A Meditation in the face of loneliness

2019.3.3 A Meditation in the face of loneliness

Spirit of Life, God of Love, Great Mystery of this Universe—

Some of us come seeking quiet and solitude this morning.  To simply be here together, to be able to pause in life, one individual among many.

Some of us come seeking the known and the familiar, to see a kind face who knows a bit about my life and will ask, how is it today?  Tell me about it.

Some us come tentatively, seeking something, not sure what, but a yearning so clear to be with others, to not be alone today.

Some of us arrive with ease and joy, without a second thought. 

Some of us arrive, finally, after a very long journey, after starts and stops, and detours through other lands, through islands of loneliness.

Some of us arrive with help, with encouragement, after someone found our lonely island and said hey, do you want to come visit a bigger place?

We come aware of our separation, of the differences among us, nervous about how we should act or whether all of who we are will be welcomed.

We come wanting love, wanting recognition, wanting to be seen for who we are.

Some of us come wanting human touch, a hug or a hand shake, because most of the week we don’t have that.

Some of us have children crawling all over us all of the time and just need to feel like a separate person for a while.

Most of us, all of us, come needing to feel safe and in control of our bodies, needing clear boundaries and consent for that hug or handshake. 

We come with all of our invisible “stuff” – all of our hopes and expectations, our personalities and egos, our sorrows, joys, frustrations, quirks, gifts and flaws. Our loneliness.

And here we are, together.  Unique human beings who are both utterly separate and always connected.

What is visible is shallow compared to the invisible: the deeper self we want to bring forth, the sacred and silent pull towards love and acceptance, between you and me.

2019.3.3 "Between You and Me: the Shared World"

2019.3.3          “Between You and Me: the Shared World”  Rev. Laura Bogle

Reading: Gate 4-A     by Naomi Shihab Nye

Unitarian Universalist minister and Army chaplain George Tyger reflects on a time when he was deployed overseas for a stretch, and he felt so lonely, missing his family.  His 8 year old son sent him a teddy bear, all dressed up in an Army Combat Uniform, with a note that said, ‘When lonely, press left paw.”  So George did, because he was feeling lonely, and when he pressed that paw out came the recorded voice of his son saying “I Love you, I miss you.”

George writes:  “There are some values honored by all faith traditions: compassion in the face of suffering, love in the face of hatred, hope in the face of fear. But on some long, lonely nights, what really matters is closer to our hearts than any of these eternal values. Right now, what matters for me is a stuffed bear dressed in ACUs and a voice that says, “I love you and I miss you.”

George’s loneliness is a kind of loneliness that “makes sense” in a way. 

It’s a situational loneliness, having to do with living far away from his family for a while.  It’s a loneliness that is recognized and even held up as a sacrifice of his service.  It doesn’t make it any less hard, but at least it is seen as valid.

I’ve thought that it would be useful to have different words for different kinds of loneliness in our culture.  You know, like the Inuit people have 50 different words for snow.

There’s the loneliness of having to live far away from your family, or moving to a new place where you don’t know anyone.

There’s the loneliness of feeling left out of your friend’s plans.

There’s the loneliness of being ill or disabled, unable to go out, and feeling isolated.

There’s the loneliness of deep grief, when no one else exactly understands.

There’s the loneliness of being in a group of people, but not feeling like an important part of who you are is seen and recognized or valued. 

There’s the loneliness of being different, the only one in a group of people – the only woman, the only person of color, the only gay man, the only person under 35, the only Unitarian Universalist, the only single person… you get the idea.

There’s the loneliness that can arise in long term relationships or marriages, when one day you realize you’ve been so focused on the kids and the work and the older parents and the house repairs, you have forgotten each other.

There’s the loneliness of really wanting to be partnered or married and you’re not.

There’s the loneliness of leadership-- sticking with your principles and saying or doing something even when it is unpopular.

There’s the loneliness of wandering around the shopping center or the grocery store and in the midst of thousands of things to buy wondering if life has any meaning at all.

There’s the loneliness that can come when living alone—whether you do so by choice or not.

So many kinds of loneliness….On any given day, as we encounter others, how can we tell if someone is lonely?

It’s not just that someone is alone.  Being in solitude doesn’t equal loneliness.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a secret sign – some sort of signal that said, “Hey, I need a friend today.”  Because it sure is hard to say it directly. 

It might be even harder to say than admitting an addiction or naming depression. 

Imagine with me for a moment:  walking in here on a Sunday morning and when someone asks how you are doing, simply saying “I’m lonely.”  Or, “I’m feeling lonely today.” 

Maybe hard to imagine for some of us.  Some of us may even have a hard time identifying that loneliness is what we are actually feeling.

Saying “I’m lonely” might be like saying I’m the last one to be picked on the playground.  For someone who is already isolated, that’s just another layer of vulnerability.

Or saying “I’m lonely” might show that everything is not all right in my world of relationships.  For someone who is generally sociable, saying “I’m lonely” might feel like it wouldn’t make sense to anyone else.  How could you be lonely when you have a marriage and kids and a job and community work and a church?

Loneliness is often invisible—either because we don’t really see the folks who are lonely and isolated, or because we don’t understand that we ourselves are lonely. 

Yet it is all around us.

A large study of 20,000 adults published last year indicated that over half the United States rates as lonely according to their scale.

“According to the survey, 54 percent of respondents said they sometimes or always feel that no one knows them very well. Even more (56 percent) reported sometimes or always feeling like the people they’re surrounded with “are not necessarily with them.” (Atlanta Journal Constitution )

Perhaps surprising to some of us-- For younger adults—those born in the 1990s and early 2000s--the rates of loneliness are even higher than for older adults over age 72.  

It’s getting some attention because loneliness is being seen as a public health problem – an epidemic associated with the same kind of health outcomes as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.  Former US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has noted loneliness as the most common pathology in his professional experiences.

Other work has found that loneliness is contagious, and spreads through social networks through feelings of mistrust and negativity.  If I’m feeling lonely, I am less able to reach out and treat you with unconditional positive regard, so our relationship falters, which leads to you feeling more lonely and that impacts your relationships with other people! And so on…

One of the doctors who worked on a study of how loneliness is contagious, writes: 

“When we pay attention to the experiences of those at the periphery, when we make an effort to prevent this sad experience of loneliness, then we can stabilize the whole social network…. We all benefit when we attend to the needs of those at the margins.”  https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/why-loneliness-can-be-contagious/

So, how do we do that, faith community?

In our story this morning, fuzzy monkey was one of those at the margins.  Isolated and lonely on their own little island.  While Fish and Parrot reached out, tried to get fuzzy monkey to a bigger island with the other animals.  They were nice, but they weren’t able to help much. 

We learn from their experience that simply reaching out and being nice isn’t much help if you are expecting the lonely person to be like you.  To be able to swim or fly in order to find a place of belonging.

We sometimes do this in our communities and congregations – usually unconsciously, not intentionally.  We individually and collectively build up certain norms and ways of being that say, to belong here you have to be able to swim or fly to get here.  In building our connections and friendships with people who are already here, in the ways that we are used to gathering, we can unintentionally become exclusive just to those people. 

It was SamSam the grandfather turtle who was able to be with Fuzzy Monkey, to accompany Fuzzy Monkey to a new place of belonging.  SamSam did not ask Fuzzy Monkey to learn to swim or fly.  SamSam carried Fuzzy Monkey on their back until they reached solid ground again. 

And then!  The welcome at Bigger Island!  The Shared World!  This is the kind of welcoming I hope we model here in our congregation! 

We are glad you are here.  Tell us about you.

There is a place here for you. Let me show you around.

We will share our food with you – what do you eat?

Do you want to play with us?  You’re invited.

We may not know everything about monkeys but we are willing to learn.

We may not know everything about your particular story, but here is a place where we will reliably say “I Love You” -- just like George’s teddy bear.

Every week we say “Love is the spirit of this fellowship”  -- here is a place where we believe in the shared world that Naomi Shihab Nye described in our reading this morning.  A shared world where even perfect strangers in an airport will cross barriers of language and culture to help a woman feel safe and included, will even sample her cookies, a shared communion.  We believe it is possible and we will act to make it so.

Look around at this bunch of people, and think “this is the world I want to live in.”  The shared world. Not a single person … apprehensive about any other person. We notice one another.  We offer a place to be known, not just a place to fit in.  We offer one another sustenance, in body and soul.  We ask for help and we offer the help that is needed, the help that actually helps.  We carry each other. 

This is the task of religious community.  The root of the word religion is religio to bind together.

But Unitarian Universalists don’t believe we are bound together by creed or class or race or gender or generation or culture or musical taste or whether you like the word God or not. 

We do affirm that we are always, already bound up with one another in a great web of interdependence. That web can transmit loneliness and isolation like a contagion, in fact this is how our current culture is set up.  But we know that web can transmit love and connection and generosity, the shared world, between me and you.

This is how we bless the world: being mindful of that interdependence, living into the truly shared world, making the invisible ties that bind visible, ties of Love rather than disregard. 

If there is a God, this is how I understand God—as that link between you and me where Love can arise, even in the hardest of circumstances, even across differences.

I end with this blessing prayer for all of us by the late Rev. Nancy Shaffer:

May each one among us have… bodies that
want to stand next to other bodies, not alone,
while singing and bending, stirring soup.
…so that no one
stands alone and no one aches and does not say so.

May our doors be so open it is drafty inside,
and people sometimes shout because noises without
come also within. May those sheltered here
sometimes cry, all at once, letting tear
water clean what words by themselves cannot.
In silent times, may every one present hear
every one else breathing, and know this is not
separate from how the world breathes all night.

May we always have enough room for those
many who want to come in. May those who cherish
this {congregation} be so glad they cannot stop speaking,
stop asking, and may that crowding itself be a gladness
as we keep adding rooms. May we notice
each one who is new and invite her to stay.
May our list of names for the Holy not ever
be finished; and may we hear God chuckling
with us as we find still more.

(from "Instructions in Joy")

May it be so.  Amen.