'old Friends'

'As hard as it is to believe that the dry desolate desert can yield endless varieties of flowers, it is equally hard to imagine that our loneliness is hiding unknown beauty. The movement from loneliness to solitude, however, is the beginning of any spiritual life because it is a movement from the restless senses to the restful Spirit, from the outward-reaching cravings to the inward-reaching search, from the fearful clinging to the fearless play.' (Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out)

i first read these words at a formative time in my life decades ago, and they resonated almost immediately and deeply within me. They were both a powerful description of what my innermost Spirit and Self already knew and what my mind and heart were desiring without having words to articulate it.

i came across them again this morning, and discovered that same underlying resonance, but in a more nuanced and multi-dimensional way. It's not like solitude grows something within us that's overwhelmingly amazing enough to overpower and eliminate loneliness. i've been learning over many years that perhaps it's more like living with depression.

You're never fully 'healed' or 'cured' of depression. But as you explore, acknowledge and embrace it more and more as a unique part of your journey and Self - as it gradually becomes integrated into your life - you have chances to discover hidden Gifts that it helps to uncover within you (like deeper empathy and the ability to sit with others in deep pain, for example). You still have times when you experience loneliness and the grief that often accompanies it (like i awakened with this morning). But as you learn to sit with it and allow it simply to be rather than denying it or running from it, you can slowly grow into the realization that this 'desert' of suffering within you contains seeds of comfort and Hope (some of which take root and grow into expressions of new Life in Love).

In other words, our sadness can actually be revealed as a source of our salvation.

Or like Nouwen said elsewhere (echoing the words of the ancient prophet Isaiah, and the life of the ancient rabbi Jesus), our wounds can become a source of healing for our Selves and others and our world.

Or as my Beloved favourite songwriter Bruce Cockburn once wrote (echoing another brilliant musical poet, Paul Simon)...

Sometimes the Road leads through dark places

Sometimes the darkness is your friend

So for all of us who've entered into this day with that familiar ache of disconnection and longing...may we be reminded that while 'the waiting is the hardest part' (thanks, TP), there are Gifts of Wonder that can emerge our of our waiting...including the astonishing Revelation that the Darkness we wish to flee might actually be one of the 'old Friends' we've looking and longing for all along.

#ThoughtfulThursdays #DesertRockFacesCanRevealSmilingJoyfulFaces #BarrennessCanUnveilBelovedness