reaching out

It is taking all my will-power to resist running out to apply for a retail job, or book some sort of long, extended trip, or move somewhere foreign...something to make myself feel busy, some action which will fill things up so I don't have to actually think about what the next step really should be. Blank space terrifies me. 

I've always loved Henry Nouwen, and I've always especially loved his book Reaching Out. The first section of the book teaches that we must learn to acknowledge and come to understand our universal loneliness.  We must discover that it is not our task to exorcise this loneliness but rather to embrace it, understand it, listen to it, and allow God to transform it into a beautiful, life-affirming, necessary solitude. If we never complete this process, we can never heal or be whole because we will just continue clinging to others and seeing situations, relationships and religion as a sort of life-preserving floaty device to keep us distracted from the achy loneliness that is being human.  Once we understand our loneliness as necessary solitude, then we can truly reach out in love, instead of groping in desperation. 

In the book Nouwen quotes Rilke's "live the question" passage, and then comments:

This (living the questions) is a very difficult task, because in our world we are constantly pulled away from our innermost self and encouraged to look for answers instead of listening to the questions.  A lonely person has no inner time nor inner rest to wait and listen.  He wants answers and wants them here and now.  But in solitude we can pay attention to our inner self.  This has nothing to do with egocentrism or unhealthy introspection because, in the words of Rilke, "what is going on in your innermost being is worthy of your whole love." In solitude we can become present to ourselves. There we can live, as Anne Morrow Lindbergh says, "like a child or a saint in the immediacy of here and now." There we can also be present to others by reaching out to them, not greedy for attention and affection but offering our own selves to help build a community of love. Solitude does not pull us away from our fellow human beings but instead makes real fellowship possible. 

Pretty cool theory, if a bit depressing at the onslaught. But I'd always hoped to be able to love these ideas abstractly. Like, oh, yes, in theory that is the way to live.  I didn't really ever envision a time in my life where I was so literally forced to live with questions and acknowledge the truth to these ideas. To confront loneliness, to learn to live with it, and to begin (hopefully) to transform it into peace and the ability to reach out.