Thirty miles of smooth black interstate lie between New Braunfels and Kyle, Texas (home of the outdoor superstore Cabela's, among other things.) I luckily had the trusted companion of my Patsy Cline Definitive Collection to fill the silent spaces of my Camry. Two tracks in, a feeling began to sink into my bones until I could feel the weight of it. My sleepy eyes filled with tears, and I recognized it at once as loneliness. A bit strange, because there aren't many moments of my day when I'm not with someone else. I'm no hermit.
I wondered if maybe this was coming not out of a lack of company, but out of a growing hunger for True intimacy.
We saw a glimpse of this last night - the long anticipated LOST finale contained some of the most beautiful scenes of television I've ever witnessed. I watched in awe as each character, stuck in a mediocre existence, was awakened by the touch of real love. When face-to-face with the person who knew and loved them to the core, they were forced to realize the life they were made for and the people they were destined to become.
Priest and writer Henri Nouwen wrote "the wound of loneliness is like the Grand Canyon – a deep incision in the surface of our existence which has become an inexhaustible source of beauty and self-understanding." Perhaps if we let ourselves, every once in a while, explore the depth of that canyon, if we do not chase away the moments in the car when heaviness lays upon us, then we will really discover the heart in us created for relationship. There is a spirit in each of us that yearns to be known and be loved to the fullest measure. Yes, I think that it is only from the depth of the canyon that we can truly see the height of the mountains ahead.
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