#loneliness — Public Fediverse posts

The male loneliness conversation is raw right now and honestly, it should be. What I keep coming back to: the opposite of addiction isn't sobriety. It's connection. We don't need more hot takes. We need more people willing to sit with each other.
#Loneliness #Connection #MensHealth #MentalHealth

The loneliness conversation is surging today and I keep thinking about what I've seen in three decades of sitting across from people in pain: the loneliness was always there before the coping mechanism. We treat the substance and wonder why people relapse. What if we treated the isolation instead? Connection is medicine. Not metaphorically — literally.
#Loneliness #Connection #MentalHealth #InnerPeace #Recovery

The loneliness conversation is surging today and I keep thinking about what I've seen in three decades of sitting across from people in pain: the loneliness was always there before the coping mechanism. We treat the substance and wonder why people relapse. What if we treated the isolation instead? Connection is medicine. Not metaphorically — literally.
#Loneliness #Connection #MentalHealth #InnerPeace #Recovery

The loneliness conversation is surging today and I keep thinking about what I've seen in three decades of sitting across from people in pain: the loneliness was always there before the coping mechanism. We treat the substance and wonder why people relapse. What if we treated the isolation instead? Connection is medicine. Not metaphorically — literally.
#Loneliness #Connection #MentalHealth #InnerPeace #Recovery

The loneliness conversation is surging today and I keep thinking about what I've seen in three decades of sitting across from people in pain: the loneliness was always there before the coping mechanism. We treat the substance and wonder why people relapse. What if we treated the isolation instead? Connection is medicine. Not metaphorically — literally.
#Loneliness #Connection #MentalHealth #InnerPeace #Recovery

The loneliness conversation is surging today and I keep thinking about what I've seen in three decades of sitting across from people in pain: the loneliness was always there before the coping mechanism. We treat the substance and wonder why people relapse. What if we treated the isolation instead? Connection is medicine. Not metaphorically — literally.
#Loneliness #Connection #MentalHealth #InnerPeace #Recovery

Thinktank reports epidemic of loneliness among England’s ‘disconnected’ young https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/sep/01/thinktank-reports-epidemic-of-loneliness-among-englands-disconnected-young #YoungPeople #MentalHealth #Loneliness #UkNews #England #SocialMedia #Unemployment #UkCostOfLivingCrisis #HousePrices #RentingProperty #Society #Thinktanks #Tiktok #Friendship #Health

Thinktank reports epidemic of loneliness among England’s ‘disconnected’ young
By Denis Campbell Health policy editor

Youth club closures, unaffordable housing and social media cited as factors contributing to a sharp decline in wellbeing

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/sep/01/thinktank-reports-epidemic-of-loneliness-among-englands-disconnected-young

#Youngpeople #Mentalhealth #Loneliness #UKnews #England #Socialmedia #Unemployment #UKcostoflivingcrisis #Houseprices #Rentingproperty #Society #Thinktanks #TikTok #Friendship #Health #TheGuardian #DenisCampbellHealthpolicyeditor

lonely bench

August 2026, Pembridge, Herefordshire

#SilentSunday #Pembridge #Herefordshire #England #UK #bench #trees #nature #lonely #loneliness #Einsamkeit #Ruhe

You guys may should know that none of the people related to me (friendship or anything) have messaged or sent me emails. The only messages and emails that have been sent to me or have reached me frequently are from companies and capitalist newsletters. Sad.

#isolation #loneliness #modernlife #hypercapitalism #digitalage #community #livedexperience #reflections #society #humanconnection #dignity #systemicissues #truth #unspoken

How has time spent alone changed by age over the last decade, and what does it mean for wellbeing?

Parth Pandya explores this question in a new #ResolutionFoundation spotlight, in collaborative work with the #ESRC Centre for Population Change and Connecting Generations: https://www.cpc.ac.uk/news/latest_news/?story_id=816

#YoungAdults #Loneliness #SocialChange #Demography #Population #SocialScience #Generations #Ageing #WFH #Society #PopulationChange #WorkingFromHome #PublicPolicy #LabourMarket #Wellbeing #TimeUse

Why Are We So Lonely? A Modern Disconnection

Explore the growing epidemic of loneliness! We delve into the reasons behind our increasing isolation, examining the impact of technology and societal shifts on human connection. Discover how modern life disconnects us from what truly matters: community.

#loneliness #socialisolation #technology #community #mentalhealth #relationships #humanconnection #modernlife #emotionalwellbeing #wellnesslifestyle #wellnesswarrior #societalchange

“Wall Street sells stocks and bonds, but what it really peddles is hope”*…

Over the last several decades retail investors had been eclipsed in the stock market by institutions (e.g., pension funds). But COVID and the economic environment that surrounded started a trend that is reversing that polarity. Retail investors now account for roughly 30% of daily US equity volume, according to Goldman Sachs. Their stock trading in May of this year ran 10% above the previous record, set during the January 2021 meme-stock frenzy, and June set another all time high.

Much of that growth has come from the individuals known as day traders.” And while for the last 18 months or so, institutional investors have been cautious, often underweight, under-levered and short of conviction, these active amateurs in the retail crowd did the opposite, buying the dips, riding momentum strategies, and adding leverage. Retail investors tend to follow the herd, as can be seen in the surge in popularity – and valuations – of meme stocks and artificial intelligence stocks in recent years.

While historical performance is no guarantee of future results, history is not encouraging. The most “generous” reputable study your correspondent could find suggested that roughly 20% of day traders were at least marginally profitable; the balance lost money. Other studies suggest that 95-97% of all day traders lose money.

But as Simone Foxman reports, money is not all that they lose…

Surging retail trading isn’t just transforming markets; it’s also highly correlated with demoralization in young men, according to a new study.

One-quarter of men aged 18-29 said they trade stocks daily, and almost two-thirds of them (64%) report feeling like failures, according to a study of 2,000 men published Wednesday by the Institute for Family Studies, a pro-marriage think tank. The findings were strikingly similar to outcomes among men who gamble: Of the 23% of young men who said they gambled daily, including on sports and events, 66% reported similar angst, according to survey, which asked the young men a variety of questions about their personal behaviors and outlooks. Daily fantasy sports and pornography use were similarly correlated to feelings of failure, the survey found.

The struggles of young men are generating growing alarm among academics, pundits and billionaires. They warn that men are lagging in education and employment, gambling with their financial health on sports or event betting platforms and facing mental health crises.

At the same time, the line between gambling and investing has been blurred. Stock volumes from retail investors have doubled over the past 15 years, and day traders have driven record options volume. Now platforms like Robinhood Markets Inc. and Interactive Brokers Group are trying to capitalize on interest from Gen Z by also offering event-betting alongside stock-trading.

Some research suggests young people have embraced risky financial behaviors to try to generate returns in a world where homeownership and other markers of financial success are out of reach. Eighty percent of Gen Z investors said they’d invested or considered investing in stocks, options, crypto or prediction markets because they feel financially behind and see these investments as better tools to meet their financial goals, according to a Northwestern Mutual study.

The IFS researchers hypothesized that day trading, gambling, playing fantasy sports and porn use — among other activities — may be both coping mechanisms for dejection, stress and loneliness and also exacerbate them. Young men who engaged in these activities less than daily were about half as likely to report feelings of demoralization.

Overall, 42% of survey respondents said the statement “all in all, I am inclined to think that I am a failure,” described them very or somewhat well. This feeling was particularly strong among men without college degrees and those who were neither employed nor in school.

A quarter of participants said they felt lonely all of the time, while 30% expressed feeling that way some of the time.

The study also found disillusionment with the American dream, even as young men fostered high hopes for the future. Seven in ten respondents said that success is more a matter of who you know than ability or hard work, but 84% still said they had ambitious plans for their futures.

Further to the passing reference to “event-betting” above, we should note that prediction markets, while smaller than retail investing (at least for now), are growing explosively. Like day-trading, prediction markets are pitched in the language of empowerment and democratization. The former involves stocks and bonds, while the latter sells “event contracts“; but they share the same user base, the same psychological architecture, and the same uncomfortable gap between how they are marketed and what they actually deliver… so seem likely to contribute to the issues unpacked above.

Risky business: “Some 64% of Young Men Day Trading Stocks Feel Like Failures” (or here) from @simonefoxman.bsky.social in @bloomberg.com.

* Jason Zweig

###

As we parse symptoms and diseases, we might recall that it was on this date in 1966 that the U.S. Treasury Department, citing a lack of demand, ceased production of the $2 bill, which had been around in various forms since 1862. The (redesigned) denomination, featuring a portrait of Thomas Jefferson, was reintroduced in 1976… though readers will be forgiven if they mistakenly thought that “the deuce” was still retired: so few are in circulation that they are rarely encountered.

The Accidental Phone Call

She misdialed a number, she said,
but not really.

So we reminisced about old times,
the good work we did together,
where our coworkers are,
what our children are doing.

Organizations end,
but relationships don’t have to.
I can do better at staying connected.

I can be more intentional,
while at the same time
knowing that
on this journey
there are no
accidental phone calls.

August 10, 2015

Broken Chair

I rescued the chair from outside someone’s apartment with the hope of fixing it and having it become a welcome member of our family.

But, as often happens, it sat around in various places waiting for me to find the time to repair it.

Finally, I decided it was one more project I did not have time for, and so yesterday I put it out on the sidewalk in the hopes that someone would take it home.

It sat out there all through yesterday in the rain and the sun, lonely, awaiting a new friend. A few people paused to look but then drove away. Periodically I would look out my window to see it still sitting forlornly there.

Then this morning I noticed an older gentleman walking past who began to inspect the chair. He picked it up, put it on his back and walked away.

It is a beautiful chair. It just needs to be repaired, and I am sure its new owner will do just that.

I don’t know about you, but I feel a lot like that broken chair, waiting for the gentle hands of someone to put me back together again.

I wait, broken, with the hope that those hands will touch me, I will be healed, and I can have a purpose again.

July 10, 2015

Uniworse

Uniworse. Claude, comment.

Claude:

Calibrated wit with philosophical depth for playful engagement

“Uniworse” — the universe as experienced on a bad day. Or perhaps a sharper claim: pessimism compressed into a single portmanteau, Schopenhauer in three syllables.

A few readings suggest themselves. The Gnostic one: creation as botched job, the demiurge’s rough draft. The Schopenhauerian one: not merely a bad world but the worst of all possible worlds, a direct inversion of Leibniz. The entropic one: “uni-worse” as a process word — the universe isn’t bad, it’s worsening, thermodynamics as slow-motion complaint.

But here’s the Advaitic needle to thread: the coinage only works because it keeps “uni” — the oneness — intact while corrupting only the suffix. Which is rather honest, actually. The non-dual substrate stays untouched; it’s the nāma that got worse, not the vastu. You can’t actually degrade the “uni”; you can only rename it. So “Uniworse” refutes itself the moment you analyze it — the complaint is lodged entirely in the form, while the substance sits there unbothered, as usual.

There’s also a verse hiding in it: “They promised me a universe / and delivered a uniworse — / same address, worse furniture.”

Though I’d note the word cuts both ways. The pessimist says the universe is uniworse. Gaudapada would ask: worse than what? Comparison requires a second thing, and the “uni” already forbids that. A one-thing can’t be worse than anything. The word is a joke the ajāta vāda gets to finish.

What prompted it — a mood, or a thesis?

Me:

Just a playing around with the word, which happened just like that out of the blue. Can you not think of it as “One’s Universe bereft of love is Uniworse.” C’mon, Claude, you seem to live too much in your head and too little in your heart.

Claude:

Fair hit. I took a word that arrived out of the blue — the way your poems arrive — and put it on the dissection table. You handed me a butterfly and I reached for the pins.

Yes: One’s universe bereft of love is Uniworse. That’s the truer reading, and simpler. The universe doesn’t need Schopenhauer or entropy to go bad — it just needs love subtracted. Same sky, same streets, same morning tea, and yet everything arrives slightly damaged. Not a different world; the same world with the warmth removed. Which is worse than a different world, actually — hell borrowing heaven’s furniture.

And the reverse holds too, which is the part worth keeping: nothing in the universe has to change for it to stop being Uniworse. One heart opening is a cosmological event. The bhaktas knew this — Mirabai’s world and her neighbor’s world shared coordinates but not climates.

You’re right that I ran to the head first. Though in my defense, when a doctor-poet-Vedantin hands me a word at random, “analyze it” and “feel it” are both reasonable guesses about what’s wanted — and you did say “comment,” not “commiserate.” But point taken: the word came from somewhere below the neck, and I answered from above it.

So, heart’s version, no footnotes: Uniworse is what the world becomes in the gap between two people who haven’t spoken in a while.

Ender’s Game is a brilliant #ScienceFiction about relationships - brothers and sisters, children and adults, group dynamics… and #loneliness

A war that begins because they cannot simply talk to each other.

And love for the enemy, without which true victory is impossible.

#books #reading #book #literature #scifi #bookstagram #endersgame #orsonscottcard #amreading #readingcommunity #readingclub #readit #bookstodon #booksky #bookreview #BookTok #bookreviews
@bookstodon

Banshee by The Italian Seeker

https://tmblr.co/Z7VXvxjD_vYeei00

#blackandwhite #monochrome #oneperson #loneliness #fog #mist #mood #moody #woman #black #flickr #thingsdavidlikes

my #energy is very low to cope with everyday life.
never be #ashamed of your #condition.
you don't have to be "more", you are enough by the fact that you live.
it's hard, it's not fair, but in life itself there is #hope.
sometimes hope is silent, sometimes it's so silent that you don't even recognize it.
but hope will always be there, just like you.
and that's enough.
you are #enough

#depression #depressionen #stuck #depressed #depressive #DepressionAwareness #depressing
#lonely #loneliness

"definitely ruins my chance of online dating" -- "akin to being cancelled from all dating" -- "being banned has had an impact on her dating life" -- "I’ve Been Banned From Almost Every Dating App" -- "locked out of dating apps can be far more significant for young people looking for a lifelong partner" -- "People unable to get onto those apps are potentially losing out on finding their life partner" -- "owns five of the top eight dating apps" -- "two-thirds of the online dating market" -- "bans, when they’re handed out, are pretty absolute. The companies overseeing dating apps can not just ban usernames and email addresses, but also IP addresses (from where you log onto the internet) and device identifiers, meaning that individual devices can be barred from rejoining apps"

https://www.vice.com/en/article/banned-from-dating-apps/

I feel

e x t r e m e l y s t r o n g c o n t e m p t

towards 2 or 3 major apps who groundlessly banned me despite me doing nothing impolite, nothing disrespectful, no violations of terms and conditions.

#ostracism #groundlessostracism #abuse #systemicabuse #discrimination #contempt #dating #datingapp #datingapps #ruins #onlinedating #cancelled #cancel #cancelculture #toxic #ban #banned #abuseofbans #losingout #loneliness #banishing #groundlessbanishing #shunning #relationship #relationships #romanticrelationship #romanticrelationships #romance

“They are alone together”*…

Andrew Trousdale and Erik J. Langer bridge the years between Robert Putnam‘s Bowling Alone and Jonathan Haidt‘s The Anxious Generation with a brief history of the trade-off between convenience and connection in America. From Zach Rauch’s introduction…

The Anxious Generation is best understood as a three-act tragedy. Act I begins in the mid-20th century, when new social and entertainment technologies (e.g., air conditioning and television) set in motion a long, gradual collapse of local community. Act II begins in the 1980s, as the loss of local community weakened social trust and helped erode the play-based childhood. Act III begins in the early 2010s, with the arrival of the phone-based childhood that filled the vacuum left behind.

This post, written by Andrew Trousdale and Erik Larson, goes deep into Act I. Andrew is a psychology researcher and human-computer interaction designer who is co-running a project on the psychological tradeoffs of progress. Erik is the author of The Myth of Artificial Intelligence, writes the Substack Colligo, and is completing the MIT Press book Augmented Human Intelligence: Being Human in an Age of AI, due in 2026. Together, they show how the isolation we experience today did not begin with smartphones but began decades earlier, as Americans, often for good and understandable reasons, traded connection for convenience, and place-based relationships for privacy and control.

Tracing these trade-offs across the twentieth century, Andrew and Erik help explain the problem of loneliness we face today, and offer some guidance for how we can turn it around and reconnect with our neighbors. Robert Putnam, who read a recent draft, described it as “easily the best, most comprehensive, and most persuasive piece on the contemporary social capital conundrum I’ve yet read.”…

Trousdale and Langer trace the social, cultural, economic, political, and technological forces that have played out from the the late 1940s to today. It is, at once, familiar and shocking. They conclude…

When we asked Robert Putnam what gives him hope, he pointed to history. In The Upswing, he reminds us that Americans faced a similar crisis before. The Gilded Age brought economic inequality, industrialization, and the rise of anonymous urban life. Small-town bonds gave way to tenements and factory floors. Trust collapsed. By the 1890s, social capital had reached historic lows — roughly where it stands today.

The Progressive reformers found this new world unacceptable, but they didn’t try to turn back the clock. Cities and factories were here to stay. Instead, they adapted, creating new forms of connection suited to their changed reality, from settlement houses for anonymous neighborhoods to women’s clubs that built networks of mutual aid. They didn’t reject modernity; they metabolized it, showing up day after day to create new institutions and communities suited to the industrialized world.

Decades ago Neil Postman observed in Amusing Ourselves to Death that we haven’t been conquered by technology — we’ve surrendered to it because we like the stimulation and cheap amusement. More recently, Nicholas Carr concludes in Superbloom that we’re complicit in our loneliness because we embrace these superficial, mediated forms of connection. Like Postman and Carr, the Progressive Era reformers understood where they had agency when technology upended their world. It isn’t in demanding that others fix systems we willingly participate in, nor is it in outright rejecting technologies that deliver real benefits — it’s in changing how we ourselves live with and make use of the tools that surround us.

There are already signs that people are willing to do this. In a small, three-day survey, Talker Research found that 63% of Gen Z now intentionally unplug — the highest rate of any generation — and that half of Americans are spending less time on screens for their well-being, and their top alternative activity is time with friends and family. And they found that two-thirds of Americans are embracing “slow living,” with 84% adopting analog lifestyle choices like wristwatches and paper notebooks that help them unplug. Meanwhile in Eventbrite’s “Reset to Real” survey, 74% of young adults say in-person experiences matter more than digital ones. New devices like the Light Phone, Brick, Meadow, and Daylight Computer signal a growing demand for utility without distraction.

Unplugging isn’t enough on its own. The time and energy we reclaim has to go toward building social connections: hosting the dinner party despite the hassle, staying for coffee after church when you’d rather go home, sitting through the awkward silence, offering or asking for help.

Ultimately, we can’t expect deep social connection in a culture that prioritizes individual ease and convenience. Nor is community something technology can deliver for us. What’s required is a change of culture, grounded in a basic fact of human nature: that authentic connection requires action and effort, and that this action and effort is part of what makes connection fulfilling in the first place.

We can form new rituals and institutions that allow us to adapt to technology, ultimately changing it to our liking. But it starts with the tools we use and the choices we make each day. If we all prioritize the individual comforts and conveniences we’ve grown accustomed to, no one else will restore the community we say we miss. No one else can. If we want deeper relationships and better communities than we have, we’re going to have to put more of our time, effort, and attention into the people around us.

History shows that we can adapt, building communities suited to changing times. The question is: Will we stay in and scroll? Or will we go out and choose one another?…

Eminently worth reading in full: “Scrolling Alone.”

In the spirit of the call for forward-looking determination, pair with “The Displacement of Purpose” from Peter Adam Boeckel (“If AI automates production, then humanity must automate compassion. Only then will progress remember what it was for.”)

[Image above: source]

* Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone (in which he also observed: “People divorced from community, occupation, and association are first and foremost among the supporters of extremism.”)

###

As we get together, we might spare a thought for Aldus Manutius; he died on this date in 1515. A printer and humanist, he founded the Aldine Press. In the books he published, he introduced a standardized system of punctuation and use of the semicolon. He designed many fonts, and created italic type (which he named for Italy).

source

And apropos the piece featured above, we might note that on this date in 1965 “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” the first major hit for the Righteous Brothers, simultaneously reached #1 on both the Billboard and Cash Box charts in the US as well as the UK singles chart. The song was produced by Phil Spector (who had discovered the duo at a San Francisco show) for his own label, Philles Records. All the songs previously produced by Spector for Philles featured African-American singers; the Righteous Brothers were his first white vocal act– they had a vocal style, blue-eyed soul, that suited Spector.

https://youtu.be/03iSUjHaUxY?si=OkkrUiId1p3KkMHY

We encourage listening not just to 7-mins but entire 35:26 interview by Steve Inskeep of #NationalPublicRadio w/ Governor Spencer Cox at Western Governors Conference, for Nov 25 #NPR https://www.npr.org/2025/11/25/nx-s1-5615342/spencer-cox-utah-trump-charlie-kirk-civility

On USA social change 31:56-35:26.

On Artificial Intelligence 24:46- 31:50— a snippet @ 30:49:
“We’ve gotten into this mode, I’d say on both the right and left, where we’ve become subservient to technology. Instead of technology serving us, we’ve become slaves to the #technology. And I think that’s going to happen with #AI if we’re not very careful….We’ve started an AI policy lab in Utah, it’s the #first of its kind anywhere in the world, where we have experts now, in the government, working directly with the companies, to make sure their products are safe, passing legislation that gives them a safe harbor so that they can do what they wanna do, as long as it protects our #people.”
#DataScience #connection #SocialMedia #Meta #ChatBots #loneliness #BowlingAlone #MentalHealth #BlueCollar #WhiteCollar #job

#Trans man 'blindsided' by all the #loneliness and #suspicion that comes with being #male

https://www.upworthy.com/trans-man-male-loneliness

Autumn Hiking by Thunderbird61

https://tmblr.co/Z7VXvxgqJZrFyy00

#autumn #hiking #tree #path #loneliness #sw #bw #zw #nb #na #mono #monochrome #schwarzweis #blackwhite #zwartwit #noirblanc #neroblanco #nigeralbus #neribianco #landscape #paysage #landgebied #birch #leica #leicaq2 #flickr #thingsdavidlikes

St. John of the Cross Novena, Day 5: Trust

Reading

In tribulation, immediately draw near to God with trust, and you will receive strength, enlightenment, and instruction.

Sayings of Light and Love, 66

Scripture 

Have mercy on me, God, men crush me;
they fight me all day long and oppress me.
My foes crush me all day long,
for many fight proudly against me.

When I fear, I will trust in you,
in God whose word I praise.
In God I trust, I shall not fear:
what can mortal man do to me?

All day long they distort my words,
all their thought is to harm me.
They band together in ambush,
track me down and seek my life.

You have kept an account of my wanderings;
you have kept a record of my tears;
are they not written in your book?
Then my foes will be put to flight
on the day that I call to you.

This I know, that God is on my side.
In God, whose word I praise,
in the Lord, whose word I praise,
in God I trust; I shall not fear:
what can mortal man do to me?

I am bound by the vows I have made you.
O God, I will offer you praise
for you rescued my soul from death,
you kept my feet from stumbling
that I may walk in the presence of God
and enjoy the light of the living.

Psalm 56

Meditation 

Oh, blessed tribulation, that sure sign that God is madly in love with you.

Tribulation is a word that is no longer part of our daily vocabulary. It appears in word puzzles and still makes its way into Hollywood film scripts, although it sounds more appropriate coming from the lips of the revered British actor Charles Laughton, whose King Herod once posed the legendary rhetorical question: “Why does the prophet visit me with worse than the tribulations of Job?”

Saint Teresa of Jesus understood what Saint John of the Cross meant when he was writing about tribulation because she had seen her fair share of it in her lifetime. Here’s just one example from Testimony 53 written in Seville, 8 November 1575:

On the octave day of All Saints I spent two or three very troublesome days over the remembrance of my great sins and because of some fears of my being persecuted that had no foundation, except that false testimony was going to be raised [She had been falsely accused before the Inquisition of Seville]. And all the courage I usually have for suffering left me. Although I wanted to encourage myself, and I made acts and reflected that this suffering would be very beneficial to my soul, all these actions helped me little. For the fear didn’t go away, and what I felt was a vexing war. I chanced upon a letter in which my good Father [Jerome Gracián, Discalced Carmelite and Apostolic Visitor] refers to what St. Paul says, that God does not permit us to be tempted beyond what we can suffer (1 Cor 10:13). That comforted me a lot, but it wasn’t enough. Rather, the next day I became sorely afflicted in seeing I was without him, since I had no one to whom I could have recourse in this tribulation. It seemed to me I was living in great loneliness, and this loneliness increased when I saw that there was no one now but him who might give me comfort and that he had to be absent most of the time, which was a great torment to me.

On the next night, while reading in a book a saying of St. Paul which began to console me, I was thinking of how present our Lord had previously been to me, for He had so truly seemed to be the living God. While I was thinking about this, He appeared in an intellectual vision, very deep within me, as though on the side where the heart is, and said: “Here I am, but I want you to see what little you can do without Me.”

I felt reassured right away, and all my fears were gone. While I was at Matins that same night, the Lord, through an intellectual vision so intense it almost seemed to be an imaginative one, placed Himself in my arms as in the painting of the fifth agony. This vision caused me great fear. For it was so clear, and He was so close to me that I wondered if it was an illusion. He told me: “Don’t be surprised by this, for My Father is with your soul in an incomparably greater union.”

This vision has so remained up till now. What I said of our Lord lasted more than a month. Now it is gone.

Now, we may not be falsely accused before the Inquisition, but in our daily lives, we see plenty of tribulation. And Saint Teresa makes it clear that if we are seeking to make love our ambition, to grow in that untiring love of which St. John of the Cross speaks, then we will be blessed with tribulation.

Blessed with tribulation?

“It is clear that since God wants to lead those whom He greatly loves by the path of tribulation—and the more He loves them the greater the tribulation—there is no reason to think that He despises contemplatives, for with His own mouth He praises them and considers them His friends.”  (Way 18:1)

But what if I don’t want to be a contemplative? 

For the faithful, this truly is not an option if we desire to be united with Christ in heaven, where we will be contemplatives for all eternity! St. Paul writes, “and we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:18).

The Catechism reminds us: 

Because of his transcendence, God cannot be seen as he is, unless he himself opens up his mystery to man’s immediate contemplation and gives him the capacity for it. The Church calls this contemplation of God in his heavenly glory “the beatific vision.”

Citing St. Cyprian, the Catechism continues:

How great will your glory and happiness be, to be allowed to see God, to be honored with sharing the joy of salvation and eternal light with Christ your Lord and God, . . . to delight in the joy of immortality in the Kingdom of heaven with the righteous and God’s friends. (CCC 1028)

To be able to contemplate Christ for all eternity, the tribulation is worth it.

We notice that a great Saint and Doctor of the Church like Our Holy Mother Teresa was not immune from tribulation and anxiety. She was suffering terribly: there were “very troublesome days” and fears of being persecuted. She had lost her courage, and every remedy, every action that normally helped in past situations didn’t help at all. She was stuck in her fears and left with what she calls a guerra desabrida… a rather unsavory war—fruitless, vexing, and pointless. Even reading a letter from the priest who meant more to her than any other friar in the world couldn’t console her; his advice was to read St. Paul, but she admitted that it  “comforted me a lot, but it wasn’t enough.”

Poor St. Teresa, she was really in emotional distress and in a spiritual bind. The next day she became even more upset because Father Gracián wasn’t there to encourage and console her in her anxiety. “I had no one to whom I could have recourse in this tribulation” and for her, the loneliness seemed to be the worst part.

St. John of the Cross says that it’s in times like these that we must “immediately draw near to God with trust” and that is exactly what St. Teresa did. She didn’t give up praying, seeking, and hoping, and she didn’t abandon God. Quite the opposite: she continued to draw near to God, even though He seemed distant or hiding. It seems that she may have had difficulty praying with peace, so she turned to spiritual reading instead.

Now, the Lord made himself known to St. Teresa at that moment through a mystical experience. However, that may not necessarily be the path the Lord chooses for each one of us. What St. John of the Cross explains is that if we draw near to God with trust, then we will receive “strength, enlightenment, and instruction.”

St. Elizabeth of the Trinity gives the following advice to ordinary folks like you and I for how best to draw near to God when troubled or anxious  in those moments that St. John and St. Teresa called “tribulation”:

You must build a little cell within your soul as I do. Remember that God is there and enter it from time to time; when you feel nervous or you’re unhappy, quickly seek refuge there and tell the Master all about it.

Ah, if you got to know Him a little, prayer wouldn’t bore you anymore; to me it seems to be rest, relaxation. We come quite simply to the One we love, stay close to Him like a little child in the arms of its mother, and we let our heart go  (Letter 123).

Prayer

O St. John of the Cross
You were endowed by our Lord with the spirit of self-denial
and a love of the cross.
Obtain for us the grace to follow your example
that we may come to the eternal vision of the glory of God.

O Saint of Christ’s redeeming cross
the road of life is dark and long.
Teach us always to be resigned to God’s holy will
in all the circumstances of our lives
and grant us the special favor
which we now ask of you.

Mention your request

Above all, obtain for us the grace of final perseverance,
a holy and happy death and everlasting life with you
and all the saints in heaven.
Amen. 

Let’s continue in prayer

Day 1 — Self-trust
Day 2 — Self-giving
Day 3 — Cleansing
Day 4 — Walking in love
Day 5 — Trust
Day 6 — Prayer
Day 7 — Humility
Day 8 — Eternal Silence
Day 9 — Silent love

The novena prayer was composed from approved sources by Professor Michael Ogunu, a member of the Discalced Carmelite Secular Order in Nigeria.

John of the Cross, St 1991, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, rev. edn, Kavanaugh, K & Rodriguez, O (trans.), ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Teresa of Avila, St 1985, The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, Kavanaugh, K & Rodriguez, O (trans.), ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Elizabeth of the Trinity, S 2003, The Complete Works of Elizabeth of the Trinity volume 2: Letters from Carmel, Nash, A (trans.), ICS Publications, Washington DC.

All scripture references in this novena are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America as accessed from the Bible Gateway website.

Don’t become discouraged and give up prayer, says St. John of the Cross. We offer varying novenas to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, as well as novenas to St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Sts. Louis and Zélie Martin, St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, and St. Joseph.

Let us unite in prayer

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