From the Desk of Father Nathan

A Message from Father Nathan

My dearest people who are all close to my heart!

Love and lots of prayers to you.

These days, I feel and get to know that lots of people feel that “LONELY”. I feel that it pains them, and they are not happy about it. Eventually, this kind of sentiments leads to many other issues like depression, addictions, and much more…

I thought I would try to attend this. Loneliness can pave a way for so many wonderful things, for our own selves-individuals, for others, and for God.

Two weeks ago we saw how it’s great to be LONELY with ourselves and others…

This week let us contemplate how loneliness can improve our relationship with God.

Our Relationship with God.

Loneliness awakens us to our emotional and spiritual longing for God

The heart also voices a kind of loneliness that can never be completely filled, answered, or quieted as long as we live. This loneliness awakens us to our emotional and spiritual longing for God.

Have you ever seen a sunset that struck your heart with its strength of color spread all over the sky and ground? The part of you that is struck by such movement and beauty is the same part that aches with the recognition of how incomplete you are.

In the aching, your heart recognizes the need for the One who made it. This loneliness for more goodness and fullness quite often comes in moments of celebration, which much be felt to be truly known, will end.

In our hearts, we want to go where the wonder, celebration, passion, and relational fulfillment never stop. We want to go to the source of this goodness.

Excerpted from “The Voice of the Heart; A Call to Full Living, copyright 2001 by Chip Dodd.

When my oldest son was about 3 I remember showing him his first rainbow. Instead of stopping in the wonder of it, he began walking toward it saying, “Take me there, Daddy”. His heart was lonely, longing to be more a part of the beauty. He valued it.

When he found out that I couldn’t take him there, he ached in his heart waiting for what he could not completely have, but what he knew he was made for. Loneliness renders us vulnerable to our hunger for emotional and spiritual fulfillment, thus exposing us to all relationship needs.

But in a world that screams negativity about dependency and glorifies self-sufficiency, loneliness is the feeling that works hardest to avoid. The irony is that the more we work to avoid it, the more it occurs. And the more we work to hide it, the more we miss out on life.

Loneliness is satisfied only in intimacy. Without admitting loneliness we are destined to remain in deep emotional and spiritual conflict. If we don’t address it, loneliness never stops whispering to us in the quiet moments, “something is missing”. So instead of filling our hunger with authentic relational sustenance, we feed our hearts with junk that relieves instead of fills. If we have courage enough to walk into the spirituality of loneliness, we will awaken to know how good God is and how much we are dependent on that goodness of the One who shapes children’s hearts.

Excerpted from “The Voice of the Heart; A Call to Full Living, copyright 2001 by Chip Dodd. Published by Sage Hill Resources, Franklin Tenn., www.providencehouse.com or www.sagehillresources.com.

Chip Dodd is the founder of Sage Hill Institute, an organization dedicated to teaching and training others in the Spiritual Root System. Dodd is also the executive director and co-founder of the Center for Professional Excellence in Nashville, Tenn, a multi-disciplinary treatment center for licensed professionals with addictions, depression, burnout, anxiety, and other behavioral problems.

PRAYER “Lord may the fire of your love inflame my heart with zeal for your kingdom. And may there be no rival to keep me from loving you first and foremost above all else.

With lots of love and blessing,

Ever at your service.

—Fr. Sahayanathan Nathan