How?

Loneliness. Lots of people are alone. There is a wistful quality to postmodernism because of it. How many have I passed with slack shoulders? How many fingers are listless on the counter now? There is an ache beyond body and space, the only ache I know which can truly be called a soul's lack. Failure to connect. No signal. Dead.

I sometimes wonder whether materialism is just a stop-gap measure. Stuff fills one's life, one's mind. I can occupy my thoughts with a new bookshelf, ipod, desk, car, DVD player, curtain color, hardwood floor, cordless can opener, whatever. I know I can; I've done it.

Such emptiness.

But everything means something, you know? Loneliness means something. So I did a search. The word "loneliness" isn't in the Bible. It just isn't. But the word "alone" is. Guess who is most often described as being "alone"?

1. God
2. Jesus
3. The Israelites, a people alone and set apart for God
4. The single Israelite who is forced to live alone outside the camp because he has become unclean.

Now, by implication we can add others. King David cried out to God many times from the void that we call loneliness. Also, to say in Scripture that God is "alone" is usually to say that he is unique. God has always been a Holy Trinity in infinite communication. But there is one human who is consistently described as being alone, and I am pierced with a strange sharp feeling whenever I think of Jesus in that state. Think of it. He went away, alone, to speak with God. He wept alone in the garden, and his cry on the cross--who that has heard of it can ever forget?

The postmoderns have got one thing right. Life is about relationships. The relationship between God and man was of such ultimate importance to God that... no, I won't say it. It's overwhelming. How could anything mean so much to someone? How could God care so much?

I went to see a movie with Mom and Charity tonight. It was all about two lonely people who had to wait a long time, years, before they found each other. People wait such a long time to find each other. Or, if they are like me, they give up. I'm a little different. I don't know how to trust people.

"You can't have a relationship if you don't trust people," I said to Mom.
"That's probably true," she replied.

So, I guess I'm missing out on the most important thing that there is or can be between people. I didn't mean to, and no one ever gave me cause. I searched my memory for a time when I did trust. I have memories from my fourth year to the present, but in all that time there have been only two people whom I trusted. One is Jesus Christ, who has come to constitute my sole reason for being.... and hoping. There is someone in this universe whom I can trust. That realization has kept me from despair on more occasions than I care to name or remember. It is the sun of my life. The other person.... is another story. I won't tell it now.

I've had endless talks with my parents, but they all end up in the same place. Something has to change. My walls have got to come down, somehow. But how? Have you ever seen a big ancient wall? I saw one in Rome that had been standing for three thousand years. Mine is like that, old as myself and made of interlaced trees with deep, deep roots. The tips of the branches are barbed and poisonous. As in the story of Sleeping Beauty, Christ cut through that forest and woke me up from my nightmares. Did the path he carved close up behind him? Christ broke the ceiling of spiked limbs and ripped open a sky above my head, and showed me heaven. Is he the only one who can fly through that hole?

I'm tired, you know? I'm so tired. I wish I could talk to someone who understands.... but isn't that the essence of loneliness? There is no one who understands. At least, no one I can speak to.

Except Jesus. You see? That is the saving grace of my life. That is what makes me hold to him with all the strength I have, little enough as it is. That is why there is gladness in my life--forsake and wander as I will, prone as my heart is to err, he won't let go.

And whenever I think of that, it seems to me that my watchman's morning has come. Or, to put it as Switchfoot does...

She's alone tonight,
With a bitter cup and,
She's undone tonight,
She's all used up,

She's been staring down the demons,
Who've been screaming she's just another so and so,
Another so and so

You are golden,
You are golden, Child

You are golden,
Don't let go,
Don't let go tonight

If you just keep hanging on, or even if you let go, the sun will catch you before you have fallen all the way, and it will turn you golden again. In that moment, you can stand in the sun laughing. In that moment, there is no such thing as loneliness, and the soul has no lack. I have had many many thousand such moments. Therefore I can say, with gratitude beyond words, that I am not alone.

I am golden tonight.