A prayer in loneliness

For all who sit in this quiet ache

Sometimes the wind would blow a wift of sensations in this body , the mind too quick to label would name it ‘the excruciating pain of loneliness’. Oh I remember this pain! It was my first few years in the University of Ilorin. I was far away from all I had known in the 18 years of my life. I was left in this school with strangers — the farthest I had ever been from family who were now a few hundred miles from me. The pain of separation would shoot through my sides, pushing me near tears. But I had to stuff them. After all, “men don’t cry”.

It’s been many years now and I am visited by the same sensations. And then similar thoughts, “ a longing for intimacy”. You stay long enough in silence to figure out that emotions sometimes rise up before thoughts. And when one studies the beautiful cocktail of emotions, how they wash through the body, seeing all the ways one has learned to repress them, it becomes yet something to hold in wonder.

And slowly, in this wonder and in silence, a weirdness shows up: just sounds, sensations, a knowing of these thoughts and a missing "me".

I wrote this piece below as a prayer. There's something consoling and at the same time beautiful about naming what’s showing up for me at this moment, framing it with the name of the Lover and offering it up.

Great Lover,
Right now, all I perceive
is radical silence.
And it comes with fear:
the fear of separation,
all the fears that come
with being alone.

So I pray, let this silence
not be emptiness,
but spaciousness.
Not abandonment,
but your invitation.

Let it be your invitation
to go even deeper
into the dark spaces
where you wait
hand outstretched,
gently summoning me inward
where no other hands can reach.

I confess, I crave a face,
a touch, a voice,
something to name as “with me.”
But as all things fall away,
may I learn to stay.
May I learn about my own constance.
May I learn to see that I am not undone.
That what I think is void
might be the womb
of something holy.

When the world rages,
and economies crumble,
when our sense of division
creates even more chaos,
let me hear your soft voice distinctly.
When the world goes quiet,
and once again I feel alone,
let me hear the hum beneath it all—
this presence that does not leave.
This presence out of which
the world itself and all
its senses emerges.

In my forgetfulness,
may I not rest in the echo of missing voices
(the echos of coveted memories),
but in the still, unwavering heartbeat
of something deeper than company:
the One who is never absent.

May I not fear my own company.
May I not run from these long hours
that stretch out with no witness.
Teach me to sit with myself
until I am no longer a stranger.
Until I feel my own presence
as your presence,
your breath as my breath,
my breath as your breath.

And that will be enough.
I know that will be enough.

Teach me to see
the sacred hidden in the ordinary—
the flicker of light against the wall,
the thrumming of my refrigerator,
the rumble in my belly,
the breath rising and falling,
the way these thoughts echo
like a canyon, vast and deep
and sometimes, bothersome.

So let this ache draw me
not toward distraction,
but to the awareness of Awareness.
Let it deepen my seeing,
soften my heart,
carve space for compassion
for all who sit in this quiet ache.

For all who sit in this quiet ache,
we share of the same essence,
this very same essence!
The one that’s nearer than near.

You, Lover, who are nearer than my skin.
You, who walk with me
through this dark tunnel,
through this dry valley,
I ask that you do not fix this emptiness,
but fill it with Your being.

Until this room,
this breath,
this moment—
is made home.