Longing for the infinite
Psalm 19 New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE October 4, 2026 – World Communion Sunday Photo of a mural painted on the wall of a concrete underpass. The mural is in black, white, and gray: a painting of a close-up of a bicycle wheel and gears. In the wheel are the words "Let's love our community". The summer I turned 25, I was a chaplain intern at a state mental health hospital and I was living on the seminary campus. I had changed my driver’s license to my address at school as a sort of declaration of independence, but I knew this was only temporary. I came to the realization that though I had a place to live, I had no home, no place to call my own. This feeling of impermanence was heightened by a sense of knowing that no one else could see the world as I did, could understand my feelings, my reality the way I did. I entered a year of counseling with a pastoral counselor who called it “existential loneliness”, the feeling of being alone in one’s unique exp...
