Trust is not earned, it is given, it is lost and it is given again and again and again in an endless cycle of grace. To call someone to earn your trust is to suggest you deserve it in the first place and then sets us up to have to defend how we ever achieved such a status as to actually deserve another’s trust.

I am writing these random and somewhat mopey things today partly in an effort to procrastinate and partly as a way to stop the grey clouds that are outside from invading my soul. The want to penetrate my defenses with whatever cheap means at hand and will not fail to stoop to most devious means.

Writing it out is like laying leeches on the flesh in attempt to draw out the poison inside that threatens to overwhelm. It is a mysterious and ignorant ceremony I perpetrate on myself and yet it often works.

So I am thinking about trust and isolation this morning. How we build and destroy each and how easy it is to look to someone and say “your wish is my command” in terms of both and than set them adrift. I am being purposely obscure (some would say obtuse) but it serves me because it hones the skills of metaphor I so desire.

At any rate I wonder lately at the many, many islands of humanity I see (including myself) floating about in this strange sea of the world. Despite John Donne’s wise assertion that “no man is an island” the reality of things seems very different to me. So if no man, or woman for that matter, is an island than what trick is being played on my eyes?

Isolation is a lie. There is no such thing. There are nearly 7 billion people in the world and none are born in a vacuum. No matter how hard one might try to shut the world away, to keep them all out, others must recognize this attempt and then concede to it, thus making them complicit in the act of isolation and thereby linked to the person who seeks solitude. This is the irony of the whole thing…

I often hear people say things like “they are so hard to connect with” or “they really don’t want anyone around” or “this is a situation of their own choosing”. What I really hear is “It’s too hard” or “I will allow it” or worse still “they deserve it”. That is something we often don’t realize, that the community must consciously and willfully act to allow isolation to continue in a person’s life. In the old days churches would often do this…it was called shunning and it required an act of will on the part of the community to accede to isolating someone…the only way a person can be made to feel as if they are alone is if many people are involved in the process.

This is brokenness. In a world and a people created and designed to be communal and together and an expression of a God who is community within God’s self…this is sin and severing. It is the building of the wall Christ is said in Ephesians to have torn down and which Saint Paul warns against building up again.

There is no single human being on this planet so powerful that they can defy the will of a community and perpetrate isolation upon themselves…it requires help.