April 24, 2024

My favorite writer about the Christian faith, the poet and teacher Christian Wiman, spoke at the Festival of Faith & Writing conference I recently attended. He spent some time in his talk on the idea of human loneliness or human aloneness. Wiman asked the question, “Is our loneliness a shadow of God’s loneliness?” What a question. I never thought of God as experiencing loneliness. Sure, God as Jesus Christ, takes time to go off alone and pray, but that is different, I think, than being lonely.

It makes sense that God, becoming fully human, would know human loneliness, but what might divine loneliness feel like? Any different from my own human loneliness? (Perhaps it is a lonely place sitting on the heavenly throne by oneself.) Wiman went on to say, “Loneliness is one of the ways we meet and know God.” This is a lovely affirmation of a state of being human we all share; one that makes me feel less alone in my aloneness.

Rev. Eric