The Opposite of Loneliness

“You’re a man who stops and listens. If that’s not the definition of friendship, it’s close enough for now.” -- From I Cheerfully Refuse, by Leif Enger

We lived the opposite of loneliness.

These words were said by my friend, Ameena, at the end of a week-long artist residency with Orein Arts at Mount Saviour Monastery in Pine City, New York. Her words captured the beauty, joy, and camaraderie of a people gathered to rest and remember. To remember that the calling of the artist is one of urgency and necessity. To remember that such urgency is not optional but bears the weight of hope -- a hope that refuses the allure of cynicism and despair in favor of a tension-filled language that defamiliarizes the groaning we experience in the seemingly endless space between the now and not yet of kingdom-come. We remember that the work "slows us down and enables us to see things as if for the first time -- indeed to re-see them" (Abundantly More, Jeremy S. Begbie).

But remembrance often feels more like recovery. A recovery of the rhythms of work and prayer. Of the patient spaces in which to dwell and create. Of the active rest that supports the slow work of creativity.

But...recovery is communal.

The work of the artist (well, the work of being human!) can be isolating, and we must do the hard work of cultivating the kind of community that transcends common interests in favor of a purposeful vulnerability. Deborah Sokolove argues that “Perhaps beauty is a relational experience.” I think she's right. And more, our understanding of and experience of beauty is stunted when not pursued in community. If we are to imagine new creation, we cannot bear such a vision alone.

Curt Thompson writes that there is no longing deeper than the desire to be known. And we all have experienced the fear of being known, that people will see who we really are.

Unimpressive.

Not good enough.

Insecure.

Inadequate.

A failure.

A fraud.

When we isolate, we drift toward the strange comfort of these lies, untethering from the relationships that mirror our glory. To be human is to be known. It is a quiet courage that compels us toward a generative community. Our formation as people depends on being known.

Our formation as artists depends on being known.

John O'Donohue's poem "For Longing" begins:

"blessed be the longing that brought you here and quickens your soul with wonder."

We are a people of longing, and perhaps your longing has brought you "here," to a place where "the forms of your belonging — in love, creativity, and friendship — [are] equal to the grandeur and the call of your soul." The forms of your belonging are realized in the grandeur of friendship. The urgency of hope is a shared urgency, the experience of the opposite of loneliness.

"may you come to accept your longing as divine urgency. may you know the urgency with which God longs for you."