Nothing can remove the loneliness that we all have. All of us. It is the human condition.

No one can alter that, A wife or husband, an affair, a community or commune.

No thing either. Money, power, position and status. Those actually accentuate the lonely.

I have used many excuses for my ways of isolation, never realizing it is universal and excuses are what we think we need for our behaviors. It makes us feel justified to blame others for it.

I felt such lonliness when I was playing fiddle for a well known country western band. We did a lot of Bob Wills songs and my favorite one was “Faded Love” the line of ‘I still miss someone’ wept off my D string and hung in the air. Sometimes I wondered why it was so tender to me and others.

Loneliness, It’s not a bad thing at all. If we would only stop blaming ourselves and others for it.

Henri Nouwn states this condition in a startling and almost unbelievable way. The deep chasm within all of us is actually a blessing.

As adults, young or old, we ache to go back to the womb, where a soothing presence coming upon us satisfies. From birth we cry and as a baby we cry. We are lonely, no longer totally embraced by love. It never ceases.

“Such a baby!” “Stop crying or I’ll make it worse” “What’s the matter with you?” Those things really helped a lot, didn’t they.

I was amazed to feel hunger when I first came into the very large room of my current church. I had entered with a good friend, high up on a landing above the room to be surreptitious and wait to pray way down below after service. Stepping onto that platform I started to weep. Instantly. I was overcome, astonished with the knowledge it was hunger that I felt. I asked our Lord. “What is this! Is this hunger, from me, or is it them?” His answer was “Yes”

It was the combined spirit longing of almost two thousand people that overwhelmed me with resonance in my own heart. That was the beginning of my quest for answers to His answer of Yes.

It was indeed, a blessing to be lonely and then realize my drugs, affairs, gang involvements, military comrades and even jail time in Spain with other sympathetic prisoners and guards was not enough to sooth my hunger. Even the beautiful love of my wife and children was not enough. I was lonely, always was. Just like you and everyone else.

Truth of the only love and embrace that would satisfy me came when I heard and saw the lover of me. All of me. Past wounding and wounding others. The only cure. Jesus. The best. Jack Gator