Inner Climate Change

Spirituality in the Age of Loneliness

The Contemplative Column By Theodore Richards, from the 2021 autumn/winter issue

Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash

I’m on the bus, in a crowd but somehow feeling lonely. We are heading north, along Lakeshore Drive, past Lake Michigan, its waves shimmering in the sunlight, waterfowl dancing along its edge. No one notices. Everyone is staring down at a device, existing in some other, personalized, curated, disembodied, individualized world. It’s a world in which each is simultaneously consumer and product. It is the world crafted by a system, a worldview, called capitalism. In this world, each of us is ultimately alone.

I. The Relevance of Spirituality Today

The question we all have is not so much about what happens to us after we die but whether or not we are alone in the Universe. If we are alone, no afterlife would be worth much; for me, even a blink of an eye with the possibility of true communion with others would be preferable to such an eternity.

The Great Reimagining: Spirituality …