Loneliness was on my mind this week and this weekend. Earlier in the week, I read a compelling essay on feeling lonely by the spiritual author Henri Nouwen.

I talked about loneliness with the Mansion residents at my morning prayer and contemplation service. And I admit to feeling inevitable loneliness this weekend, penned into our house and farm by this endless snow and ice and rainstorm.

The weather service has extended the storm watch to 9 p.m. now; this storm doesn’t want to disappear. I’ll be out scrapping first thing in the morning with Maria.

We will be walking on and around the ice for a long time, and up here, we fear ice more than snow or cold.

An older friend messaged me and said he was living in dread of falling this weekend. I’ve done all I can do to prevent slipping, from shoes to guardrails to paying attention; I’m leaving the rest up to the furies. I’m keen on letting go of worrying about things I can’t control.

I get to live longer than men like me used to live. There is a downside to that. Older people fall.

Living in the now, as it is today, works for me.

I went outside two or three times a day to work as long as I could, and when I came inside and left Maria to dig and scrape the hard ice, I just collapsed and fell asleep. It felt like the cold and ice was sapping my spirit, as well as my body.

The day was dark and gloomy, my body was reacting sharply to the cold, the farmhouse was dark and Maria was working. I never put my loneliness on her.

I guess I was lonely for the time – vivid in my memory – where I was the one outside digging and scraping.

Nouwen wrote that when we feel lonely, we keep looking for someone who can take our loneliness away. That was certainly what I did for much of my life when I felt those waves of loneliness. I looked for people to rescue me, hold me in a way, touch me, speak to me, and comfort me.

Maria loves me very much, but she is not trying to rescue me, that is the last thing I would want.

I was often alone, always alone, and until I was suddenly no longer alone, I didn’t quite comprehend the loneliness that followed me for so much of my life.

But soon enough, I discovered that the people I expected to take my loneliness away could not give me what I wanted and needed. I was the only one who could do that.

These people drifted away from me and me from them.

They felt oppressed or put upon by my needs and neediness, and most of them melted away or ran away.

In many cases, I ran away from them. These were friendships built on need and nothing else. They couldn’t last.

“Clinging to one another in loneliness is suffocating,” wrote Nouwen,” and eventually becomes destructive.”

Nouwen’s caution rang true to me and deep. I learned that loneliness is cured by love, and love is only possible if I find the courage to create space between myself and other people and trust that this space will allow me to dance together with other human beings.

And this is what happened. My loneliness is always there somewhere in my DNA but sinks deeper and deeper into my consciousness.

Some things trigger it, but mostly I am too busy living my life to think about it or feel it often. So here I am on this beautiful farm with this remarkable human and our peaceable kingdom.

It is very difficult to be lonely here for long.

I like this idea of the dance; I believe I have created space to dance tother.