Proper 23a.05     October 9, 2005

Isaiah speaks to us today about loneliness and shame.
“When the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm,
       the noise of aliens was like heat in a dry place,
you subdued the heat with the shade of clouds;
       the song of the ruthless was stilled.”

The dry place, the wilderness, is a place of solitude.
Matthew, Mark and Luke call it “a lonely place.”
It’s a lonely place in our hearts and we all know it very well.

The spiritual writer, Henri Nouwen, said,

       ‘We live in a society in which loneliness has become
              one of the most painful human wounds.
       The growing competition and rivalry which pervade our lives . . .
              have created in us an acute awareness of our isolation.
       . . . It has also led people to ask anew how love, friendship,
              brotherhood and sisterhood can free them
       from isolation and offer them a sense of intimacy and belonging.”

Late one night years ago, I telephoned the Crisis Hotline
        just because my loneliness was so unbearable
               I was desperate to hear a human voice.
I recognized the voice that answered.
It was my friend, Sallie. She was good enough a friend,
        I had once borrowed money from her.
But I didn’t tell her about my loneliness.
I was so ashamed of how desperate I felt,
        I didn’t even let on who I was.
I just said I needed to say goodnight to someone.
She said “Ok, goodnight.” And I was alone again.

Bill Wilson, one of the co-founders of AA, said that
        loneliness and shame are the root causes of addiction.
Recalling his drinking years, Wilson said,

  “My self-consciousness was such that I simply had to take that drink.
  So I took it, and another one, and then . . . . I felt that I belonged
  where I was, belonged to life; I belonged to the universe;
   I was part of things at last.”

But the chemical sensation of belonging wasn’t the real thing.
It was an illusion, not existential connection, not personal relationship.
So the illusion only led to more isolation, then greater loneliness,
         then more drinking until he had spiraled into his own abyss.
What led Bill Wilson into addiction was the loneliness
         that afflicts everyone at some level of their soul.
We form families and go to parties to escape it,
         but find ourselves still alienated when we are alone in a crowd.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke call the dry place “lonely”
         even when thousands of people are there.
Thomas Wolfe described it,

         “Naked and alone we came into exile.
         In her dark womb we did not know our mother’s face;
         from the prison of her flesh we have come into the unspeakable
                  and incommunicable prison of this earth.
         Which of us has known his brother?
         Which of us has looked into his father’s heart?
         Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent?
         Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?”

When I went on a one-month solitary retreat in a desert hermitage,
         I was afraid I’d need the Crisis Hotline again.
And this time I wouldn’t even have a telephone.
But instead I discovered a different kind of solitude.
It still hurt. The sunset in the Colorado desert could break the hardest heart.
And I was assailed by all the demons of shame every day.

Nonetheless, I experienced something I couldn’t put into words then.
Years later, I found a writer who said it for me.
Notre Dame Theologian John Dunne asks,

         “What is the heart’s desire?
         If I let myself feel the loss of the road not taken,
         if I let myself feel the loneliness of the road I have taken,
         I am led on a journey into my own heart,
         I come to know my heart’s desire,
         and not only my own but that of others as well.
         I am led on a journey into the human heart.”

John Dunne’s theology doesn’t begin with speculations
         about the origins of the universe, but with direct experience.

         “Our starting point,” he says, “will be . . . loneliness . . . ,
         the loneliness that is felt in . . . . conflict
                 and suffering and guilt and death.
         It is a loneliness that is not taken away even when human

                 beings are close to one another.
         There is a longing in that loneliness.
         It is the longing that I will call ‘the heart’s desire.’”

Solitude is painful but not because it is bad.
It is painful because in solitude we touch the fire of life,
         the fire of the spirit, we come up against our own desire

         – a longing that moves us through life,
                  and therefore cannot be fully satisfied in this life.
I have “miles to go before I sleep.”
So like it or not, I need this heart’s desire, need this longing,
          even need this loneliness.

And there will be moments of genuine union, real belonging,
         when the pain is banished and we get a foretaste
                  of the joy of coming home.

Benedictine monk, Brother David Stendahl-Rast says,

         “(W)e often feel orphaned; we feel lost;
         we feel we are wandering and looking for something.
         Then comes a moment, unexplainably, (when we feel)

         ‘Now I am home, this is my home. And I belong.
         I am not orphaned. I belong . . .”

Religion isn’t the only way that happens – not by a long shot.
But “belonging” is what religion is about.
It is the very etymological root meaning of the word.
It is what Holy Communion symbolizes and creates
         at the deepest level of our souls.

Loneliness leads us through the moments of connection
         until it brings us home to union with everything and everyone.
But there is a pain in solitude that is not necessary
         to move us along in life.
In fact, it keeps us stuck in the dry place.
It is the shame that made me unable to tell Sallie,

         “This is Dan. Can we talk?”

Loneliness is from God. It is the truth of our situation.
Shame comes from quite another source
         and it is a cruel lie about who we are

         – a lie that wounds our sense personal worth.
Shame is healed in precious moments of real connection
         to Christ, to a community, or to another person.

Henri Nouwen tells a story of the Risen Lord.
I don’t know if it really happened , but the point is true.
The Risen Lord was at a party looking like an ordinary guy.
A woman there gave him a fake name,
         then told him all about herself,
         told him everything she regretted and was ashamed of.

She started to walk away,
         but he called her by her real name,
         just as he called Mary Magdalen by her name at the tomb.

He said, “Mary, you are a perfectly beautiful person.
        Other people have broken you by making you ashamed.
        And you have lived sometimes out of your brokenness.
        But you are still yourself, the way God made you,
                 perfect in God’s eyes and in mine.
        The shame is not who you are.
        You are loved – and not in spite of who you are,
                 but because of who you are.”

The shame we feel, the shame that traps us, binds us,
        is inflicted by the ruthless voice of aliens,
        outsiders invading and polluting our hearts
                with lies about who we really are.
Our shame is what Isaiah means by

        “the noise of aliens,” “the song of the ruthless.”

“When the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm,
        the noise of aliens was like heat in a dry place,
you subdued the heat with the shade of clouds;
        the song of the ruthless was stilled.”

It can happen in a thousand ways.
It can happen in prayer.
It can happen at this Communion Rail.
It can happen over a cup of coffee when someone listens to us
        without judgement.
It can happen in a moment when, without any cause whatsoever,
        we spontaneously feel our connection to the life
                dancing around us.

These are all hints of grace, moments of consolation.
God steps in to still the voice of the ruthless
        and whisper to us a gentle reminder of who we are.
This is a foretaste of the home God has prepared for us.

Isaiah goes on in today’s lesson to describe our destiny,
     the home waiting at the end of our long lonely road.

     “. . . (T)he Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
     a feast of rich foods, a feast of well-aged wines . . .
     Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces,
     and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth.”

                                                                               Amen.