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Recently I heard a sermon by a Priest, he said many were counting on a relationship to save them, and this was idolatry. Indeed it is. I've seen it many times, expecting a partner to give you happiness. At the same time, I imagine some may hear this differently, especially the young.
Solitude is different,but loneliness can, in fact, kill.
I’d argue what we call loneliness today is several different clusters of negative emotions, and several different types of loneliness all converging, and that it’s brand new. We all know loneliness is twice as harmful as obesity, worse than smoking, chronic loneliness alters the brain, decreases cognitive functioning to the point of qualifying as a traumatic brain injury. Also, one can check, the Church has no sermons on loneliness before the 1800’s; in fact “loneliness” simply meant being alone, with no emotional longing. “A Biography of Loneliness” by Fay Bound Alberti goes into this.
Two good articles on this:
https://stephanjoppich.com/can-loneliness-kill-you/
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/BF01278458.pdf
In any case, I awoke with the following short story in mind:
The Food That Perishes
He pushed wide the heavy Church doors and ducked into the darkness. Candle lit faces crowded the pews. He hesitated. It had been years. He crammed himself into a corner, standing in the back. It was packed. Thick pungent incense rolled through the beams of light streaming from high windows. How much did incense cost? Didn’t the Bible say something about incense being food for God? Moses burnt piles of meat so that the smoke rose up to the heavens, didn't he? His stomach rumbled. Days without food. The acid ate through his gut. A sharp pain, like a blaring alarm he couldn't turn off, it threw his entire nervous system into a panic. He clutched his stomach and grimaced.
The priest glided out in shining robe, a baby faced innocent smile, and immediately launched into his sermon. Bit of a belly there, eh father, he thought, guess the Church weren’t too strict with fasting these days.
“Brothers and sisters,” he intoned, a sea of ill, green faces, stretched tight across yearning skulls, they too, he knew, were starving, and had been for going on 27 years now, “there are those of you who have set their hearts on a full belly, the problem with this, my brothers, is that when it doesn’t happen, you become disappointed, disgruntled.”
His stomach rumbled fierce at the mention of food, he scarcely heard the Priest, his attention strained through the pain to hear, oh, but I am desperate for an answer to this terrible god in his belly... this hunger will never end!
“It is idolatry,” the Priest continued, “you set your hearts on the things of this world, yet we are aliens in this land, passing through, rather hunger for righteousness, man does not live by bread alone, but here, right here brothers and sisters, is the food which does not perish, that forever satisfies, that confers not just life, but eternal life!”
The Priest had worked himself up into something like a frenzy and his eyes glowed with some bright vision,
“Christ is that bread! He will satisfy you! Yes, Christ did not promise a nice house with steak for dinner, caviar for desert, he promised a cross! But he’s here, waiting, right here.
You don't need food to survive. You don’t. Did you know that ? St Seraphim survived four months, kneeling in prayer, without food. It is God, not food, that provides true satiation. You make food an idol when you place it above the Lord. It’s a kind of adultery, cheating on God Himself.”
The Priest paused to collect himself.
The practitioners eyes were glazed from malnutrition, stomachs grumbled, a few sighs, someone groaned in pain.
“It wont be easy. Yes, you will still awake with pangs of hunger, your children will go to bed with tears not hear eyes, you may starve until, indeed, your body gives out, and death overtakes you - but Christ is their! He is there in your pain, in your terrible hunger, even as you starve to death, He will not abandon you.”
His intestines seized up, like a wild animal clawing through his lower gut, he stumbled out of the Church into the bright light, squatted down on the stairs. He rubbed his belly to soothe the spasms ripping apart his abdomen.
Just then a crow landed not far from where he sat. It hopped over. It’s head turning to get a better look.
He thought of reaching out and grabbing the bird, a quick meal, but the pain paralyzed him. It hopped closer.
“I’ve nothing for you friend.”
It cawed and did a little dance.
The man let out a groan, “Do you not find it odd, little friend, that no one in the Bible asked the Lord to be cured of their anger, no woman stumbled up to Him to remedy her vanity, no man concerned with their gluttony or pride.”
“Caw!”
“No, they demanded their daughters be saved from death, their paralysis be healed, they demanded baskets of bread and fish….loneliness, they say, is today’s leprosy, but Christ restored them to health…He didn’t simply keep them company! The nervous symptoms cares little for spirit, it cries out for warmth and flesh!"
The man shook his head.
“Well, friend, at least you’ll listen to me.”
The crow hopped around to the mans battered show, packing at its rubber. In its feathers an ant crawled. The man slowly reached out and picked it off. He crushed it between his fingers and sucked the tiny body into his mouth.
His stomach was settling. The illusion of sustenance, sometimes that’s all it took. Perhaps.
