"The Heart is a Lonely Hunter"

This fact is one that I regret and have agonized over more than once: not only do I have huge gaps in my literary background, but I will never live long enough to read the great books that have been written ages ago; so how then, will I ever keep up with what is being published today, and yesterday, and will be tomorrow?

Today I am amazed and intrigued by Carson McCullers' "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter."

Reading it takes me to my own bookshelf and into a little gem that a former pastor introduced a group of us to a few years ago. Any book that has people shouting at one another across the table is notable. This one was almost a heart stopper for me. Marcus Borg's "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time" stirred my gray matter to read what I could about 'the Sioux spirit person, Black Elk' and Niehart's daughter's retelling of the climb to Harney Peak to relive the vision. But today that is not the point, and it is not the point of Borg's book either.

It is Borg's hypothesis on separation and lonliness that resonate within me. "As a life of being separated from that to which one belongs, exile is often marked by grief, as in one of the psalms of exile: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion." He goes on to say "The same sadness is experessed in one of the church's gread Advent hymns: "O Come O Come Immanuel, and ransome captive Isreal, that :mourns in lonelly exile here."...exile is marked by deep sadness and an aching loneliness."

If the problem is exile, what is the solution? as Borg states, the solution is, of course, a journey of return. I can understand that, having returned to my childhood homeland recently and the power that has always had on me. Alas it is always so fleeting. But that is only scratching the surface of exile. True exile is not of place, but of heart.

Carson McCullers had nailed it at 23 in 1940. I am only on page 70 and with every encounter one finds lonely exiles. She had the key to a good novel so young. My regret is that it wasn't one of the books chosen for my college American Lit class in 1972. It would have been an excellent book to discuss with a group.