June 10, 2016 – Simon's still stanza

Another Side of Loneliness or ‘On Living Life to the Full’

Paul Murray, who is a poet, scholar of Christian Spirituality and a Dominican Friar, writes in his book, Scars: Essays, Poems and Meditations on Affliction (Bloomsbury: 2014), on both the gift of our uniqueness and the loneliness that can be felt along with it. Part of our lives are unique to us alone and others cannot perceive, think and feel exactly the same way that we each do. By the way, I’m fine at the moment. I just recognise having had this experience before and wondered if others may identify with this in some way.

‘On Living Life to the Full’

When you heart is empty

And your hands are empty

You can take into your hands

The gift of the present

You can experience in your heart

The moment in its fullness.

***

And this you will know,

Though perhaps you may not yet

Understand it,

And this you will know:

That nothing

Of all you have longed for

Or have sought to hold fast

Can relieve you of your thirst,

Your loneliness,

Until you learn

To take in your hands

And raise to your lips

This cup of solitude

This chalice of the void

And drain it to the dregs.

(All rights to Paul Murray, OP and Bloomsbury Press 2014)

Interesting that I had read this, as, in recent times, the author Hannah Kent tweeted on her @HannahFKent account “My favourite new word: Waldeinsamkeit (German, noun). The feeling of being alone in the woods, an easy solitude, connectedness to nature.”

I partly covered what Murray is talking about in a closing section to one of my previous posts, “The Great Alone”

How do we hold them,

Their damp, dark spirits,

In the fog,

When they realise

That we each

have an alone

that is unique to ourself,

and no other human

can truly dwell

with us

in that beautiful