On Cracks - Bishop Erik Varden
What is the sound of loneliness and what is its colour?
Good question. I’d say the colour of loneliness is grey and its sound is indefinable — just a resonance, an echo coming from another place.
I was thinking about shades, semitones – there can be different tones of loneliness, different intensities.
A useful feature of English is its varied vocabulary in this respect. You can speak about solitude, which does not have a negative meaning. Solitude is a choice; it can be uplifting. You can speak about aloneness, more neutral, neither good nor bad. It carries no difficult emotional charge. Then there’s loneliness, which has a distinctly negative connotation and is associated with isolation, abandonment. While one can long for solitude, one cannot truly yearn for loneliness. Much can probably be learnt about the English from their subtle differentiation in the vocabulary of loneliness!
Using the richness of the English language, I would like to clarify that we are going to talk about that difficult variety – loneliness. We do not choose it, we do not wish for it. It is an unwanted guest in our lives. Can it still be useful and constructive?
Good can come from everything. Such an attitude is, of course, related to a specific Christian view of reality. Scripture shows that even from death, sin, or betrayal, good things can come. I think about people who have spent time in forced isolation. When someone is in such isolation, they experience forced loneliness. This was the case of Brian Keenan, who in his book An Evil Cradling tells the story of his kidnapping and forced isolation in the 90s. He talks about the suffering of loneliness. At the same time he found that it carved out new depths within him. In retrospect, he sees that the experience was enriching. This enrichment, however, comes not from loneliness itself, but from the proper way — the wise, skilful way — of coping with it. Loneliness can also be destructive and can even lead to madness. This is why totalitarian regimes always have eager recourse to it and like to use it.
So suffering caused by loneliness does not in itself make us better or ennoble us, but we can derive meaning from it?
Yes, we can derive meaning from such experience.
Can we do it ourselves? I am wondering how it is possible. The title of your book Shattering of Loneliness, may suggest a more forceful approach?
Several friends had long discussions about which word would be best in the Polish translation. The image that accompanied me while creating the English title was of a glass dome, the kind you use to cover cheese. I imagined a man standing under such a dome. At some point, for some reason – whether due to some kind of tension within the glass structure itself, or due to an accurate blow with a stone – cracks appear on the dome. And later, these cracks, these glass wounds, spread, extending across the entire surface. At first, the shape of the dome is maintained, but the necessary internal strength is no longer there. As a result, suddenly the whole thing falls apart. One can breathe at last. This is the image of shattering of loneliness.
Does it mean that a person trapped in loneliness should actively work to escape it? It is said that in a crisis, it is better not to make any decisions, that it is not a good time for action.
I think the most important thing in this context is to acknowledge loneliness. Often we are reluctant to admit – both to ourselves and even more so to others – that we are lonely. This resistance is related to the fact that we perceive loneliness as a failure. It is particularly difficult in times when success in life is perversely measured by the number of virtual friendships. People spend time taking photos of everything – what they eat, the beautiful things they buy or want to buy – and in this way put much effort into creating an image of themselves as constantly enterprising, always connected to others. In this way the pain of loneliness is suppressed and hidden under images of apparent closeness. I think it is important to develop and hone skills — emotional, intellectual, communicational skills — that let us sit in a chair and say, ‘I am lonely’. Then it becomes clear that what we perceived as failure can actually be liberating. For when I acknowledge my loneliness, I can also ask myself, ‘Why am I lonely? What can I do to overcome this loneliness?’ In this way, I assume initiative, I have a chance to regain agency.
So we take the initiative, throw something at the dome and break it? Could honesty with ourselves be such a stone?
Yes, the first and decisive step is to cast the stone of honesty, as we have already talked about. Then we can find stones of agency and take positive action.
To face the truth about one’s own loneliness requires courage and maturity. At the same time, loneliness forces us to be courageous, and this leads us to maturity.
The question is: Am I able to use the word ‘I’ within my glass dome? Can I say, ‘I am here. This is my loneliness. This is my suffering, and I can face it.’ Or do I still claim that others brought me to this state, that others are to blame, that ‘they’ did this to me. Until I say the word ‘I’, I will not be able to move forward. The glass dome will remain intact.
Self-awareness is therefore important. But is awareness of the other equally important? We have evoked a virtual reality in which the drama of loneliness unfolds in successive acts: we reach for ChatGPT, with which we enter into relationships (sic!). True liberation from loneliness involves an encounter, it must relate to a person. No substitute will suffice – we need a human being.
This is very important. This is what my book Chastity: Reconciliation of the Senses is about. I consciously structured the narrative so that the last chapter would be about seeing. It is crucial to look, to see clearly. The opposite of chastity may be loneliness, separation from others. Although loneliness can be painful, it can also be pacifying and provide a sense of security. I may complain about my loneliness, but at least I am left undisturbed in it; no one is a threat to me. But when I meet another person, when I go out to meet the other, I also meet his or her gaze – I see someone and that person sees me! Then there is risk: I am visible, uncovered, I can be exposed. Loneliness protects me from such exposure. In that sense, it can seem comfortable, even desirable.
This is the paradox of our times: we desperately want to be seen and yet we hide behind a version of ourselves we have created.
And we want to see others; we want to peek into their lives through their windows.
We look inquisitively, fragmentarily, not wanting to really see the other person’s face.
Yes, we have created a culture of voyeurism.
At the same time, there is a cruel type of loneliness — we create the illusion of closeness and familiarity, but in reality, we isolate ourselves even further.
I would say it is the saddest kind of loneliness. And yet, we hold the key that allows us to escape it. The stones that can shatter the glass dome are in our hands.
We observe various struggles with loneliness; we share many experiences. What is your personal experience? What sort of loneliness has there been in the life of Erik Varden, a Trappist, then a bishop.
Like many others, I went through a period during my adolescence when I felt very lonely. People sometimes speak with irony or even contempt about Weltschmerz, the pain of existence experienced during adolescence. It always leaves me a little peeved. For this is a real dimension of teenage experience: the feeling that the pain of the world, the pain of existence, is somehow massed within me, within my body. Of course, it is not strictly speaking true. Nevertheless, this adolescent experience is real and demands recognition and respect.
The pain of existence, which is a developmental experience.
Yes, but there is always a risk of getting stuck in such a state. It can become a trap.
Adolescent Erik didn’t get stuck?
Well, I was very lucky because I had friends, I read books, listened to music. I could find echoes of what I was experiencing. Thanks to that, I was no longer alone.
At what stage of this experience did faith appear?
I was about fifteen years old. Until that moment, I assumed that the Christian faith was just a collection of superficial, stupid answers to unreal questions. Then I began to discover that, in fact, this is not the case at all, that the Christian tradition provides deep, insightful, beautiful answers to fundamental questions. It occurred to me that within these answers, the Church gives us the courage to ask new questions which, without the experience of tradition, continuity, and community, might seem too difficult or too painful.
And these questions, these answers led you to the Trappist Order?
Yes, I found great authenticity in monastic life. Every moment of the day, whether you are singing in church or milking cows on the farm, can be a search for truth. This attracted me. In the monastery, I discovered an extraordinary intellectual and spiritual heritage and I loved it. I was glad to be part of creation a community with good, faithful, kind brethren.
A community of faith. Faith itself is a relationship. One might provocatively ask, can a believer be lonely?
I think such a question is justified, and the answer is ‘no’. However, a person of faith can still feel lonely. Loneliness is a subjective feeling. It is worth noting that feelings of loneliness can be a useful warning sign. When this sense appears, the familiar feeling that I am lonely, it tells me that I am withdrawing into myself, entering again into the glass dome, hiding under it as if I were cheese.
This image of cheese under the glass dome will stay with me.
To complete the image, imagine the smell!
A strong and evocative addition! Isolation protects against contact, but not against corruption or decay. Loneliness, therefore, is a warning sign. Properly interpreted, it leads to conversion.
The experience of helplessness can work this way. I can throw stones at a glass dome and cry, ‘Lord, have mercy on me!’
Humility, humiliation that leads to God.
Absolutely. And I expand on the theme when writing about loneliness. Humility is related to humus. Humus is the soil, the ground, the ground level. So, it is about being at ground level. I must face the collapse of my pride, the collapse of my illusion that I can rise on my own. There is a chance I will discover what grace and mercy mean. I have a chance to discover what salvation is.
When we talk about a believer who cannot be alone, I recall a story of a certain man. Being in a difficult situation, he said he felt like a stray dog. And then he heard the words that stayed with him forever and saved him in many situations: ‘No, you are created and redeemed by the Lord.’ Man is always the Lord’s.
This is true. What is important is that he decides to admit this, to see it, to accept it. And let’s remember that God is a dangerous reality.
‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God…’
Yes, this God whom I call upon as Comforter and Helper may turn out to be a God who makes as well demands. Maybe I do not want these demands! That is why I prefer to keep Him at a distance. Just as we spoke about forming relationships with real people, not virtual reality, we speak now about an encounter with the living, true God.
And we can create our own ‘Lord God,’ mould him from our imaginations. Life with such a god can be much easier, although ultimately tragic, because false.
And I will find no great comfort in a god I created for myself. The Israelites discovered this after they spent some time dancing around the golden calf. Sooner or later, the experience of worshipping our idols teaches us the same thing.
This risk is inevitable – escaping loneliness means entertaining an authentic encounter with the true God and reaching out to a true man. Can one prepare for this?
We mentioned earlier the challenge of admitting loneliness. We move forward towards the next stage: preparations for the encounter. I must ask myself: Am I ready for the encounter? Or do I prefer a chatbot I can programme to support me, encourage me and assure me everything is fine? Perhaps at some level it is more comfortable to stay with this thing than to risk a friendship with someone who might come and say, ‘You can’t go on like this!’ My preparation will begin with the question: Do I really want my loneliness to be shattered? This reminds us of the question Jesus asks in the Gospel, ‘Do you want to be healed?’ We could describe this stage as an internal, subjective preparation. There is a further preparation that is realised ‘outwardly’. In this sense it is objective. It is about engaging, about entering the reality of other people. It can be performed in a safe way by, say, reading books, engaging with poetry, or watching films. These are simple exercises in compassion, in developing empathy, or simply in showing interest for another person. But it is necessary to meet real people who stand before us, to see them, talk to them. I do not mean that we must immediately start to talk about deep issues. It can be just a look in the eye, a smile, a simple way of saying, ‘I am here and you are here. That’s good.’
I think of the poem Loneliness by Rainer Maria Rilke. I would like to quote in its entirety:
Being apart and lonely is like rain.
It climbs toward evening from the ocean plains;
from flat places, rolling and remote, it climbs
to heaven, which is its old abode.
And only when leaving heaven drops upon the city.
It rains down on us in those twittering
hours when the streets turn their faces to the dawn,
and when two bodies who have found nothing,
dissapointed and depressed, roll over;
and when two people who despise each other
have to sleep together in one bed –
that is when loneliness receives the rivers…
There is a closeness that feels like an abyss of emptiness – a person is physically close and still very distant. Loneliness ‘drops upon the city’, ‘it rains down on us’, and ‘receives the rivers’. Is this an inevitable human experience?
When I was at school, I had a good history teacher. When we wrote essays, he never allowed us to use the word ‘inevitable’. If you did, the word was crossed out or underlined in red. He instilled in all of us that nothing is inevitable. I think this is true in the context of history, but also regarding human experience. Therefore, I’d hesitate to say that everyone ‘must’ go through the experience of loneliness. At the same time, based on years of empirical observation, I’d say that most people do go through it. However, the experience of loneliness can become a place out of which community is born, closeness is built. Even when two people — as in Rilke’s poem, ‘who despise each other, must sleep together’ — experience loneliness in the space of a shared bed, this doesn’t have to be the ultimate situation. We are created to build relationships; we are programmed for it.
We do not so much have relationships; we are relationships. How can we not be in relationship with others, with God?
We can be isolated from others. But it is impossible to flourish while we are cut off from the others. In my book on chastity, I recall the story of a monk who had a vision of hell: it is a place where people are chained back-to-back. They can never get rid of each other, yet never see one another. The Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland captured this state in his monumental relief Hell, which is a vision of loneliness, not as physical separation, but as a state of being among others without any true connection.
But there is an escape from the hell of loneliness – Jesus Christ. The mystery of the incarnation is God’s radical response to human confusion, to our loneliness.
Logically, the story of what it is to be human begins at a different point: man was made to live in communion, in the fundamental complementary of ‘me’ and ‘you’. This communion is symbolised in the image of man and woman, incomplete without each other. Loneliness comes later. It is a consequence and wound of sin. The Biblical account indicates that the dissatisfaction Adam felt before Eve was created was not strictly speaking loneliness, for it was marked by anticipation. He asks, ‘Where is my companion?’ Only when sin enters the picture is he separated from God, and from others. He hides, isolates himself. Emmanuel, ‘God with us’, speaks to this lost man as ‘God with me‘, within my loneliness.
Wherever the wound of sin appears, God pours out the grace of his closeness. In my thoughts I return to the image of the dome, the broken glass. The blessed crack from which it all begins.
And as someone once said: ‘Blessed are the cracked, for they shall let the light in.’