The Invisible God and the Solitary Human

1.

In the early 1900s, my great-grandfather Myles McDonough left Inis Mor for America. And about 100 years later, I stood on the cliffs of Inis Mor and wept, alone, 100 metres above the crashing Atlantic waves. I was far from where tourists were “supposed” to go, trespassing amongst grazing cattle and stone fences centuries older than any human constructions I’d ever experienced at home in Canada and the United States. There was no fence, no rail.

I put down my rental bicycle. I sat criss-cross in the grass. I stared out over the sea. I wondered what Myles thought as he looked one last time over the cliffs and contemplated life in America. Inis Mor, as I had learned about it in family lore, was a desolate shit hole of poverty of unemployment, a foggy island which for centuries genetically altered my family skintone into a translucence that burns upon the mere thought of sunlight.

But the Inis Mor where I sat though was the promised land. It was everything I wanted. Bright and hot sunshine on April day. It was a full 20 degrees warmer than my home back in Montréal the same day. Earlier on my bicycle ride, while still on legitimate roads, two children--about 10 and 12--were playing on their iPhones as they herded some cows down the lane in their Umbro soccer apparel, speaking Irish. It was this confluence of old and new that I so longed for. Tech savvy kids, connected with European sport stars, yet still speaking a language which has been preemptively eulogised for centuries.

And I was not grateful for Great-Grandpa Myles sacrifice and bravery for coming to America. I was pissed off at him for taking generations of us away from here. This was the trip of a lifetime. I lifetime dream fulfilled. And I sat on the end of this holy place with the weight of centuries of ancestors landing upon my shoulders.

And I wept. And I didn’t weep happy tears.

I closed my eyes, and my brain did not whisper assurances or peace. I closed my eyes and I saw myself neatly setting aside my backpack, neatly folding my clothes in a pile, and running naked to my death. My whole mind said, “There is no point.” And in a fraction of a moment, my body could have followed. But the horrific vision, that I didn’t imagine or will so much as was invaded by, faded.

I grabbed my bicycle and peddled fast inland. I had to dismount and throw it over ancient walls a half dozen times. I had no idea where I was or where the roads were. I just had to get inland. I had to get safe. Safe away from the cliffs of Aran, and from my own inner voice.

The cliffs are so high that the whole bicycle ride to the village where my ferry awaited on the opposite shore was a downhill coast. I glided to the ferry dock. I returned my bicycle. I bought a sweater. And I got on a ferry.

And then I pretended on Facebook that it was the best day of my life.

2.

A good Christian does not feel lonely, because a Good Christian knows God is with them. “We are not alone, we live in God’s world,” say the reassuring words of the United Church of Canada’s creed. The hymn I grew up with echoes, “Fear not, I am with thee; oh be not dismayed / For I am thy God and will still give thee aid / I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand / Upheld by My righteous, omnipotent hand.“

But I am not always convinced.

I don’t know where God was on that cliff. Because I didn’t feel the presence of God there. I felt utterly and desolately alone.

To be where I always had dreamt of going, but to be alone in doing it, I was overwhelmed with a sense that there is no point. That if my joys and sufferings live just in my mind, then they are not worth the effort. That life unshared was meaningless.

Of course better Christians than I have long known that one is not ever truly alone. And though in my desolation and loneliness the worst of all possible thoughts flooded my mind, nonetheless, the same neurons that could have fired my limbs into the sea fired them onto a bicycle fleeing. Upheld by some righteous, omnipotent hand?

Inis Mor was settled millenia ago by monks seeking isolation at what was to them the furthest farflung corner of the world. Earlier that day I had rested in the ruins of their monastery. An April weekday far from peak tourist season, I wondered how many of my ancestors were baptised, were married, were committed to their rest in the chapels whose roofless ruins were now a tourist site. These brothers knew God was at Inis Mor. That God could in some ways be best experienced far from distracting others.

Were those sainted monks looking down at this faithless great grandchild of Inis Mor as a weak-willed sinner. I wouldn’t blame them.

How many of my ancestors must surely have come to these chapels to hold hands, to make vows, to make children, to begin lives of poverty, of work, of getting drunk, of getting laid, of being oppressed by the British, ignored by the British, liberating themselves from the British. That is to say, to live, to live together in all of life’s complexity.

I don’t know stories beyond Great-Grandpa Myles. But the family lore is clear about him. He was a “feckin drunk asshole,” who once threw a dog over the cliffs, whose departure for America was not mourned on Inis Mor. Mentioning my relation to him a century later could still be dangerous in the village my grandmother had warned. For decades there were men who would spit on the pub floor at the mention of the piece of shite, Great-grandpa, may he rest in peace. The drunken animal abuser’s teetotaling vegetarian progeny was still the flesh and blood of Myles McDonough.

Those pasty pale freckled ancestors flashed in my mind.

My own wedding, a world away, flashed in my mind. I was married in a modern temple, designed to imitate an old Spanish mission, but somehow more resembling a Marriott than a basilica, on the coast of Southern California. I remember holding my bride’s hands and imagining that every sacred moment to come would be at her side. The architect’s underlined that with no subtlety, with double mirrors on each side of the altar. She and I together, infinitely, into eternity.

But she wasn’t with me on Inis Mor. She did not want to be with me any more. Not in our home in Montréal. Not on my pilgrimage to the ancestors.

A bishop in my past told me that the no love on earth approximates the self-sacrificing love and unrestrained open intimacy of the love of God like the love of marriage.

It may be blasphemy, but I came by it be sincerely, that to sit on that cliff alone, without her beside me, I felt the words so intensely. ‘’Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

It is heretical and presumptuous to assume our sufferings are even a dim mirror of our Lord’s. But exaggerating our suffering is an ancient Christian practice, is it not? And look at that. To be lonely in the face of believing in God may not be what Good Christians do. But Christ did it.

3.

I think that April day on the cliffs of Aran, lying on Facebook saved my life.

I was alone. Nobody was in my rental car. Nobody was in my hotel rooms. But dozens followed the journey. Clicking like and love. Technophobe moralists say we should live in the moment and put down the cell phones. But each picture was how I did live, how I checked my emotions to see the beauty before my eyes. And each pulling out my cell phone to share was an act remembering that I was not alone.

I do not have the spiritual strength of the centuries of holy men and women who felt the love of God so richly that they felt led to renounce parenting and intimacy. My spiritual convictions don’t fill me with true spiritual satisfaction.

Perhaps a lifetime of terrible pastoral advice should have driven me away from the faith. Pray the gay away. I suppose being bisexual is a glass half-full/half-empty debate for the homophobes. Pray the depression away. Pray the loneliness away.

I did not somehow end up a priest without a belief that prayer touches a reality that I cannot readily explain away. That righteous and omnipotent had has felt invisible and absent too much for me to moralistically condemn the doubters. But it has made itself known too much for me to be at any greater peace with atheism than I am with my oftimes shaky faith.

Centuries of hermits and cloisters tell us that encountering God in isolation is a thing. A reality whose power in other people’s lives I would not presume to deny or downplay. If you can be alone and feel God beside you--and I have, but as truly exceptional flashes never as a continuous presence--truly, truly, good for you. But if you have not, if sitting truly alone makes you wonder, perhaps melodramatically, but not insincerely, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me, well, that I understand. That feeling I know.

Do not pray the loneliness away in isolation. Pray about the loneliness in community. Do not fall prey to, nor perpetuate the rumour that the Good Christians do not feel loneliness. St. John said, “For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen” (1 John 4:20b). Loving one another is how we love God. And, the inverse is true. The love of others is how we feel God’s love. And longing for human love isn’t spiritual weakness. Jesus expressed disappointment when his friends did not stay beside him.

Maybe a truly saintly monk once sat on the Cliffs of Aran and felt the sublime presence of God there alone. But I for one won’t go back without someone to hold my hand. I am not a failure for needing to feel some of God’s love from other humans. And if and when I find someone who wants to see the Cliffs of Aran with me, to think of the monks, to think of the McDonoughs of the centuries, to think of that fecking asshole--upon whom my life depends--and that poor dog, we’re going to take a picture and share it on the internet. Because I want you all there with me, too.