Encountering Loneliness on the Journey Toward Authentic Community

Photo by Dan Gribbin on Unsplash

As our facilitation team has played its part in journeying with three 2HC cohorts, I have been struck by the consistency with which the poignant words of one participant have captured the sentiments of many as they’ve engaged the 2HC theme of “Authentic Spiritual Community.”

“I am bereft of community,” this individual said. So many others feel the same.

While sitting with the question of why this is the case over the past couple of years, a theory of the experiences of loneliness we encounter on the journey toward authentic community began to take shape in my mind. Eventually it found expression on the pages of my journal in the following form.

• The loneliness of isolation. This occurs when we truly are alone, that is, not around others with enough frequency. Everyone is too busy, too hurried, too occupied to say yes to the invitation to spend time together. We feel nostalgia for the good ol’ days when it was easy to spend time with friends, misconceiving that times were categorically different back then. In reality, it was more about that unique season of life we call childhood and adolescence. That season offered us the twin gifts of comparatively low levels of responsibility and high levels of free time. But now those gifts are mostly gone, and we feel isolated and lonely.

  • The misconception that arises at this stage is that my loneliness would be solved if I could just be around people more often. In missionary life, this takes the form of, “If only I had teammates, I wouldn’t be lonely.” In the desire for a spousal relationship, it takes the form of, “If only I was married, I wouldn’t be lonely.”

• The loneliness of being around others and finding it not only unsatisfying, but wounding. This occurs when we, by hook or by crook, are able to spend more time with others (we are no longer dominated by isolation), but — although we usually don’t have the language to name it yet — we find our personas and shadow compulsions slamming into the personas and shadow compulsions of others. Neither we nor they have done our interior work yet. We only have our false selves to offer in relationship. We only have our undiagnosed shadow compulsions and areas of unfreedom. And so it is with those we are interacting with. Here, not only does a new, even more unsettling type of loneliness begin to settle in, but our experience of “community” is largely marked by our wounding others and being wounded by them. It is inauthentic self colliding with inauthentic self, and the result is pain, not fulfilling community.

• The misconception that arises at this stage is that my loneliness would be solved if I could just be around a different set of people that I click with better. In missionary life, this takes the form of, “If only I had different teammates, I wouldn’t be lonely.” In marriage, it takes the form of, “If only I could be married to someone else, I wouldn’t be lonely.”

• The loneliness of an emerging authentic self living in a world of inauthentic selves. This occurs when by some surprising grace, we are led to an interior journey. We engage in the painstaking process of interior work, shining a spotlight on and honorably discharging our personas, and unpacking and integrating our shadows. Increasingly, we have our true/authentic/integrated selves to offer others. But the vast majority of those around us haven’t yet taken such journeys. We offer our true selves and they are disregarded or even trampled upon (“Don’t throw your pearls to pigs! They will trample the pearls, then turn and attack you” Mat 7:6). We try to draw the true selves out of others, and they meet our attempts with resistance, even hostility. Here a third and increasingly painful loneliness presents itself, a loneliness whose pain is accentuated by holy longing for true self to true self communion.

• This stage is not accompanied by misconception as much as by the profound experience of deep calling out to deep. The infinity in one soul calling out to the infinity in other souls. The authentic self drenched in unspeakable desire for interactions with other authentic selves.

• Authentic (Spiritual) Community. Spiritual is in brackets because it can be implied: any experience of true, authentic community is innately spiritual. When one person who has done interior work and has an emerging true self to offer comes into contact with another who has done the same, sparkling fireworks ensue. An experience of authentic community is realized, regardless of the number of people involved. For many, just a few of these relationships are enough, just a few are even available, but they are enough to carry us through our daily ministry to a world populated mostly by false selves. It is ours to be fed by the few true self to true self relationships we have. Patiently we set out breadcrumbs for the true selves of others, as much as we are able, is appropriate, and is consented to.

• A final word on a fourth type of loneliness baked into the human experience: Existential Loneliness. Existential loneliness is a phenomenon each soul must bear in its own way. This speaks toward the fact that, in the end, no one really knows what it is like to be you except for you—and even your apprehension of self is wildly incomplete, shot through with mystery. Others can journey with you, but no one can journey for you. No one can truly know what it’s like to be in your particular skin, to experience existence in your particular way. You are, in this sense, entirely alone in this world, and when this sensation visits us, we experience an inevitable—dare I say sacred—existential loneliness.

  Whether or not we will taste this type of loneliness is not the question; it is baked into the human experience. The question is simply—and paradoxically—will I experience existential loneliness with others or alone? If we share our existential loneliness with others, and they with us, and if we can hold these experiences with one another, we can receive the gift of being together in our loneliness.

Reflection

Andrew listed several “if only …” statements that convey desires for authentic community.
What is the “if only …” you hear yourself say?

You may choose to talk with God about this. Tell God what you think God needs to know about it.
Ask God what God thinks you need to know about it.

Think of one person you can share this with.