Helped Are the Lonely

Background: This month at Christ Church Easton, we are offering Blue December services on Wednesday evenings leading up to Christmas. These services recognize that people have a difficult time leading up to Christmas for any number of reasons–loneliness, grief, depression, anxiety, or just feeling out of step and out of place in a commercially-consumed culture. These services include lighting of candles, prayers, quiet music and singing, Scripture readings and reflections, some silence, Communion with previously sanctified elements (often called a Deacon’s Mass), and they are for are for anyone going through something this time of year who might want to come together for a quiet worship service in the evening in the middle of the week, and have some fellowship and discussion after. Our hope is that people will feel God’s presence and love and experience the company, care, and fellowship of other people.

The Gospel reading for the service on December 4 was Matthew 5:1-12, often called the Beatitudes from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount.

“Helped Are the Lonely”

The cards are stacked against us if we are going through a hard time in December. It’s getting colder, it’s basically dark after lunch, Christmas movies and music are streaming 24-7, and we feel like we are supposed to act like we are happy, even when we are the farthest thing from it.

States of being that include loneliness, grief, depression, and anxiety are all connected, we can move back and forth between them. And I say states of being because these aren’t things we can just change our mind about and decide, “I am not going to be lonely or sad,” “I am not going to grieve anymore,” or “I am tired of being depressed.”

But we can reach out. We can show up. We can give ourselves permission, allow ourselves to be low or hurting, or questioning. It may be counter to what we see when we look around this time of year, but it’s honest. Let’s start where we actually are.

How’s it going? Fine. How are you doing? Good. Granted, when someone asks us that when we run into them at the grocery store, that may not be the time and place to bare our souls. But we need to have some place we can do that.

Different people have different ways of coping with life. I don’t know where I would be without distance running and reading, two things that have helped me keep going through some of my darkest times. Reading, in part, because I find people who are describing the same thing I am feeling—someone who helps me give words to something I feel but can’t describe.

There is a poet named David Whyte. In his book “Consolations,” he talks about loneliness.

“Loneliness can be a prison, a place from which we look out at a world we cannot inhabit; loneliness can be a bodily ache and a penance, but loneliness fully inhabited also becomes a voice that asks and calls for that great unknown someone or something we want to call our own.”

One of the questions that led me to searching and to the journey I am on now was wondering in my bones and in my soul, “am I really and ultimately alone—are we only ever truly alone in the Universe?” It’s a question I came back to often enough, and one of the times that it had legs and kicked me in the gut was when my marriage was ending. I knew that even together, I felt alone, I knew that even among friends, I felt alone, like no one was out there, or really understood who I was.

But I wanted there to be. The fact that I didn’t want to be and feel alone, sent me both inside myself and out into the world.

This is David Whyte again:

“Loneliness is the very state that births the courage to continue calling, and when fully lived can undergo its own beautiful reversal.

“Loneliness is the place from which we pay real attention to voices other than our own; being alone allows us to find the healing power.”


Lonely human beings are lonely because we are made to belong. Feeling alone is hard because we aren’t made to be alone. As many times as I feel like living as a hermit would be a lifestyle-change I would embrace—even for an introvert, there are times I need connection.

In one of the most counter-intuitive sermons in the Bible, Jesus says that these low times we experience have a purpose. We call this section of Matthew’s Gospel, the Beatitudes, for its use of the word “blessed.” This is one of the key parts of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. He tells us:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
“Blessed are those who mourn,
“Blessed are the meek,
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…”

Ummm… Jesus, what are you talking about? I’ve felt those things, and no offense, but I’d like to be done with all that.

In her book, “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories,” Debie Thomas writes:

“What Jesus bears witness to in the Beatitudes is God’s unwavering proximity to pain, suffering, sorrow, and loss. God is nearest to those who are lowly, oppressed, unwanted, and broken. God isn’t obsessed with the shiny and the impressive. God is too busy sticking close to what’s messy, chaotic, and unruly.”

What our faith tells us, what Jesus showed again and again with his teaching, his healing, his life, is that it was the outcast, the low, the hurting, the people no one wanted to think about or deal with, who were his people.

Self-reliance and independence are very American values. I can take care of myself, I got this, I don’t need anyone’s help. Those ideas are NOT Christian values. They are not love-centered values.

One of the biggest Christian values we hold is surrendering. Realizing that we don’t control the Universe; that there are so many things in our own lives that we don’t have control of and that we are helped when we surrender our need to be in control to a higher power, to God.

It often happens that we don’t experience a need for God, a need to accept that we aren’t always in control, until things start to fall apart.

And it’s those times that God is closest to us. It’s those times when what we’ve been fed by society—that if we have the right house, the right family, the right job, the right car—then we ‘ll be happy. When that turns out not to give us what we are looking for, or pursuing those things stops making sense, and we are looking for something more substantial, then we are open to another way of thinking about life.

One of the most useful things I’ve run into in thinking about the Beatitudes is the novelist Alice Walker, who wrote “The Color Purple,” in coming up with a similar list for a character of hers, changed the word “blessed” to “helped.” Listen to Jesus’s teaching like this:

“Helped are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Helped are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
“Helped are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
“Helped are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
“Helped are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
“Helped are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
“Helped are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

The world wants us to be hard, tough, to put our heads down and be productive. To be good, to be fine, to be surface level.

Jesus wants us to have soft hearts. To go deep. To care for one another, to help one another, to love one another. Our ability to do these things is part of what constitutes the Kingdom of Heaven.

We are not meant to go through life alone. We need each other. We need to be there for each other.

To have soft hearts, to be able to be there for someone, we are helped by knowing what they are going through.

Brene Brown describes herself as a storyteller and social worker. This is how she talks about empathy:

“Empathy is feeling WITH people. I always think of empathy as this kind of sacred space. When someone’s in a deep hole and they shout from the bottom and they say “I’m stuck. It’s dark. I’m overwhelmed.” and we look and we say “Hey” and climb down and say “I know what it’s like down here, and you’re not alone… Empathy is a choice and it’s a vulnerable choice. In order to connect with you, I have to connect with something in myself that knows that feeling.”

Helped are the lonely.

Helped are those who struggle.

Helped are those who feel lost.

Because they are closer to God. And God can help.

And we can help each other.

What if we believe?

Today (December 21) is the Feast of St. Thomas. Thomas was one of Jesus’ inner circle of 12 disciples, who we read about a few times in the Gospels, most famously in John’s Gospel, after the risen Jesus has appeared to the disciples in a room when Thomas wasn’t with them. They tell him that they’ve seen Jesus, but Thomas wasn’t having it. He lets them know in no uncertain terms, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

And that’s where we get the nickname, “Doubting Thomas.” Of course, Jesus loves Thomas and waits for him to be gathered with all the disciples and Jesus appears to them all and tells Thomas to, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”

Thomas declares his faith, thankful for Jesus giving him the proof that he asked for. And Jesus finishes up the exchange by saying, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

In a world now with AI videos and illustrations, maybe Thomas would double-down on his need not only to see, but to touch and experience Jesus for himself in order to believe. This week, I’ve been sitting with and mulling over what it is to believe and what believing does for us.

I stumbled across this from one of my favorite writers Brian Doyle in his book “How the Light Gets In And Other Headlong Epiphanies”

“The miracle is that we all believe there’s a miracle.
If we didn’t believe in the unbelievable there is no
Mass and no Church either, and then where would
We be? The church is a vocabulary for that for which
We have weak words.”


On the one hand, what we do in faith is to believe in the unbelievable. Using our rationale faculties alone, we might all be in the same boat as Thomas. But faith is more than just reason. As the writer of Hebrews says, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (11:1)

Faith, hope, and trust are strands of the same rope, wrapped around and strengthening each other. When I sit still in prayer or meditation; when I get to the top of a trail and stand on rocks looking down at the countryside below; when I watch the sunrise or stare up at the stars at night, it’s not reason that lights up.

When my daughter Ava and I are decorating the Christmas tree and thinking back over years of Christmas memories and laughing at the talking Dwight Schrute and Michael Scott (The Office) ornaments she bought; when Holly and I are sitting in a Charlottesville brewery talking with friends about life, hope, loss, and dreams–it’s not my rational brain that lifts me into elevating thinking and feeling.

There are so many ways to look at the lives we are living and life around us. This morning I was reading in “Spirit Wheel: Meditations of an Indigenous Elder” by Steven Charleston, who is both a member of the Choctaw Nation and has served as the Episcopal Bishop of Alaska.

In “One of Those Days,” Charleston writes (excerpted)–

“Today I believe in the final victory of hope over fear.
I believe in the worth and dignity of every human being.

Today I believe all will be well with me
Through the love and grace of the Spirit.

I may have bad days again
But this will not be one of them.

Today I choose to stand again as a believer
In the future before me.

Some days I believe I can change the world.
This is one of them.”


Believing, like loving (agape love, loving God and your neighbor, loving Creation) is a choice. We decide what and whether we will believe; we decide if we are going to live and act with love for others. If we wait for hard, fast, rational proof to decide whether we are going to love or whether we are going to believe, we may spend our lives waiting.

Maybe that’s why Jesus says, “Blessed (helped) are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

What if we decide to love first. What if we decide to believe and see what happens. Maybe in some small way, like Charleston, we might try to change the world.

* Featured image/art by Jean Paul Avisses

Can the fishes see it’s snowing?

The Christmas story I re-read every year has firemen and a house fire, snowballs waiting for cats, mentions of wolves, postmen, a celluloid duck, and a possible ghost joining in for caroling. And it’s all true. Or at least remembered true.

Dylan Thomas’s “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” is the kind of opening of nostalgic floodgates you expect from a poet’s vivid and quirky memory. And what he remembers aren’t gifts (those get a comic couple paragraphs) but the experiences he had, what he and his friends got into, uncles and aunts visiting, and what the town looked and felt like in the snow.

As Thomas and his friends walk in the snow along the shore, trying to decide what to get into, someone asks, “Can the fishes see it’s snowing?” Maybe those are the moments of true and honest friendship and the things we build our memories around.

Christmas is certainly a time when nostalgia hits us over the head like a cartoon wooden mallet, this year especially. I stumbled across this piece I scrawled out a couple years ago and if nostalgia is the path you want to run down, it might walk there with you. As I sit here with waves of Christmas memories crashing over me, I have written about for 30 or so and thought about Christmases past for maybe 45 years (the memories had to build up for the first three). I find myself coming back to the same thoughts, the same books, the same memories, and the same themes.

Clark Griswold understands the pressure of trying to create and re-create the perfect Christmas.

I’m thinking about the pressure we put on Christmas–finding and buying the perfect gifts, wanting to create the perfect memories for our families, wanting to get past the commercial and to the spiritual, communal aspects of Christmas. And I think about the fact that my Christmases as a kid are vivid memories, then not much to call up in my teens and 20s. Thinking about Christmases having young kids, crystalline again, and now the girls are well into their teens, into the age of unmemorable Christmases. And maybe I am caught in a place where the next memorable Christmas won’t be until there are young kids in the picture again (which I hope is a good ways off…).

But maybe that’s the key. Not young kids, but seeing things with eyes like that again. When he picks what memories to share, Dylan Thomas goes back to when he was a child. Because that’s where the vivid memories are; that’s where his eyes were fresh and impressionable. Maybe that’s what I/we need, especially during a pandemic year when I know my family won’t be gathering on Christmas Eve or Day.

Looking with the eyes of a child.

In his book, “Love Is the Way,” Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, writes:

“Jesus said, ‘Unless you change and become as little children, you will never see the kingdom of heaven’ (and thinking on a lecture he attended by Terry Holmes, Bishop Curry continues)… children have vivid and boundless imaginations. They dwell happily in that space between fantasy and reality. Theirs is often that land of the fairy tale, the cartoon. They fantasize, they imagine, they dream. I think Dr. Holmes was right. To behold the reign of God, the perfect realization of God’s peace, God’s shalom, God’s salaam–the dream of God–we must become as little children. We must imagine and… dream.”

I was talking to a friend recently about that exact thing, how Buddhists use the term “begininer’s mind” and Jesus talks about seeing with the eyes of a child. If re-think where I am right now and go back to my surroundings, I smell the evergreen/fir smell of the Christmas tree; I see the white lights on the tree that the girls asked for this year to replace the rainbow lights that I generally use to conjure up trees from my youth; I can smell and taste the coffee, which makes me think of my grandfather this time of year. I can see the cat and dog half-sleeping on the couch, waiting for movement toward the kitchen.

We’ve always got all the tools we need to build the perfect Christmas. If I choose to focus on sitting down to have a Sunday afternoon lunch with people I love rather than looking at what I find or don’t find shopping, I am creating the right kind of memories.

This isn’t a post about what Christmas is or what it means, but more about what lenses/eyes we use to approach the whole experience.

Our dog gets up and runs to the door or window every time the same neighbors walk by. It’s a new experience for her every time. Even she has the child-like enthusiasm and wonder idea down. I can learn from her example and reminder.

If I am open. If I see with the eyes, imagination, and wonder of a child. Maybe I won’t be stuck having a conversation with the ghost of Christmas past. Maybe I will be in the moment, caught up in wonder and conversation, and I can again ask questions like, “Can the fishes see it’s snowing?”

Need & Seek

Jesus digs questions. He likes to ask them to us and I think he likes us to ask them of ourselves. Rev. Daniel Groody points out that in the four Gospels, Jesus is asked 183 questions, only directly answering three. On the other hand, he asks 307 questions.

Groody put together a devotional booklet, “Daily Reflections for Advent & Christmas: Waiting in Joyful Hope 2019-2020.” He suggests daily Scripture readings and then provides reflection, meditation, and a prayer. It’s a cool and meaningful way to guide us through Advent. A perfect coffee companion in the mornings.

Groody quotes Martin Copenhaver and then adds something of his own:

“‘Jesus is not the ultimate Answer Man, but more like the Great Questioner.’ And through these questions Jesus holds a lantern to our hearts.”

In studying and discussing the Gospels and reading commentary, one of the first things to become clear is that God, through Christ, is after our hearts, first and foremost. Everything else follows. Our hearts function best when they are full of joy, wonder, and they/we are after the right things. Groody goes on to say, “Answers can foreclose new discoveries, but questions open up new possibilities.”

Both Jesus and Groody are speaking my language. In 47 years, I have more questions and fewer answers than ever. But also more than ever, I’ve come to love the questions, the seeking in and of itself. It (the seeking) gets me up in the morning, sends me into Scripture, sends me into nature, connects me to people, and opens me up to wonder and mystery.

Groody quotes theologian Bernard Lonegran, who said, “There are two kinds of people in the world: those who need certainty and those who seek understanding.” I’m not big on anyone who tries to reduce the world to two kinds of people, but I like the distinction between needing certainty and seeking understanding. Probably there is a bit of both in each of us.

In his book, “Riprap & Cold Mountain Poems,” Gary Snyder writes:

The mind wanders. A million
Summers, night air still and the rocks
Warm. Sky over endless mountains.
All the junk that goes with being human
Drops away, hard rock wavers

A clear, attentive mind
Has no meaning but that
Which sees is truly seen.

Gary Snyder, still seeking. Photo by John Suiter. Great audio and photo essay over at Poetry Foundation.

Snyder strikes me as a seeker, not of certainty, but of experience, wonder, beauty, and understanding. Discovery is not about certainty.

Advent is a time of waiting, of staying awake, of readying ourselves. It’s a time of hope, and just finishing a study of Brene Brown’s book, “Daring Greatly,” she points out that we can’t know hope without struggle.

Part of our struggle as people, is the need to know for sure, the need to be certain–and yet, certainty precludes faith and mystery.

So on a gray, sleety, rainy Monday morning, I am going to sit in the questions, take a cue from Groody, and try to stay open to new discoveries.