“He took him aside by himself, away from the crowd….”(Mark 7:32-37)

“He took him aside by himself, away from the crowd…” (7:33)

It is a well-known phenomenon that, as soon as we are surrounded by people and activity, we have the tendency to forget about ourselves.  In the worst case we forget what we came to do or wanted to say.  Without interruption the noisy world chatters into us, wants our attention and, in the end, makes us forget why we actually came to the earth. That phenomenon is as old as the world; however, in our time that world is so noisy that everything and everyone risks being drowned out by it.

Formerly, life was still ordered, more or less, according to the principle of “pray and work,” ora et labora.  Now there is nothing left that imposes the duty on us to turn away from the world at set times and go into our inner room.  But there is something else that has taken its place, something that in former times was not yet so obviously present.  That is loneliness.

Even when we are in the midst of a crowd, surrounded by distraction and diversion, we may experience a profound loneliness that throws us back onto ourselves.  Only, we often have the tendency to escape from such loneliness and drown it out.  We throw ourselves into the rush of things, into the whirl of life.  And then comes usually the hangover, the realization that we are even lonelier than before.

We can also choose a different way.  When we succeed in staying in the loneliness, a conversation may arise from it, a conversation with ourselves.  Then what was one is turned into two.  This is what Dag Hammarskjōld meant when he wrote in his diary: “Lonely. But loneliness can also be communion.” *

Even more than a conversation with ourselves, loneliness may become communion.  For Christ wants to be alone with us, away from the crowd, to open our ears to His voice.

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, September 1, 2024

* Dag Hammarskjōld, Markings.