“I wish there was anyone here childish enough
(or permanent enough, not the slave of his particular and outward age) to

share it with me. Is it that no man makes real friends after he has passed the

undergraduate age? … the question I am asking is why I meet no such men now. Is it that I am blind? … Oh for the people who speak one’s own language.”
-C. S. Lewis before meeting Tolkien, Williams, and other Inkling friends

 

Until recently, I think one of my least favorite personal wars has been with lonliness verses solitude. I have always hated to be alone. Sanguine by nature I am most comfortable in a crowd. I love people. However, that isn’t the lonlieness I am talking about because I have found that times I am just as lonely in a crowd as I am without one. That’s when I cry out like Lewis, “Isn’t there anyone who speaks my language?” I often spent parts of my childhood longingly looking. Who knew that that was one way he draws us to him?

There’s a song I love by Sara Groves that provokes that hunger in me. I have spent time with it on repeat in the car CD player, and on my mp3 player walking, or on our home stero. I wanted to capture what this song evoked in me. Let me share the lyrics.

Maybe There’s A Loving God

by Sara Groves

album: All Right Here (2002)

I’m trying to work things out
I’m trying to comprehend
Am I the chance result
Of some great accident
I hear a rhythm call me
The echo of a grand design
I spend each night in the backyard
Staring up at the stars in the sky

I have another meeting today
With my new counselor
My mom will cry and say,
“I don’t know what to do with her;
She’s so unresponsive.
I just cannot break through.
She spends all night in the backyard
Staring up at the stars and the moon.”

They have a chart and a graph
Of my despondency
They want to chart a path
For self-recovery
And want to know what I’m thinking
What motivates my mood
To spend all night in the backyard
Staring up at the stars and the moon

Maybe this was made for me
For lying on my back in the middle of a field
Maybe that’s a selfish thought
Or maybe there’s a loving God

Maybe I was made this way
To think and to reason and to question and to pray
And I have never prayed a lot
But maybe there’s a loving God.

Maybe this was made for me
For lying on my back in the middle of a field
Maybe that’s a selfish thought
Or maybe there’s a loving God

Maybe I was made this way
To think and to reason and to question and to pray
And I have never prayed a lot
But maybe there’s a loving God

And that may be a foolish thought
Or maybe there is a God
And I have never prayed a lot
But maybe there’s a loving God

    This song expresses something in my soul that I could never put into words. I looked for it in people, after all we are made for companionship. I looked for it in books, art, and nature—often still do. The solitude of outdoors and wisdom of those who have gone before me often still leave me with more questions than answers. My mom must have thought at times I was crazy, moody, sullen, overly lovey-dovey, and tons of other idiosyncratic and neurotic behaviors. I thought there was something dreadfully wrong with me. No one could love me enough. Nothing could fill me enough. Nothing could answer my questions well enough. I felt like Dr. Eleanor Arroway from Sagan’s book, Contact. I was certain that there had to be more. I searched in a number of places from childhood to college. Finally as I read Lewis, L’Engle, Arends, Yancey, Nouwen and a few others and began to see that I wasn’t alone or weird. Others were searching and hungry as well. I was able to see what was missing. Seventeenth century metaphysical poet George Herbert explained the craving like this: 

The Pulley

When God at first made man,

Hhaving a glass of blessings standing by;

Let us (said he) pour on him all we can:

Let the world’s riches, which dispersed lie,

Contract into a span.

So strength first made a way;

 Then beauty flow’d, then wisdom, honour, pleasure:

When almost all was out, God made a stay, Perceiving that alone of all his treasure

Rest in the bottom lay.

For if I should (said he)

Bestow this jewel also on my creature,

He would adore my gifts instead of me, And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:

So both should losers be.

Yet let him keep the rest,

But keep them with repining restlessness:

Let him be rich and weary, that at least,

If good ness lead him not, yet weariness

Will toss him to my breast.

-George Herbert

I have tried to spell it out in my own language and sound it out in various songs from other people. What I have learned is that for me it is about Who holds the answers until I am ready for those answers I am looking for. While I search I find reminders for me that I love a God who isn’t angry or upset or surprised with my questions and doubts and fears.

“I will tell my son a secret– something I am just now learning to believe– and it is this: The questions themselves may be the greatest proof we have that there is something out there beyond the cosmos (and something here in our hearts) worth believing in. … we need meaning and purpose as primally as we need food and sleep. This drive is either a cruel trick of nature or the stamp of God upon our soul… I will ask him to listen to the questions rumbling deep within his own soul, and I will pray they tell him more than the answers ever could.” -Carolyn Arends, Living the Questions pg 219—222

An excerpt from Michael Card’s song, Could It Be,

In the ebb and flow of living
As we wander through the years
We’re told to listen to a voice
We can’t here with our ears

They say to live by something
That you can’t see with your eyes
Is there really any purpose
To this foolish exercise?

Could it be, You make Your presence known
So often by Your absence?
Could it be that questions tell us more
Than answers ever do?

Could it be that You would really rather die
Than live without us?
Could it be the only answer that means anything
Is You?…

(Could It Be, Michael Card, Present Reality, ’88)

Filed under: Christianity, Uncategorized, life, wonder on February 25th, 2008