mindful monday : when you are lost, you are not alone.

"Last year, when President Kennedy was assassinated, who among us did not experience the most profound disorientation?

Despair? Which way? What now? What do I say to my kids? What do I tell myself?

It was a time of people sitting together, bound together by a common feeling of hopelessness. But think of that! Your BOND with your fellow being was your Despair. It was a public experience. It was awful, but we were in it together.

How much worse is it then for the lone man, the lone woman, stricken by a private calamity?

‘No one knows I’m sick.’

‘No one knows I’ve lost my last real friend.’

‘No one knows I’ve done something wrong.’

Imagine the isolation. Now you see the world as through a window. On one side of the glass: happy, untroubled people, and on the other side: you.

I want to tell you a story. A cargo ship sank one night. It caught fire and went down. And only this one sailor survived. He found a lifeboat, rigged a sail…and being of a nautical discipline…turned his eyes to the Heavens and read the stars. He set a course for his home, and exhausted, fell asleep. Clouds rolled in. And for the next twenty nights, he could no longer see the stars. He thought he was on course, but there was no way to be certain. And as the days rolled on, and the sailor wasted away, he began to have doubts. Had he set his course right? Was he still going on towards his home? Or was he horribly lost… and doomed to a terrible death? No way to know.

The message of the constellations – had he imagined it because of his desperate circumstance? Or had he seen truth once… and now had to hold on to it without further reassurance?

There are those of you in church today who know exactly the crisis of faith I describe. And I want to say to you: DOUBT can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty. When you are lost, you are not alone."

-First sermon from the movie "Doubt", performed by Philip Seymour Hoffman

I am mindful of how we stand on one side of the glass as he says, looking at all the happy people, our own wound hidden, that secret about ourselves festering and separating us from the others even more (I'm not as smart as they think, I'm sick, my house is a mess, I'm broke, I'm not as creative as she is, I sometimes wish for things I cannot have, I feel lost, I don't know, I don't even understand what the Dow Jones Industrial Average means, I'm an imposter, I eat cereal for dinner). And how often–at least in this society–we feel we must pay someone to tell them these things about us, as if revealing these truths or beliefs are too much for a friendship to bear. Sometimes, I suppose, they are.

"It was a public experience. It was awful, but we were in it together. How much worse is it then for the lone man, the lone woman, stricken by a private calamity?"

Perhaps this is why people write and read blogs, to make their own pain a public experience, to share the wound.

Sometimes I wonder how much we invest in our own woundedness when investing in our capacity for joy might be right at hand, just there, just on the other side of the glass.

Sometimes I wonder what healing might take place if we all just put down the glass that separates us.

This week, in the exploration of your own doubt, your own private calamity, be mindful of the isolation of others. Know that doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining (perhaps even more so) as certainty.

And know that when you are lost, you are not alone.