite reruns alone, the process continues. After a while you can start to feel as if various parts of you are poured out into many people and places - some real, some virtual, none satisfyingly constant. My friend Tracy compares it to attempting to salke one's relational thirst by sipping from a thousand little waxy Dixie cups. You don't die of dehydration, but in your core, you increasingly long for a few deep wells."

Perhaps it may seem that my number one fear should be that I will die along. Like Bridget Jones' fear that she would "end up dying alone and found three weeks later half-eaten by an Alsatian," I - who has never dated any one - will remain overlooked for my entire life. But increasingly now it isn't just the fear of never being married that consumes me, but more that I will be left alone. Until now (and to be honest, even not quite yet), being single hasn't bothered me, mainly because I have so many single friends. There's a comfort and dependipility you find in others when they remain unattached. But I begin to peer into my future, and I see my close friends moving away (moving on), I see my roommates getting married (or finding boyfriends to distract the time that was reliably open), and I see myself, alone, standing amongst a sea of forever changing people and places, with just a few strings anchoring me in place. The thing that we are so afraid of in our modern context - being stuck - is exactly what we begin to crave when we find that drifting leaves us alone among the unfamiliar. What seemed so exciting before now seems less appealing, but so does the alternative. What is the solution? How does one anchor oneself in this world? I know Wendell Berry's solution to this - but how does that make sense to me? What and where and who is my home?

"And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home."
Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness

Silence like a cancer grows

Lately I've been feeling a growing sense of loneliness and isolation. I've spent a lot of time by myself (not by choice, but yet, its always a choice isn't it?), and have been increasingly uncomfortable with my periods of alone time. I crave people to sometimes just be there, even if there's no conversation, while other times I crave the interaction and banter and friendship and companionship and understanding another person provides. That sounds so unfeeling, like I could be talking about a pet and not a person. I think what underlies it all is a craving for understanding, for someone to look at me while I talk and not to check their phone, for someone to ask me questions followed by more questions, to listen to what I'm saying. I crave for someone to tell me it will be okay, that I'm going in the right direction. I crave for someone to hold my head as I cry with my head resting on their lap. I crave that underlying love that doesn't give advice or order steps or condemn, but gently propels you to stand on your own and not pity yourself. That indulges you moments of weakness and lets you be you for a moment, without all the masks and coverings.

I find that I've been listening to a lot of songs dealing with loneliness. "Sound of Silence" by Simon & Garfunkel is featured in the opening (and closing) scene of The Graduate. It begins with Benjamin Braddock getting off a plane and walking through the airport, all while the song is playing in the background. For almost the entire duration of the song, Ben is moving along the people mover, his upper torso and the wall the only things in view. "Hello darkness my old friend," is the first line, underlying the theme of emptiness and loneliness, but also ironically using the word friend. The problem is that the speaker has no friends, that is why he is lonely. So the only friend that befriends him is his loneliness. Also, Regina Spektor's "Summer in the City" for some reason also speaks to me. On the surface, the song is about sexual frustration, but what it also could be about is craving intimacy. In the song, this takes form through lust for sex. "Summer in the city, I'm so lonely, lonely, lonely, so I went to a protest just to rub up against strangers... The castrated ones stand on the corner smoking, they want to feel the bulges in their pants start to rise." The want to connect with others, to react, to pursue, to feel. But they can't, they are alone.

Ultimately, I realize I am not alone. Not even by a longshot. But it doesn't take away this feeling of loneliness.

Trees were a fist, shaking themselves at the clouds.

A persistent image is ingrained in the back of my mind, nagging my waking dreams. Hauntingly and relentlessly it pursues me yet draws me to it. Its wretchedness has a lingering beauty that probes my mind for meaning. Inexplicably I sit here, unable to peal my eyes away. What is it that keeps me here?

Almost two different trees, you share the same trunk, though that is the only company you keep. Your bark is rough and unkempt, your limbs have long since stopped reaching. A stark silhouette across an even starker sky, your body is naked and exposed without covering. Somehow I always end here, unable to go forward for you block my way.

It is as if I have made this pilgrimage for you alone. Struggling, I try to ignore you, but you persist, I know you exist. Although I don’t want to accept, you give me your sadness, your despair, your hopelessness, your tragedy. What am I to do with your burden?

What good can come from Galilee? But yet I keep returning to you with something that I cannot explain. I want so badly to choose hope, to believe that spring will come. I run to you, hoping to see just one bloom, just one breath of oxygen to fan my meager flame. Irrationally, I place an ultimatum before God. Renew this tree, restore my belief in miracles, give me a faith in your ability to regenerate, to make all things new. Let me believe—and not only believe but see—that you care about your children deeply, passionately. That you will not let them wallow in grief, tortured by pain and joylessness. That you can take the worst, the most dire, the most hopeless and work it to good. That you can move in mighty and powerful ways. That you want more for your children than just helping them to get by, but that you want to take their burdens upon yourself and help them break free of the bondages of sin, depression, worldliness, hurt, pain, resentment, insecurity, greediness, unforgiveness, doubt.

Where is the God I serve? Where is the merciful Jehovah, slow to anger, abounding in love, steadfast, unchanging? Where is He in the world, among the warring factions, among the suffering poverty, the starving populations, the forced slavery, the destitute and oppressed, the depressed, the unhappy, the dying? Where is God in world politics, in the heathen, in the fundamental, in the liberal? Where is God in the Gaza strip, in the West Bank, in the child factories in China, in Darfur, in New York City, in the ghetto, in the country, in the suburbs? Where are You in my life? I try to be like You, but who are You? I have let a lot of things slip--show me what it is that is keeping me from You. This world (desperately) needs a Savior, this nation (desperately) needs a Savior, this Church (desperately) needs a Savior, this decripit, sinful being (desperately) needs a Savior. Are You in Focus on the Family? Sojourners? with the Pope? the conservatives? the pacifists? George W. Bush? the new monastics? the liberals? the gays? the Jews? the emergent Church? the Lutherans? the Pentacostals? the Church of Christ? the Amish? the Mormons? the religious right? the 700 Club? Patrick Henry University? Bob Jones? Messiah College? Where does one find the Truth amongst so many truths and lies? Why is it that your Church is often so corrupt, so fallen, so deceiving? All I want is to see You, unadulterated from all human bias. To see You clearly, accurately, without error or blur. I don't want the God of social justice or the God of morality or the God of love or the God of zealous anger, but You in everything You are. My human mind cannot comprehend. But yet You are. You changest not, yet my perceptions do. Perhaps you are always in plain view, but I have not yet learned to see you.

A bloom on the tree. Now bloom in my life.

Shaniqua don't live here no mo'

I've been thinking a lot about the meaning of home lately. I think it all started with an activity we did with a group a few months ago. We had everyone come up with five things that mean home to you and then rank them. We then randomly took away four of them, leaving you with just one. We shared what we had written down, what we lost, how we felt when we had lost it, and what we were left with. I wasn't sure how the activity would go because it seemed a little abstract, but by the end I was fascinated by how real our situations came to feel.

It was particularly fascinating to listen to what was chosen for the list. The smell of my house. My friends. My family. My dog. My stuff. My privacy. My comfort. My safety. Home meant so much more than a physical place--it also was an emotional, a spiritual space, a place where one felt safe and loved.

The very next week I found myself yearning for this home many times. In one particular day, I felt berated with struggles and condemnation. People putting me down, my organization, my expertise, how I do my job, all consistently undermining me. And then, that night, something happened with one of my students and everything in me yearned for that safe, secure place that I could go run to, to escape all the turmoil--physically, emotionally, spiritually--around me. I wanted to go home.

If a home is truly more than a building or a place of shelter, than to be homeless means more than just losing your house. In fact, it might not even mean that. Losing anything on that list may make a person homeless: a person, a place, a feeling of comfort and safety. By this definition, how many of us are without a home? How many people don't have a place--physical, emotional, spiritual--to go to when there's danger in their life? I can't help but think that we all must have a bit of homelessness in us, or at least understand what that feeling is.

"For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him.
He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken.
On God rests my salvation and my glory; my mighty rock, my refuge in God.
Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us."
Psalm 62:5-8

"Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go."
"Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head."