The Great Loneliness
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There is a great, expansiveloneliness in the universe,perceptible when the heartcourageously enters the clarityof the shining momentafter long days of rain.Its immense void ripplesout beyond visible beauty,intellectual certainties,what we can know.Neither beckoningnor repelling,neither threateningnor inviting,it knits in solidaritythe tangled threadsof our deepest lonelinessto the eternally orderlysolitude of God,and, being the realityof what actually is,brings both consolation.If you listen carefullyinto the emptinessyou can hear the soft clickof those conjoining needles. [End Page 247]
Bonnie Thurston resigned a Chair and Professorship in New Testament, after years as an academic, to live quietly in her home state of West Virginia. She is author or editor of nineteen theological works, has published five collections of poetry, and contributes to scholarly and popular periodicals. An internationally known Merton Scholar, her doctoral dissertation was one of the first on Thomas Merton. blbthurston@gmail.com
