And God stepped out on space,
                                             And he looked around and said,
                                             “I’m lonely…
                                             I’ll make me a world.”
                                                         -- God’s Trombones by James Weldon Johnson
                       
Dear old and new friends,

     Forty days is a long time to be all alone in the desert. Did Nazareth’s stone mason/carpenter after thirty some years of cramped close village life taste there the acidic bitterness of loneliness? Solitary confinement today is considered the harshest punishment, just a notch above capital punishment. So why did God’s Spirit drive him into the desert for forty days when today scientists equate the health effects of loneliness to that of smoking 22 cigarettes a day?

     Modern loneliness doesn’t require retreating to a desert or being estranged from others. Paradoxically it is found in public gatherings, happy social events, Sunday church worship and hectic work sites. You can encounter it in loveless marriages, the staffs and residents of nursing homes and senior care facilities, in the homes of the elderly and infirm who live alone, and surprisingly by those with a microphone standing before large audiences. As John Lennon and Paul McCartney sang in the Beatles’ song Eleanor Rigby, “All the lonely people, where do they all come from?”

     Loneliness is the new black plague in spite of television’s endless display of us being always happy people, smiling with perfect white teeth, selling this or that—but that isn’t us! America psychologists tell us we are in the midst of widespread psychological depression. This “epidemic,” according to psychologist Dr. Martin Seligman, has gone hand in hand with the loss of psychological and spiritual guidance. There is a nostalgic longing for the wise neighbor at whose kitchen table we once could confidently unload our inner feelings. People hunger for someone who will listen to them with no personal benefit except to wish them well. Ironically, flooded with an array of hi-tech message devices, people cannot find anyone willing to genuinely listen with only his or her welfare in mind.

     Looking for a personal mission in life requiring no special education? Consider becoming a listener. Sounds simple, but it isn’t. It requires not giving advice (which we all love to do), not judging and simply the ironclad patience of listening. You can minister anywhere. When encountering anyone—stranger or friend— carefully look at her/his eyes for the dullness of loneness’s lack of joy. Then say a few words invested with sincere caring to them with the hope of rescuing them at least for a brief time of being frozen in isolation.
 
                                               A Spirituality of Solitude

     Seriously consider adding to your spiritual practices time in solitude. Turn off all your hi-tech gadgets and phone, and just be alone in silence. Self-imposed isolation is frightening. So let the Spirit “drive” you into it confident that it is a holy place. The Spirit drove Jesus into the desert for 40 days, and the same Spirit drove Buddha to a Bo Tree, there to sit alone for an extended period of intense contemplation. For both of them their solitary times ended with enlightenment, and each began to teach and minister to others. What gift is hidden in our dread of silent solitude that we try to fill up with music or worthless entertainment. Is it the same gift that Buddha and Jesus discovered? Neither spoke of what it was, but their lives loudly proclaimed it.

     Perhaps Mark Twain may have given us a hint in his observation, “Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anyone….” (And I will add…or to themselves.) Could it be if truly sufficient time spent, not counted in minutes per day but in a true solitude, one is liberated from life’ s distracting three-ring circus of frivolous triviality so that very slowly one’s moon turns its dark side towards us? Once that happens its darkness and all that is secreted in it could be lovingly embraced and converted.

     Or in their long solitude did Buddha and Jesus slowly descended down into their underworld of the Unconscious, symbolized by the dark side of the moon? We each have such a subterranean consciousness which is not some reservoir of animal drives; rather it is the unexamined reside of our earliest training and feelings about ourselves and the world. It is unexamined since as small children we weren’t old enough to make judgments of the behaviors of our parents or the influences of our home environment that were influencing us. Yet in each of us that unconscious contains the deep motives of our adult behavior and the drives that determine our conduct. So we are blessed when we attempt to confront that hidden inner consciousness that can lead to conversion, real growth and the self-assurance to become whom we were destined to be.

Dear old and new friends,

    To achieve success in any activity or sport it’s only logical you would make more progress when supported by a small group or team. Yet, illogically, this isn’t the case, at least so says psychologist K. Andrews Ericsson of Florida State University.

    He says a deliberate practice in solitude without any partner or teammate is the key to achieving transcendent skill in any area! If you desire to excel in any activity he advises that you will do best by practicing that ability alone! That last word, “alone,” is frightening to most of us Americans, and for good reasons. The prison system’s most dreaded punishment is solitary confinement! Parents used a softer form called “Time Out,” which is a punishment for disobedient children who are sent to their room to be alone in silence.

    We live in an electronic communication age where solitude seems almost impossible. Even those who live alone, don’t! Their solitary life can be filled with all-pervasive television, relentless e-mails and numerous telephone calls. Prehistorically we are communal people, yet unless we learn to create private space apart from others we risk becoming superficial. We must be courageous if we are to disconnect and “turn off” our communicating gadgets to “turn on” our inner-life and find the riches of stillness.

   Thomas Edison, inventor of the phonograph, the motion-picture camera, a battery for an electric car and the electric light bulb, had 1,093 U.S. patents in his name. Amazingly, this great inventive genius worked and lived in silence! He lost his hearing as a child through an accident and as an adult when doctors told him they could cure his deafness—he refused! He preferred dwelling in the silence of his creative laboratory in his head to hearing the noisy surrounding world.

    Even if you can hear, creating your own silent Edison laboratory takes courage to deliberately separate yourself from others. It requires discipline to silence your machines, regardless how entertaining or newsy, and to daily practice the art of silent solitude for twenty to thirty minutes. Upon being at ease spending time on your Island of Solitary Confinement, create more of them. Use the time driving to create rolling tranquility by turning off the radio and your iPhone so solutions to various problems can bubble up from deep within you.

    When next you must work on some problem go into your own Edison silent laboratory, recalling his well-known words, “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”

The previous Haystack reflection dealt with television sets running throughout the day into the night while not being watched. This phenomenon may be explained by the fact that the endless background noise from TV voices and sounds gives comfort to the lonely! In our society the number daily increases of those suffering from loneliness, yet being alone is a natural experience in this life. Sadly, so many were not instructed as children in the art of how to spend time alone.

Aloneness, when balanced with some companionship, provides the necessary solitude for all creativity, as well as growth for our souls. Regrettably, we judge solitude as something bad since the most dreaded punishment society can inflict is solitary confinement! Yet in spite of this reality more people live alone today than ever before. A few freely choose this as a lifestyle, while for others it is caused by a spouse’s death, divorce or sadly the cards they’ve been dealt in this life. Life isn’t a game of chance but of choices—so choose to volunteer, join a book club, bridge group or some participation where one can feel community. Such choices though don’t always help those living that modern nightmare of feeling painfully alone even while surrounded by people. The good news is someone has created a solution to the agony of aloneness—the Lightmate.

This creation of Francesca Lanzavecchia and her husband is a human-body-sized soft pillow similar to a white cloud. When hugged it emits a gentle glow and delicate heat. Francesca, an Italian student, said upon her arrival in Holland as part of a student design project that she “felt very little and tiny and lonely.” To alleviate this condition she created the first prototype of the Lightmate. After her return to Italy and marriage, she and her husband began to produce this life-size comforting pillow. Its success Francesca says is because, “We can have an empathic relationship only with things that resemble us.” Her life-size huggable pillow companions are available only by special order at around $3,500 each.

All loners seriously should ponder and act upon these words of divine wisdom first spoken in the Garden of Eden: “It is not good for one to be alone.”