Quality Versus Quantity...

In 2019 a team at Trinity College Dublin researched 1,839 adult Americans between the ages of 18 and 70. They found that the quality of their relationships had a far greater impact on their mental health than the number of their relationships. Those with toxic relationships turned out to be far worse in terms of mental health than those with very few relationships - those whom we might call loners.

We have other research that shows the risk of heart disease increases for women in bad marriages and hypertension is more frequent among couples who assess their marriage negatively. All this is still correlational data - so we have to take it with the same grain of salt we apply to the studies on loneliness. But at a minimum, it should give us pause.

There are many potential benefits to this added perspective, especially during a pandemic. Maybe we should focus more on the relationships we have rather than fretting about the gatherings we are temporarily losing.

Let me get super vulnerable here for a minute. I hate not being with my community several times a week. Like most pastors, I literally am at our church almost every time the doors open and often when I have to unlock them to gain entry. I like my life this way. But this was my pre-pandemic life.

At some point I had to grow up and realize that nothing was stopping me from having connections and human contact except my own lethargy about picking up the phone. Has contact with all my relationships survived this loss of personal contact? No they have not. But I suspect there is much for me to learn here about the nature of those relationships. Did the pandemic cause me to lose these relationships? Not really.

What about the ones I’ve gained and strengthened? Nothing like a good pandemic to find out who your friends are!! And it is instructive to examine ourselves and notice who we have been inclined to contact and who we have not (and vice versa). This reach out and touch someone is a two-way street.

Before you assume that I am going to encourage you to make contact with everyone in your phone list - stop. Don’t go there! We’ll unpack this more in tomorrow’s blog post.

We live in a world that defines us by our “isms”. Don’t buy into that nonsense. Spend time today and every day in gratitude for you being you - warts and all.

Striking a Balance Between Loneliness and Connection

Lately it has become one of those things that we say all the time in recovery - we need community. AND WE DO!! This is true. This is very true. But it is not the only truth.

If the opposite of loneliness is too many relationships, then that is also a concern for long term recovery - especially unhealthy relationships. Too much intense contact with others can lead to serious health problems and - in many species of animals - death. Biologists call this “intraspecific competition”. It happens when the same species becomes so over-populated in a given area that there is a scarcity of resources. This leads to infighting; the weaker of the species loses; the strong prevail.

I’m not suggesting that we need to let the strong eliminate the weak. That would fly in the face of biblical perspective. (“The meek shall inherit the earth.”) But what I am suggesting is that the work of spiritual wisdom and maturity is to behave DIFFERENTLY from the animal kingdom. We are to grow up and help the weak build stronger muscles. We mature and realize that our work includes giving those who are marginalized a hand up, a way out of their vulnerability to predatory attack. This is what differentiates us from wild beasts. In theory.

For humans, our vulnerabilities come when we suffer the negative effects of bad relationships, selfishness and immaturity. Other people - and how we interact with them - cause the strongest negative emotions that we experience. It is the “other” or ourselves who cheat and disappoint. Jean Paul Sartre wrote: “Hell is other people.” A quote I love to hate; but for some people, this is true.

The mom who wants to get her child back from social services is perhaps unaware that this child begged to NOT be returned to the home where she was regularly left alone at night and went days without a meal. Mom believes that her daughter is lonely in foster care and would be better off with her. And she would. If mom was gaining in wisdom and maturity and able to care for her kid. I can count on one hand the number of people who have lamented their loneliness over the years but me and all the people I have ever met combined do not have enough fingers and toes to count the ways we hurt others and others hurt us. Just to be clear - loneliness is not great AND it may not be the central problem we need to address in order to become stronger spiritually.

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Matthew 6:6 NIV

What Does Spiritual Maturity Look Like?

Resistance to loneliness as a spiritual concept may have to do with the lack of research clarity around social isolation as opposed to the FEELING of loneliness. It turns out that deep dives into the data around loneliness points out correlation but not causation.

These mega data dumps indicate that lonely people often live shorter lives. But that does not mean it is the cause. Maybe people in poor health have less energy or inclination to maintain contact with others. Perhaps these folks are dying of poor health and loneliness is a consequence of their disease not the cause of their death.

Take for example a 2012 study that reports that Denmark’s inhabitants are among the happiest and longest living populations in the world. And guess what? They have a high rate of loneliness (30% according to Keming Yang’s book Loneliness: A Social Problem).

Now, why does this matter?

Because if we identify loneliness as a problem, we might seek to solve it with magical potions and scary warnings to NOT BE LONELY. And what if we “cure” loneliness? And what if “loneliness” is a necessary component of developing maturity? Oops. That would be a bit of a snafu. We might end up with an entirely different sort of problem with even fewer people to serve as spiritual guides for souls interested in seeking after a faithful life. More personally, we might be blaming our loneliness on our spiritual malaise instead of taking the time to inquire about what spiritual fulfillment means, how it really feels, what thoughts we actually have along the way and how it changes our behaviors. Maybe, I am suggesting, spiritual maturity looks wildly different than we ever considered.

At daybreak, Jesus went out to a solitary place. The people were looking for him and when they came to where he was, they tried to keep him from leaving them.

Luke 4:42 NIV

Intentional Solitude?

From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense to have a primal fear of loneliness. We are safer running in a pack than living in isolation. There is a reason we think the phrase “lone wolf” signifies risky behavior.

We fear loneliness, but we also long for it. Ask any parent of toddlers and they will tell you that their most provocative fantasies include grocery shopping solo or a weekend of bedrest.

Christopher McCandless gave up everything to live alone (read about that in the book Into the Wild) and it killed him. It also turned him into something of a legend. We fear loneliness and obsess over the possibility that we might squeeze out a few minutes each day for ourselves.

I wonder if running from loneliness might be a symptom of a deeper problem. Maybe our terror over our covid-disrupted routines may have more to do with our distractibility and lack of spiritual sturdiness than we would like to admit.

So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place.

Mark 6:32 NIV

Solitude, which inevitably will stir up latent feelings of loneliness, is a spiritual practice that is encouraged by those who have walked the spiritual paths long before we were born. Silence and stillness are equally encouraged as daily spiritual practices.

What better time to test them out?

During this winter of the pandemic, what if...we carved out time for solitude, silence and stillness? Get quiet. Don’t use a guided meditation or play music while you walk. Don’t distract yourself from yourself in any way. Sit in homage to God. Sit as one who waits for a dear friend or lover, eager to hear the car pull down the driveway, the sound of the key rattling in the lock. Sit still and just be you.

The Inevitability of Loneliness

Just to review, I’m (Teresa) exploring this idea that what we have historically thought of as wisdom and maturity and how to acquire it may be...not quite right. I’m suggesting that we rethink what the experience of spiritual growth is versus how we imagined we would feel once we achieve it. As an example, I am picking on loneliness and our notion that it is a bad thing. I’m going so far as to suggest that loneliness may be an inevitable part of growing up. The reason I suggest this is partially because the book of Romans keeps reminding us that our culture gets it wrong and we often go along with its current hypotheses about life without thinking.

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you:

Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

Romans 12:1-2 The Message

Loneliness has become a cultural bad boy, like gluten or wearing hose (not leggings). In 2017 Theresa May (British prime minister at the time) appointed a “Minister for Sport, Civil Society and Loneliness. Health experts in Germany declared an “epidemic of loneliness” and called for an appointment of a commissioner for loneliness (to eradicate it, not promote it, I presume). Scientists are even working on an anti-loneliness pill to reduce or even eliminate the feeling of loneliness!

I wonder if we have all gotten just a titch off course.

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.

Mark 1:35 NIV