Walls insulate from the warmth of human love

Walls insulate from the warmth of human love

"He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. Putting spittle on his eyes he laid his hands on him and asked, 'Do you see anything?'" (Mark 8:23)

If I remember correctly, I was about 15 years old when I first noticed the low stone walls that criss-crossed through the woods along the New York State Thruway. Who built them, I wondered, and what purpose did they serve? They were often placed too close together to serve as boundaries for a neighbor's encroaching fields and they weren't high enough to stop even a limber youngster from climbing over.

Most likely, my father had explained, they were built simply to define "my space" and "your space." Human beings are remarkably territorial, he reminded me. Those walls always fascinated me but I would soon learn as an adult that there are many other walls that we build and which are often unscalable.

We have all experienced the person who, for any of myriad reasons, protects themselves with an emotional wall of indifference or perhaps an attitude of superiority or a manufactured aura of power. Those people can, and do, hurt us, but more often they hurt themselves in keeping the warmth of human relationships at a safe distance.

For me however the most debilitating experience of a "wall" happened during my long journey through depression.

My spiritual director once asked me if I ever experienced the "wall" that many depressed people speak about. I had, and it was, and sometimes still is, a very powerful experience that almost defies words. But in trying to explain it to him, I realized that the wall is an image of isolation, from people, from events happening around you, often times from feelings.

For the seriously depressed person, the wall is very real. And it is terrifying. Nothing has meaning; there is a sense of despair and hopelessness. In my case, the wall would fall often between me and God, and that was the worst experience because prayer was almost impossible during certain periods. Still, I would force myself to pray because I could feel myself drawing nearer and nearer to giving up -- everything, even life. I came to realize that, with the isolation of depression, it was my emotional connections to people that enabled me to break through the wall. My closest friends always made it clear that they were there if I needed them, no matter the time or place, and made special considerations for my emotional highs and lows. They offered their presence and, perhaps, most importantly, the healing warmth of a human touch.

In reflecting on what the experience meant to me I have often thought about how Jesus used touch so frequently, as in curing the blind man with spit and mud. Surely the Son of God could have healed this man without touching him, but he deeply understood the man's need for human contact, for an expression of love. It is unfortunate that ours is a society that has become afraid to express emotion through touch, unless it is sexual, and that is such a limited understanding of the human makeup. Real love is so much more than that. Eminent sociologist Erich Fromm spoke of the power of real love to break through walls, something that poets have written about as well: "Love is an active power in man; a power which breaks through the walls which separate man from his fellow men, which unite him with others; love makes him overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet it permits him to be himself, to retain his integrity."

Such is the power of real love, better known to us as Christ.

________________

Mary Morrell is the Associate Director of the Office of Religious Education for the Diocese of Metuchen, NJ, and the mother of six sons. She is also the author of Angels in High Top Sneakers from Loyola Press; Things My Father Taught Me, a bi-weekly column that appears in several Catholic newspapers, I'll Walk With God, a monthly newsletter published by the Metuchen Diocesan Office of Religious Education, and a writer for Real Faith TV, produced by the Diocese of Trenton, Office of Communication.

Contact

Diocese of Metuchen
http://www.diometuchen.org NJ, US
Mary Morrell - Associate Director, Office of Religious Education, 732 562-1990

Email

mmorrell@diometuchen.org

Keywords

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