CONQUERING LONELINESS

To gain a further understanding of the meditation that follows, a reading of the suggested scriptures will be most helpful. The Editorial Notes at the end of the post may also prove to be beneficial.
Suggested Scripture Readings: 2 Corinthians 4:7 – 18;
Matthew 4: 18 – 22.

There is something about Percy Bysshe Shelly’s “Ode To The West Wind” that captures the human phenomenon of loneliness. Like the West Wind, in Shelly’s poem, which arrives with a little advanced warning and immediately starts its destructive transformation of summer’s stunning creations, so also, does loneliness transform the landscape of a person’s dream life.

“O wild west wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,” (1)

How difficult it is to look at what was once a prime source of delight, and see in its place a gaunt emptiness. What does one do when the familiar is gone, and the present and the future tumble into the void of what used to be? I don’t know of anything that can limit the ascension of the soul like the experience of loneliness.
Literature is abundant in the moving incidents of loneliness it provides. Ernest Hemmingway’s ” Old Man And The Sea” is one engaging example.” It is a superbly told, tragic story of an old Cuban fisherman, Santiago, in the Gulf stream, and the giant Marlin he kills and loses. The old man becomes the pathetic victim of a community’s superstition when for eighty-four days he returns to shore empty-handed He is deemed to be jinxed. There is a young lad who is the beloved companion of the fisherman, and who is, because of this judgment disallowed to continue as the old man’s fishing partner. The appearance of the old man, all alone, navigating his boat through the grey mist of the early dawn, is heart-wrenching. His same pathetic saga drags on, one dreary day after another. And then one afternoon, while he was further from port than ever, Fortuna, the Greek goddess of fortune and the personification of luck, smiled upon him. He hooked the coveted, but elusive prize Marlin. It might have been an occasion for a community celebration if only, some others from the community were on site with their helping hands! But the old man was alone, all alone! One tired old man, doing battle with a monster of the sea. With his hands bruised and bleeding the exhausted fisherman wins the final battle. Lashing the marlin to the gunwales of his boat he begins the slow trek homeward. His hard-won victory is; however, a tragedy camouflaged in the garb of success. In an instant, a school of ferocious sharks rise from the depth of the sea and begin their unrelenting attack upon the old man’s treasure. In spite of his valiant effort to fight one more exhausting battle, the old man suffers a crushing defeat. The skeleton of his prize still lashed to his boat; he docks the craft. With leaden steps, the old man staggers up the hill, his bruised and bleeding hands clinging to the wooden oars. Alone! Still all alone, he reaches his little shack, enters and closes the door behind him.
“ the boy came to the old man’s shack as he had come
each morning. The boy saw that the old man was breathing and then
he saw the old man’s hands, and
he started to cry. He went out very quietly to go to
bring him some coffee and all the way down
the road he was crying.” (2)
There is loneliness, stark and unyielding, in spite of a human effort to conquer it.
I summon you now to another story with some similar features, yet, it provides for an entirely different outcome.
The story unfolds in the New Testament as a part of the narrative of Jesus ‘ calling His first disciples. “Jesus saw two brothers, James, son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with Zebedee, their father, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed Him” ( Matt 421 – 22)
The picture of Zebedee sitting in the company of his two fishing companions, and more striking, his sons, mending nets he most likely will never use again, is the first ingredient in a developing heartache! As a Newfoundlander who lived by the sea, I have felt, again and again, the depth that such incidents can fathom in a man’s soul. The sons of Zebedee hold the old man’s life in their hands, to a far higher degree than they ever realized. In the village by the sea, Zebedee might well qualify to be the most favored fisherman around. To have two sons to carry on the business, and not only so, but their willingness to give their father a meaningful role to play, in the work he loves, speak eloquently to human effort to stay the onslaught of loneliness. Then, as swift as the onrush of the autumn west wind, the old man’s dreams are in abeyance.
It is a natural phenomenon for which each must endeavor to understand and prepare. It is natural for the day to arrive when the children will ‘flee the nest “, nor is it anyone’s fault that one day you may find yourself sitting alone on the shore. But, here is where the story becomes fundamentally different and engagingly beautiful in contrast to what has gone before. It is a person’s spiritual prowess that conquers all loneliness and equips the soul with eagles wings to soar.

St. Paul with profound insight addresses this essential issue. “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” ( 2 Corinthians 4: 16 – 18)
From his seat in the boat alongside his sons that day Zebedee looked up, and he saw two things that would disarm loneliness forever. In the first instance, he saw the face of Jesus! It is true, that to see what Zebedee sees with the natural eye, we must look with eyes of faith. Be assured that Jesus did not see only the possibilities within the lives of his two sons without empathizing with, and taking steps to address Zebedee’s critical need to deal with his loneliness. It is utterly unthinkable that Jesus would call James and John, and commission them to respond to the physical demands of the waiting crowds while leaving Zebedee, their father, to fight loneliness, entirely on his own!

” I’ve wrestled on towards heaven,
‘Gainst storm and wind and tide;
Now, like a weary traveler
That leaneth on his guide,
Amid the shades of evening,
While sinks life’s lingering sand,
I hail the glory dawning
From Emmanuel’s Land.” (3)

But there is one thing more that becomes a most effective antidote for Zebedee’s loneliness, and, please God it will be ours too. To comprehend, in some small way at least, the scope of Christ’s mission to affect the entire world. It is to rid the world as a whole of its crippling loneliness and to make it common knowledge that no one is ever left alone. Zebedee watches three men heading out together towards the sunrise, and two of them are his sons.

All that remains for us is just the quiet whisper of the sea breeze, and an old man sitting alone in his boat, but in that man’s soul, there is the sound of a thousand silver trumpets and a choir singing: Hallelujah! The Lord God Omnipotent Reigneth! And He shall reign forever and forever! Amen.

PRAYER TO FOLLOW THIS MEDITATION

O Spirit of Gentleness, Who tends to the falling sparrow in its flight,
Look upon me when I crave the wings of an eagle to lift me above my loneliness and pain. But I do not ask to escape from the milieu of loneliness and depression if my brothers and sisters feel left to fight their way through it alone. Better it will be if I find myself trusting solely in the strength of Your Spirit so that You and I will work together to banish from this world everything that perpetuates loneliness and heartache. It is not wings I need if I use them to fly away from earth’s shadows. It is arms, Your loving arms, that will hold me firmly when the fearful winds of change sweep away everything that reminds me of You. That way I will provide one more foothold here on earth for You to conquer the loneliness that spreads here like a destructive west wind in autumn. I pray that more people will seek the fortress of Your protecting arms so that in time the whole round earth will rejoice in the togetherness known in Eden, where You walked with your Children and provided constant companionship with them. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, we make this prayer. Amen

Hymn: Jesus, You Have Come To The Lakeshore

https://youtu.be/ovSgc-iLTCo

EDITORIAL NOTES

Here and throughout the text of this meditation, the quotations from the Holy Bible are from the New International Translation, Unless otherwise noted in the text.

1. Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ode To The West Wind
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45134/ode-to-the-west- wind.

2.Ernest Hemmingway.The Old Man and the Sea
https://www.amazon.ca/Old-Man-Sea-Ernest-
Hemingway/dp/0684830493
3. Samuel Rutherford. The Sands of Time are Sinking. https://hymnary.org/text/the_sands_of_time_are_sinking
4. Photo: Leading Tickles, Newfoundland.
” No More Sea”