ISSUES OF FAITH: A treatment for loneliness

Published 1:30 am Friday, June 12, 2026

I AM VERY thankful for the number of medications now available for what seems like every malady that ails humanity. The diseases described in ads, often named with just three cryptic letters, suggest major relief is just a pill away.

My enthusiasm and gratefulness, though, is much tempered with the fine print on the bottle or the too-fast-to-understand voice on the TV ad that warns the same curative medicine may have side effects that some users will find more than annoying.

As one example, I remember my own experience a few years ago when I was in the middle of a life-defying “dark night of the soul” depression. I was prescribed an antidepressant but alerted to possible dire ideations as a “short term side effect.” The warning scared me to death which, in fact, was the possible outcome. I mean, really?

For all the physical ailments that are now thankfully treatable, there is another painful human condition a pill can’t fix.

It’s a kind of cardiac condition, a “hole” in the heart that yearns for meaningful connection. The malady is manifested as a sickening loneliness.

The lyrics of “The Sounds of Silence,” written by Simon and Garfunkel, seem as relevant now as they were in the mid-1960s. The 1960s, for those of us who can personally remember them, were unsettled at home and abroad. “Unsettled,” maybe, is an understatement for the time. Unpopular armed foreign interventions, ethics violations at the highest national levels, a loss of personal worth and direction … the list can go on and on.

The first verse goes like this: “Hello darkness, my old friend / I’ve come to talk with you again / because a vision softly creeping / left its seeds while I was sleeping / and the vision that was planted in my brain / still remains / within the sound of silence.”

“Darkness” as the absence of guiding light and as metaphor for loneliness is as present to many now as it was in the song’s lyrists’ day.

In fact, loneliness, a product of emotional darkness, was categorized as an epidemic by the U.S. Surgeon General in 2023. Dr. Vivek Murthy’s report described loneliness as a state of mind that centered around “inadequate meaningful connections.” Further, loneliness is directly related to a variety of physical diseases.

A follow-up study by Harvard’s Graduate School of Education described “existential loneliness” as a result of a feeling of being “fundamentally separate or disconnected from others or the world” and an inability to share their true selves with others.

These observations are from secular studies, but they have a spiritual ring to me. In fact, one of the causes of loneliness cited in the Harvard study was a lack of “religious or spiritual life.” I don’t think that means finding a church home is a cure as much as coming “home” to an honest relationship with our Creator. Finding a welcoming congregation can’t hurt though, and it just might help being with fellow pilgrims.

To be accepted and loved for who you truly are is magical in its benefits. Coming to rest in God’s love is the beginning of a treatment for the malady of loneliness. And it has no dire side effects.

St. Augustine, the 4th Century saint, started his adulthood running from God as far as he could, but finally gave up running. He came to realize that “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”

Simon and Garfunkel penned the plaint of loneliness with the “Sound of Silence,” but Marty Haugen, a contemporary hymn writer, wrote more hopeful lyrics in his hymn “Healer of Our Every Ill.”

All the verses are great, but I especially like the last one. It goes like this: “You who know each thought and feeling / Teach us all your way of healing / Spirit of compassion, fill each heart.”

The refrain has become a prayer for me, “Healer of our every ill / Light of each tomorrow / Give us peace beyond our fear / And hope beyond our sorrow.”

Peace and hope are great medicines for a depressive “heart disease” like loneliness. Another line in Simon and Garfunkel’s song is “Hear my words that I might teach you / Take my arms that I might reach you.”

St. Augustine heard words like those and let God become his lifetime friend, which is much better than the sound of silence.

It’s a sad commentary that, as electronically connected as we are to each other, the sound of silence reverberates even in restaurants where the couple or group are all on their phones.

Bowed heads of diners are not in prayer, but looking at their phones! How sad.

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Issues of Faith is a rotating column by religious leaders on the North Olympic Peninsula. Don Corson is an Ordained Deacon in the Lutheran Church (ELCA) and the winemaker for a local winery. He is also the minister for Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Forks. His email is ccwinemaker@gmail.com.