{"id":1814,"date":"2020-04-30T20:49:57","date_gmt":"2020-05-01T00:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/religious-spiritual-life\/?p=1814"},"modified":"2020-04-30T21:39:16","modified_gmt":"2020-05-01T01:39:16","slug":"on-isolation-and-consolation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/religious-spiritual-life\/2020\/04\/30\/on-isolation-and-consolation\/","title":{"rendered":"On Isolation and Consolation"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we all know,\u00a0in these days of quarantine, loneliness and isolation are prevalent.<\/p>\n

Zoom is as depleting as it is efficient. Social distance may be wearing on us, our own particular responses to stress may be in full action.<\/p>\n

One thing that stuck with me this week, however, was how isolated and alone we often feel under\u00a0normal\u00a0<\/em>circumstances, sometimes even when we are surrounded by people.<\/p>\n

A time like this in which we are at a physical distance from one another might be a good time to be reminded that the spiritual distance is often created in our minds.<\/p>\n

The truth is that how we present ourselves a good deal of the time, and what we often imagine about others, is never the entire story.<\/p>\n

In our isolation, let us take this as a consolation.<\/p>\n

Every time we go on to a class, or on a zoom call, or any remote forum wherein we interact with others, let us try to take it as a lesson in connection. We differ so vastly in privilege and background and age and culture, yet our desire to see and be seen, to accept and be accepted, are shared phenomena that transcend these differences.<\/p>\n

As we finish up this strange and hard and sometimes heartbreaking but deeply rich semester, let us choose to be consoled by our connection rather than isolated by our distance, and we will be the better for it.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ April in New England continues to bring blooms and blossoms, and we continue to trust in what is emerging through this hardship, just as new life comes through the winds and rain of this long spring.<\/p>\n

...<\/em>\u00a0your eyes fix on the empty distance<\/em><\/p>\n

That can open on either side
\nOf the surest line
\nTo make all that is
\nFamiliar and near
\nSeem suddenly foreign,
\nWhen the music of talk
\nBreaks apart into noise
\nAnd you hear your heart louden
\nWhile the voices around you
\nSlow down to leaden echoes
\nTurning silence
\nInto something stony and cold,
\nWhen the old ghosts come back
\nTo feed on everywhere you felt sure,
\nDo not strengthen their hunger
\nBy choosing fear;
\nRather, decide to call on your heart
\nThat it may grow clear and free
\nTo welcome home your emptiness
\nThat it may cleanse you
\nLike the clearest air
\nYou could ever breathe.
\nAllow your loneliness time
\nTo dissolve the shell of dross
\nThat had closed around you;
\nChoose in this severe silence
\nTo hear the one true voice
\nYour rushed life fears;
\nCradle yourself like a child
\nLearning to trust what emerges,
\nSo that gradually
\nYou may come to know
\nThat deep in that black hole
\nYou will find the blue flower
\nThat holds the mystical light
\nWhich will illuminate in you
\nThe glimmer of springtime<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

-On Loneliness, by John O’Donohue<\/p>\n

(Matilda Cantwell, Director of Religious and Spiritual Life and College Chaplain wrote this article.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"