Yet another report tells us that loneliness in Britain today is almost at “epidemic” proportions. According to Age UK, half a million people over the age of 60 go for an entire week without meeting or speaking to anyone.
Our society has a strikingly utilitarian response to human problems, and this situation is especially deplored because it could cost the public purse, since loneliness has been linked to heart problems, depression and dementia. Lonely people need more services and so we should do something about it.
Indeed, we should all do something about it; and we should, if possible, busy ourselves to deter our own personal loneliness. There are plenty of corny old remedies handed out by counsellors over the years: join a club, develop a hobby, make new friends (because if you survive, your old ones will predecease you), keep in touch with family and neighbours, and, of course, go to church. Many studies have shown that churchgoers are less isolated and live longer.
It’s just common sense that we all have to make an effort for ourselves, and not allow ourselves to lose touch with our community of friends, neighbours, family links or even like-minded hobbyists.
Single people – be they widowed, separated or unmarried – become especially aware that married couples in retirement seem to form an even tighter unit than before, so singletons have to be particularly proactive in their anti-loneliness tactics.
And yet I think there is an element of loneliness which is existentially part of the human condition. Humans thrive in groups, yet we also know that we are lone souls travelling through time and space. That awareness is with us even when we’re surrounded by company.
On Radio 4 on New Year’s Day, Jeremy Irons gave a superb series of readings from the poetry of TS Eliot. His words are haunting and often desolate, and in Four Quartets he plumbs the depths of despair in old age: “as body and soul begin to fall asunder” our “impotence of rage / at human folly” haunts us and our awareness “of things ill done and done to other’s harm” in our own life contributes to the pessimism that comes in later years. Eliot’s poetry is full of mournful notes, but the redemptive thread always appears as he echoes Julian of Norwich’s “All shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Yes, we should do all we can to combat loneliness, but we should not try to avoid the truth that it is a part of human experience; and strangely enough, Eliot’s melancholy musings can also be a comfort in the lonesome moment, or in a dark night of the soul.
…
Silence is a film about faith which took its director Martin Scorsese 27 years to make – and it has been a deep personal commitment for him. We know it has been screened in the Vatican with approval, and Scorsese has had a meeting with Pope Francis.
Yet I dreaded going to see it after I heard film critics (especially women) saying they hated the torture scenes. And indeed, I must have spent nearly half the film covering my eyes: samurai decapitations, slow drowning pinned to a cross or upside-down gradual suffocation are not my idea of entertainment, even if you keep reminding yourself that these people are only acting.
All the same, it is a serious and important film which I needed to see: it asks big questions about faith, endurance, suffering, sacrifice and doubt – and Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver are compelling as the two persecuted Portuguese Jesuits in 17th-century Japan.
Missionary activity in overseas lands is now sometimes called “cultural imperialism”, and that controversial point is raised, too. As is the anguishing question of whether you are entitled to make other people suffer for your convictions.
Amid the savage landscape and often primitive conditions, there’s also a welcome visual relief in the form of Dutch traders in all their Franz Hals finery. But at the centre of it all, and in a startling coda, is the cross itself – a dramatic reminder that this remains the kernel of the Christian faith.
…
I’ve noticed a friend using the expression “in lodge” when indicating that information imparted is in confidence: the phrase comes from the Freemasons’ Lodges (and Orange Lodges too) whereby a brotherhood of secrecy is implied. I rather like the expression – even if used half-ironically – and have taken to using it myself sometimes, as in: “This conversation is ‘in lodge’.”
It’s no bad thing to recognise that in these days of full disclosure on social media some information is private and should remain so between friends, professional associates or intimates. Not everything needs to be in the public realm.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.