Category: SolitaryLife

Sometimes, I wonder if the modern church could make me a follower of Jesus. Some of the things I hear from “church people” are completely disconnected from everyday life. (That includes my everyday life! And, honestly, I get more push-back from church people to living as an enclosed solitary.) Maybe the best way is to say that the church is very good at answering questions that no one asks.

I am just a voter, a consumer, or a “parishioner,” and I should behave accordingly. Sometimes, I am told that I am very privileged to be a voter, a consumer, or a parishioner. The message is that I am called to surrender me for the community.

Maybe the following quote makes the point much better:

It is frequently said that a reformation has to begin with each person’s reformation of himself, but it has not happened that way, for the idea of reformation has given rise to a hero, who very likely bought his license to be a hero very dearly from God.

A little further, Kierkegaard writes:

… the abstraction of leveling is a principle that forms no personal, intimate relation to any particular individual, but only the relation of abstraction, which is the same for all. No hero, then, suffers for others or helps others; leveling itself becomes the severe taskmaster who takes on the task of educating.

Two Ages

In the end, I am stuck. Forward or backward? Prophesy or escape? Should I risk all (including me) for a community with little interest in me?

Anyway …

Have you ever thought that all of this is a cosmic joke? It’s a mistake, and the joke is on me. That feeling that I am completely out of place, out of time, out of sync with the world around me. There is an inside joke called “life”, of which I am simply not part.

I have felt that more in the last couple of months, and I censor myself to fit in, making myself small to fit into other people’s views of me. I have not spoken up and allowed my silence to be consent. It is a learned stress response. It is a way to escape and internalise everything until the balloon is full and “pops” with much noise. And I want to run, perhaps to see if people will miss me.

When is “enough” enough? Where do you draw the line? I fool myself into thinking that I am open-minded, yet even I have my limit. But where is that invisible line? I think I am on the threshold. I feel like I am drowning. Or being fed a diet of air. Why do I hide my thoughts and ideas for “peace”? Is that life with other people?

Being alone is great. Refreshing. Upbuilding. Perhaps the context has to change?

One of my favourite Kierkegaard quotes is from Sickness Unto Death:

The formula that describes the state of the self when despair is completely rooted out is this: in relating itself to itself and in willing to be itself, the self rests transparently in the power that established it.

So, I pray for what I fear most: having my “self” transparent in Jesus.