Article August 25, 1980 Issue

Healing loneliness

MARGARET EILEEN MOORE

When we realize man's inseparability from God, loneliness is transformed into proofs of our presence with God.

Loneliness is the feeling of being cut off from what we love most or want most. A longing for companionship, to love and be loved, to share, to escape from the isolation of the finite self, has come to most of us. This sense of need is often assuaged by marriage, a deep friendship, a common interest, a home shared. But what of unhappy relationships or loss? When we face one of these great challenges, we may feel as though we are in a wilderness, the scene around us blank. We may feel we will never be happy again or be able to go forward on our own. But we needn't doubt the power of God's goodness.

Mary Baker Eddy uses the word "loneliness" only once in the Christian Science textbook, when she gives the metaphysical interpretation of "wilderness." It begins, "Loneliness; doubt; darkness." Then follows the spiritually illumined meaning: "Spontaneity of thought and idea; the vestibule in which a material sense of things disappears, and spiritual sense unfolds the great facts of existence." Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 597; The word "lonely" also occurs just once in the textbook: "The lonely precincts of the tomb gave Jesus a refuge from his foes, a place in which to solve the great problem of being." ibid., p. 44; Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, saw both the wilderness and the tomb as standing for points of exit from material sense to a higher, spiritual sense of life.

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