Throughout The Shattering of Loneliness, Erik Varden brings to attention a number of instances in the Biblical Story where remembrance is key.  He started with the Ash Wednesday reminder that we are dust.  From there he revisited call to remember slavery in Egypt, the fate of Lot’s wife, Jesus’ words in the Last Supper, and the promise of the Spirit (who would “call everything to mind”).  In the final chapter, Varden looks back to earlier in the Biblical Story and attempts to go deeper and wider in what he wants readers to remember.

The chapter title comes from a moment early in Deuteronomy, right after the giving of the Great Commandment and as preparation for entering the Promised Land.  The full paragraph from the ESV:

¹⁰ “And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, ¹¹ and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, ¹² then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. ¹³ It is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. ¹⁴ You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you— ¹⁵ for the Lord your God in your midst is a jealous God—lest the anger of the Lord your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth.

In his reflection on this command, Varden brings in the chief monastic task to “remember God” while also bringing in the poetry of Rainer Marie Rilke and the theology of Athanasius, particularly as they all point towards the idea of longing as key in the Christian life:

Human beings, says Athanasius, are conditioned to long because they are structured in such a way that nothing in this world can satisfy them.  Made in the image of the Word of God, they find no peace outside of a sustaining relationship with the Logos who, alone, can bring them satisfaction.

A precursor of C. S. Lewis, for sure.

From there, Varden sets out to tell the story of our longing as it relates to God’s nature, the creation of the world and humanity, and the affect of the Fall on our God-given/God-directed longing.  Over the course of the chapter, Varden tells the story well (thus making it difficult to replicate in a quick reflection).  Varden summarizes:

There is a distinction to be drawn between our heavenly, ‘logical’ longing and our earthbound, ‘illogical’ desire.  Yet the fundamental principle holds: any authentic longing, any longing that, even implicitly, points towards eternity, is a possible path towards God.  Dying, Christ declared a sentence of death on death.  Death alone is dead.  In Christ, we go beyond what is ‘natural’ so that our nature, one with the Word, is no longer what it used to be.  The condition of newness, which corresponds to what at first we were, makes us, too, possible epiphanies.  ‘Our arguments,’ says Athanasius, ‘are not composed merely of words, but have the proof of their truth in experience itself.’  On this basis he concludes by professing the principal result of the Word’s incarnation: ‘He became human that we might become divine.’

All this to say, I suppose, that one way Christians can and should engage those around us is through an “apologetics of desire.”  Or, perhaps as Jamie Smith would say it, helping us realize that “we are what we love.”  I’ll be the first to admit that I find the argument appealing and of the utmost importance . . . and that I find very few good examples of its effectiveness in contemporary Christianity (at least of the evangelical sort).  I suppose we often hear it as some version of the “God-shaped hole” approach, though that’s not quite it.  Varden is convinced, though, that the approach of longing is key in the 21st century, for a people who either do not know or have forgotten to remember who it was and is that delivers us from slavery into a good and pleasant land.  Varden claims:

Our time is wary of words.  It shuns dogmas.  Yet it knows the meaning of longing.  It longs confusedly, without knowing what for.  But the sense of harboring a void that needs filling is there . . . The gospel does not obliterate our longing.  It validates it, assuring us that what we long for is real and substantial.

Because what we truly, deeply long for is Who made us and What we were made for.

There is more to say about this, of course, and Varden does a good job throughout the chapter.

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Over the course of this Lenten season, I’ve attempted to trace some of Varden’s key thoughts on remembrance.  In remembering well, it seems, we might be able to “shatter loneliness.”  It’s not quite the clearest connection or thread for book title and content, but I think I sense what Varden was going for.  Because when we remember well, we can be less lonely.  We remember the God who is always present and always at work, who has not left us even when it feels like He has.  Each of these ways of remembering call us back into a story and a reality that is far too easy for us to forget (which takes me back to what Lewis said about faith and remembrance and the importance of keeping things in front of our eyes and hearts).  It is fitting to end these reflections on Good Friday, I believe, a day in a season ripe with opportunities to remember.