Article April 22, 2013 Issue

Sacred solitude

Annette Kreutziger-Herr

What’s the distinction between loneliness and being alone—between a kind of “solitary confinement” and sacred solitude with God?

If you search for loneliness on the Internet, you’ll get everything from articles about the basic need for social connection and interaction to warnings about how being lonely can increase the chance of illness. While inclusion is often the goal, exclusion seems to be very common.

The term lonely hints at a state of being that is remote from everything else. The word is defined as a lack of companionship, the depressing feeling of helplessness, and the hazy notion that the basic fact of the human condition is living in solitude. Loneliness brings with it a feeling of distance, a sense of being thrown into a world without compassion and cohesion. The whole world seems as if it’s a family, and we’re not a part of it. If we subscribe to a material, mortal concept of life, nothing feels permanently connected; things seem to be in constant competition for attention and people are labelled as winners and losers. This point of view brings with it many forms of loneliness.

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