Some of you might know that I occasionally do a bit of interviewing before I write a blog (see previous blogs about pornography and gambling for examples of the results). For this one I spoke to three of my more skeptical friends about angels. These friends, who do a fine faith journey in spite of their difficulties with God, miracles, you name it, have no problem at all believing in angels!
For at least two of them, the reasons are entirely practical and experiential: They think they might have met one, or more.
Ok, in the year before I was willing to consider myself a person of any faith at all, I had three experiences with someone I couldn’t explain … I couldn’t understand why he showed up where he did … in three different situations … all of which were the most upsetting moments of my year… and in each situation he, well, “saved” me.
Jesus speaks of each of us having an angel advocating for us. Oh, and by the way, I know some of you and --you need it!
In some faiths they speak of serendipity, the way some things seem to conspire together to make just the right thing happen at the right time. In most large world faith traditions they speak of supernatural beings or messengers or gods present in our world.
I don’t think you have to believe in angels to be a person of faith. But you might do well to consider the help you get, from finding your keys to not being hit on the road. It seems to me that in light of a wounded world where we all suffer some real pains, that God has, perhaps in our defense, constructed multiple layers of kindness to meet us on our way. And you never know when you will run across a surprise.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Talking About Faith
Remember the story of E Stanley Jones, the day after he became a Christian? Someone said “E Stanley, you ain’t no Christian”, to which he responded “The Hell I ain’t”.
This is in response to a recent question of Diane’s “How do we share the invitation to faith in a religiously paranoid age?” (my wording).
I asked some of you what people said to you when you were considering church or before you were. The answers varied. I didn’t ask permission to share names, so you’re safe!
I told Diane I often say to atheists that I am glad we’re at least partly on the same page. They must have rejected much of the religion of judgementalism and closed mindedness that I, too, have had enough of.
One friend told me someone said nothing of their faith other than to listen to her story of wandering, and then said they were really glad she had embarked on a spiritual journey and would love to share it with her if she didn’t yet have a spiritual family.
Another said that someone just conveyed that they genuinely appreciated him. That made him ask questions of their faith and hope.
I guess the joy of it is that we are never in a place where we have to sell anything. We can admit to our friends we are in love, with God and life and all the creation. We can admit easily to those who are deeply pondering that we don’t have all the answers. And we can deeply listen to people’s stories and hopes and tell them our spiritual story as well, in mutual hearing. And it really matters to be able to tell friends that we go to a church where love is all we need to belong, trusting God to figure out the rest in us.
But don’t forget: most all of the people you know are wounded by their histories with bitter, hateful people who claim to represent Christ. My sense is that they are nervous only until we show them that we are ready to hear them and love them as they are. When they see faith as the power behind whatever loving we know, it tells them something more important than words.
I am wondering how [or if] you share your faith with others? If you’d like, find “comments” at the bottom of this page, click it, log in and share your thoughts [if you’re shy, send me an email].
Do well.
This is in response to a recent question of Diane’s “How do we share the invitation to faith in a religiously paranoid age?” (my wording).
I asked some of you what people said to you when you were considering church or before you were. The answers varied. I didn’t ask permission to share names, so you’re safe!
I told Diane I often say to atheists that I am glad we’re at least partly on the same page. They must have rejected much of the religion of judgementalism and closed mindedness that I, too, have had enough of.
One friend told me someone said nothing of their faith other than to listen to her story of wandering, and then said they were really glad she had embarked on a spiritual journey and would love to share it with her if she didn’t yet have a spiritual family.
Another said that someone just conveyed that they genuinely appreciated him. That made him ask questions of their faith and hope.
I guess the joy of it is that we are never in a place where we have to sell anything. We can admit to our friends we are in love, with God and life and all the creation. We can admit easily to those who are deeply pondering that we don’t have all the answers. And we can deeply listen to people’s stories and hopes and tell them our spiritual story as well, in mutual hearing. And it really matters to be able to tell friends that we go to a church where love is all we need to belong, trusting God to figure out the rest in us.
But don’t forget: most all of the people you know are wounded by their histories with bitter, hateful people who claim to represent Christ. My sense is that they are nervous only until we show them that we are ready to hear them and love them as they are. When they see faith as the power behind whatever loving we know, it tells them something more important than words.
I am wondering how [or if] you share your faith with others? If you’d like, find “comments” at the bottom of this page, click it, log in and share your thoughts [if you’re shy, send me an email].
Do well.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
LOSING OUR RELIGION
One academic Christian friend stood in front of a group and said “I stopped believing God exists several times last week. That apparently had little or no impact on God existing”. Have you seen this week’s headlines about the slipping number of people who consider themselves Christian in our country? Bishop Warner Brown mentioned it in his message to the Church of the Joyful Healer last week.
Hmmm … Since church/synagogue/house of worship in the USA hovers at between 25 and 35 percent most of the time, when I hear that those who call themselves Christian has dropped from 86% to 75%, I think we may not be getting clear information from the poll. I suspect rather, the use of the word “Christian” no longer has the same meaning it once had, like in the South, where a “good Christian” used to mean someone who doesn’t cause much trouble. People used to call themselves Christian with little meaning to the word other than perhaps a relative was buried by a pastor or priest. Maybe it is good for the country to support people being more reflective on how they connect themselves.
But specifically, when I was appointed to start a church in northern
I suspect that as churches in the
I don’t expect our more open and positive church family to grow every year in number, but usually it does.
What is more important is that the church is growing in relationships and in usefulness to the communities around it. I just spoke to someone in the tick-borne disease support group that meets in our building on Friday. She loves our church even while being a member of a very different religious group. It is never about numbers! It is about the people we bless and the life we find together in faith.
Do well.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
ABORTION/STEM CELL DEBATES
Here are topics and notes that might help you with people concerned either about the abortion/stem cell debates, or with moms in crisis pregnancies:
We are taught to take artificial positions on abortion, as if pro-choice isn’t pro-life and vice versa. This is an asinine game of hatred-brewing that damages our ability to hear each other and even hear the Spirit speak to us. Fund raisers and lobbyists nourish this dichotomy, and if we were further removed from the debate, we would find them and their extreme positions absurd and hilarious. But now that President Obama has launched the American stem cell sciences again, the issue is more tender for our Christian fundamentalist friends.
What matters in our message? You are my friend, whatever your opinion about this or almost any issue. We are called by Jesus to be one. I offer you my hand.
What You Might Expect Me to Say about Abortion: Everyone wants happy, healthy babies to be born into ready, happy, and healthy families. And you probably already know, I love kids and smile from the inside out when I see healthy families! While we can disagree on particulars, it is artificial and nonsense to believe that people who view the abortion debate differently than us don’t want that just like we do.
But that Isn’t the Whole Story, Is It? Crisis pregnancies happen in virtually every community in the world every day and more so in areas where birth control and abortion are hard to access. And a desperate mom does not need judgment or theoretical debate or pressure. She needs the same access as any other mom could have to quality medical care!
The religious community is divided into two broad camps, led by the mainline Protestant and Jewish communities on one hand, the Catholic and fundamentalist Christian communities on the other: one that focuses on compassion to the expectant mother and the other on compassion to the baby she carries. The United Methodist Social Principles speak of the “tragic conflict of life with life” but still insist the decision on abortion is a private one between a woman and a skilled care provider.
The Jewish point of view on the beginning of fully actual human life is that it begins at birth. “God … breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and he became a living being”. In Exodus 21 a forced loss of pregnancy is worked into a legal discussion about when the community of God in the fragile early years of
Anti-abortion Bible readers don’t focus on these statements of principle, but fear that such a reading will lead us to under value life itself, especially that of the vulnerable. Their Biblical support may be a rigid reading of poetic lines in psalms and prayers, like Psalm 139, “You knew me in my mother’s womb”, but their concern is for the belief in all life as sacred. Not a bad platform now, is it? Also the anti abortion teachings find passion in the Bible’s condemnation of people who “offer their children in the fire” to the god Moloch, a hideous child sacrifice ritual with commonalities in many cultures. But of course, these are born children. In my contacts with the pro-choice community, I have never met a soul who would not risk their lives to save a born child, so the child sacrifice analogy seems to me to be irrelevant to the concerns of either side.
It is sure hard, though, to find common ground when some view the thoughtful choices of others as murder.
Don’t Lie to Yourself. As pro-life as we may view ourselves, unless we believe a mother and a doctor choosing to have or assist an abortion should be tried as murderers, we are functionally on the “pro-choice” side. And you have many friends who have had an abortion. Most of them don’t strike you or me as death row candidates.
Our real tasks are these: First, to work to make birth control options viable for anyone, yes even of young people. Our thoughts about sex among the young should not cloud our commitment to provide them safety and protection. And in many places, this means confronting an anti-condom culture among men in certain “macho” sub-cultures.
Second, we must raise the issues of compassion for the mother as well as the child. A teenager saw anti abortion leaflets showing a sonogram of an embryo six weeks from conception. His response? “Where is the mother?” he asked. He pointed out that the photo gives no sense of the needs or situation of the mother whose body this embryo was in!
Third, we must say an absolute NO to those who would have us hate each other for seeing this issue differently. Most pro-life and pro-choice people have great swaths of their reasoning and purposes in common, and no lobby or demagogue should be allowed to obfuscate that fact. My position is clearly mother-centric, but in our church we have several members who lean on the anti abortion side. We talk. We challenge each other. But we don’t deny each other the right to come to conclusions and work for positions that we each feel compelled to.
And last, and most important, we are called to be agents of healing and grace for those who have tough choices to make. Moms and Dads need a bigger community on their side and laws that support family health. And women in painful conflicts should have as many options as possible available to them so they can choose the best ways to move forward into life making and life building and life sharing. And we need to be there for them and with them.
Stem cells are usually most available through the destruction of embryonic tissue. This means that we need to be clearer about how we see abortion before we can understand and take reasoned positions on research and curative work with stem cells. Balancing our hopes for healing therapies from stem cell research with our concerns about the unborn will help us see what “pro-life” really means.
Do well
Friday, March 6, 2009
RAISING KIDS #1 - Going to Church
A little guy was completely out of control one morning in church. Finally his dad picked him up and walked out in frustration. The little one cried that he didn’t want to leave, but dad kept walking. Finally near the door the little guy called out “Goodbye everybody. Pray for me.”
How to bring our kids to church is an issue at every stage of development.
What you might expect me to say about kids in church: It is one of the greatest gifts you can give them to grow up in a church and faith family.
But that isn’t the whole story is it?
… When they are young they can be distracting when they cry or fuss or spit up or yell or play loudly or grab or … or … And most of that distraction is quadrupled for the parents trying to pray or hear a message.
… As they get older they can act out home frustrations knowing you are vulnerable in a group, or they can have trouble with doing the group activities or even wanting to leave home and get dressed.
… As they get to pre-teen stage, they can think church is awful and come up with vicious interpretations of church and faith, or have issues of “coolness” or independence that can make it almost impossible to get them to come. I have seen kids love me one year, “hate” me the next, use me for a job reference the next, and tell me I have been one of the best influences in their life in the next!
What to do?
Frankly, for younger children, the best thing a family can do is keep the habit. Be there except for sickness and out of town weekends if you can. Even when it is unsatisfying, it is the gift of teaching the ritual to the child. None of us are good at something if we do it seldom enough. Frequency is the way to proficiency in anything. Families with more than one adult can shift management of the details back and forth a bit, but that is a reminder to love on the many single parents among us!
As a child gets into elementary levels, it is a real favor for them to get to know the church family as individuals. If they can remember they are coming to see “Pat, Tim, Judy, Mary, Shante, Juan, Sarah or Mike” rather than just the amalgam of those people in a big blob it can greatly add to their social skill set, since church is one of the rare opportunities for a child to mix with folk of diverse ages. Churched kids are, on average, socially ahead of others in the skill of multigenerational socialization, a vital capacity for grown up life. This makes coffee hour and an occasional special church event like the campout real useful, even vital.
Here’s a note that will save you a lot of grief with some kids: At elementary grade levels, kids need to learn that church behavior isn’t courteous because it’s church. If they think all the social graces they have to learn there are because of church or faith they can resent church or faith for requiring those social graces of them!!! They need to be taught that these graces are human graces, and are required of them any time they are in group settings. Church doesn’t need to be blamed for this. They would have to use the same social skills in a club or a family reunion.
And at elementary grade age, they need to be expected to participate in church attendance just like the easy expectation of eating family meals together and visiting cousins together.
If and when church attendance becomes a struggle, which it often does in the early to mid pre-teens, I recommend a graduated pattern of adjustments. First, remember that the kids most likely to attend church as adults have parents that are faithful to their church whether the child goes or not. In other words, when you go even when your teen is not going, they finally see how much it really matters to you. That rubs off.
If the resistance gets thick I recommend that you first make church rituals more obviously useful to your growing kid. I have seen several families wisely develop a two or three-part ritual on church day, like always doing a family out-to-eat on Sunday after church. If you miss one you miss the other. Other possibilities are starting or ending play time with other kids at church, or always doing a movie out or biking or other hobby right after church. This is just good use of precious family time, but it makes the point that this is a central part of us being family.
Do I encourage parents to debate church beliefs with a hostile teen? Not much, if at all. Church is our extended family. Many adults go without buying all of its beliefs, but we do good for ourselves and for the world as a church, so we are here and committed. The habit teaches more than the cognition, I think.
Did my kids have options not to come to church? Yes, but not often. I let them know I thought the family deserved their participation. And the youth program was a part of that family. And so were all those folk who they have come to know here. We weren’t rigid, yet as awkward as it can be for the “preacher’s kids” to feel free to define themselves, both my kids accepted church as a given for most of their youth. And they are still among you and thriving as a result of that connection.
Did we debate beliefs when they were in “rejectionist” mode? Not much. I never suggested they needed to accept church belief to attend. The same is true for many adults who attend church. They do so out of something bigger than their momentary cognitive assent to certain beliefs.
Don’t lie to yourself: church is best when it is a habit, but something inside us will try to break that. Keeping it for yourself is the greatest gift you can give yourself, even if your kids/parents or significant other don’t come along. And they are most likely to “get it” seeing you keep the habit no matter what.
Do well.
How to bring our kids to church is an issue at every stage of development.
What you might expect me to say about kids in church: It is one of the greatest gifts you can give them to grow up in a church and faith family.
But that isn’t the whole story is it?
… When they are young they can be distracting when they cry or fuss or spit up or yell or play loudly or grab or … or … And most of that distraction is quadrupled for the parents trying to pray or hear a message.
… As they get older they can act out home frustrations knowing you are vulnerable in a group, or they can have trouble with doing the group activities or even wanting to leave home and get dressed.
… As they get to pre-teen stage, they can think church is awful and come up with vicious interpretations of church and faith, or have issues of “coolness” or independence that can make it almost impossible to get them to come. I have seen kids love me one year, “hate” me the next, use me for a job reference the next, and tell me I have been one of the best influences in their life in the next!
What to do?
Frankly, for younger children, the best thing a family can do is keep the habit. Be there except for sickness and out of town weekends if you can. Even when it is unsatisfying, it is the gift of teaching the ritual to the child. None of us are good at something if we do it seldom enough. Frequency is the way to proficiency in anything. Families with more than one adult can shift management of the details back and forth a bit, but that is a reminder to love on the many single parents among us!
As a child gets into elementary levels, it is a real favor for them to get to know the church family as individuals. If they can remember they are coming to see “Pat, Tim, Judy, Mary, Shante, Juan, Sarah or Mike” rather than just the amalgam of those people in a big blob it can greatly add to their social skill set, since church is one of the rare opportunities for a child to mix with folk of diverse ages. Churched kids are, on average, socially ahead of others in the skill of multigenerational socialization, a vital capacity for grown up life. This makes coffee hour and an occasional special church event like the campout real useful, even vital.
Here’s a note that will save you a lot of grief with some kids: At elementary grade levels, kids need to learn that church behavior isn’t courteous because it’s church. If they think all the social graces they have to learn there are because of church or faith they can resent church or faith for requiring those social graces of them!!! They need to be taught that these graces are human graces, and are required of them any time they are in group settings. Church doesn’t need to be blamed for this. They would have to use the same social skills in a club or a family reunion.
And at elementary grade age, they need to be expected to participate in church attendance just like the easy expectation of eating family meals together and visiting cousins together.
If and when church attendance becomes a struggle, which it often does in the early to mid pre-teens, I recommend a graduated pattern of adjustments. First, remember that the kids most likely to attend church as adults have parents that are faithful to their church whether the child goes or not. In other words, when you go even when your teen is not going, they finally see how much it really matters to you. That rubs off.
If the resistance gets thick I recommend that you first make church rituals more obviously useful to your growing kid. I have seen several families wisely develop a two or three-part ritual on church day, like always doing a family out-to-eat on Sunday after church. If you miss one you miss the other. Other possibilities are starting or ending play time with other kids at church, or always doing a movie out or biking or other hobby right after church. This is just good use of precious family time, but it makes the point that this is a central part of us being family.
Do I encourage parents to debate church beliefs with a hostile teen? Not much, if at all. Church is our extended family. Many adults go without buying all of its beliefs, but we do good for ourselves and for the world as a church, so we are here and committed. The habit teaches more than the cognition, I think.
Did my kids have options not to come to church? Yes, but not often. I let them know I thought the family deserved their participation. And the youth program was a part of that family. And so were all those folk who they have come to know here. We weren’t rigid, yet as awkward as it can be for the “preacher’s kids” to feel free to define themselves, both my kids accepted church as a given for most of their youth. And they are still among you and thriving as a result of that connection.
Did we debate beliefs when they were in “rejectionist” mode? Not much. I never suggested they needed to accept church belief to attend. The same is true for many adults who attend church. They do so out of something bigger than their momentary cognitive assent to certain beliefs.
Don’t lie to yourself: church is best when it is a habit, but something inside us will try to break that. Keeping it for yourself is the greatest gift you can give yourself, even if your kids/parents or significant other don’t come along. And they are most likely to “get it” seeing you keep the habit no matter what.
Do well.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Thinking of God
An old teacher was speaking to pastors and said, “When you speak of heaven your eyes should be bright and you should smile and your face should reflect the joy of God. When you speak of other things, well, your normal face will do.”
Thinking of God the Joyful Healer, is a healing habit.
But that’s not the whole story is it? Many people struggle with images of God that are destructive or at least distracting.
In our images of God it is good to check: Is God always male? Is God old, or distant or angry, or irrelevant and passive? Or worse, are we just plain sure we have it figured out and have no mystery in our sense of God?
The truth is that some images of God are far from true to Jewish and Christian historical wisdom. Jesus said “God is spirit”, and this suggests that we are not headed in a constructive direction when we try to limit God to our personal conception. Many scholars believe that the Muslim practice of praying the “99 names of God”, in which the believer reviews many facets of God’s nature, was learned from either Christian or Jewish believers in the Middle East at the time of Muhammad. Well, that is sure not a current practice in some churches where Christian images are limited to “God”, “Father”, “Lord”, and “Jesus”. I find it interesting that in those forms of spirituality, many pray the names of God in almost compulsively repetitious fashion, as in “Father God, Father, Lord Jesus, we ask you, Lord God, to …”, as if the believer is stuck like a CD player.
Jesus is only quoted for a brief bit of his life, and only in a few of his messages in the Bible, yet he exhibits an explosion of freeing images of God. God is male in some and female in others (like the woman sweeping her house). God is anthropomorphic in some and even earthier in others (like the mother hen gathering her chicks). In just one of Jesus’ parables God is pictured as running to meet us, kissing and hugging, and singing and dancing in joy over us!
And Jesus endemically refers to God’s relation to the creation as one of intimacy and tender, thoughtful presence.
Let yourself go! God is not limited to our conceptions or our understanding. Great saints in the early church pointed out that that while God is beyond our thinking; we do well to think of the ways God chooses to come and be exposed to us. God mothers us and fathers us, God is a friend and lover, God wrestles with us and sings in us, God accompanies us and cherishes our every breath. God is wild in the creating business and loves our creativity and honors it.
God loves every moment we move in the ways of healing and justice. The church I pastor is actually called The United Methodist Church of the Joyful Healer!
Don’t Lie to Yourself: Sometimes when people hear you speak of faith or church or God, they filter you through their seriously damaged images of God. Be compassionate enough to understand their reservations and even sometimes their outright hostility. But listen for where the hurt is. It can make you able to communicate at an altogether different level.
And God is right here, right now. Filling the space you live in and your heart as well. Receive your blessing.
Do well.
Thinking of God the Joyful Healer, is a healing habit.
But that’s not the whole story is it? Many people struggle with images of God that are destructive or at least distracting.
In our images of God it is good to check: Is God always male? Is God old, or distant or angry, or irrelevant and passive? Or worse, are we just plain sure we have it figured out and have no mystery in our sense of God?
The truth is that some images of God are far from true to Jewish and Christian historical wisdom. Jesus said “God is spirit”, and this suggests that we are not headed in a constructive direction when we try to limit God to our personal conception. Many scholars believe that the Muslim practice of praying the “99 names of God”, in which the believer reviews many facets of God’s nature, was learned from either Christian or Jewish believers in the Middle East at the time of Muhammad. Well, that is sure not a current practice in some churches where Christian images are limited to “God”, “Father”, “Lord”, and “Jesus”. I find it interesting that in those forms of spirituality, many pray the names of God in almost compulsively repetitious fashion, as in “Father God, Father, Lord Jesus, we ask you, Lord God, to …”, as if the believer is stuck like a CD player.
Jesus is only quoted for a brief bit of his life, and only in a few of his messages in the Bible, yet he exhibits an explosion of freeing images of God. God is male in some and female in others (like the woman sweeping her house). God is anthropomorphic in some and even earthier in others (like the mother hen gathering her chicks). In just one of Jesus’ parables God is pictured as running to meet us, kissing and hugging, and singing and dancing in joy over us!
And Jesus endemically refers to God’s relation to the creation as one of intimacy and tender, thoughtful presence.
Let yourself go! God is not limited to our conceptions or our understanding. Great saints in the early church pointed out that that while God is beyond our thinking; we do well to think of the ways God chooses to come and be exposed to us. God mothers us and fathers us, God is a friend and lover, God wrestles with us and sings in us, God accompanies us and cherishes our every breath. God is wild in the creating business and loves our creativity and honors it.
God loves every moment we move in the ways of healing and justice. The church I pastor is actually called The United Methodist Church of the Joyful Healer!
Don’t Lie to Yourself: Sometimes when people hear you speak of faith or church or God, they filter you through their seriously damaged images of God. Be compassionate enough to understand their reservations and even sometimes their outright hostility. But listen for where the hurt is. It can make you able to communicate at an altogether different level.
And God is right here, right now. Filling the space you live in and your heart as well. Receive your blessing.
Do well.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
THE END OF FRIENDSHIP
Some of you have heard me tell a tidbit: I was in front of a large group of men, and I asked them to make a list of their five best friends, and get in groups of two or three and quickly describe one quality of each of the five. The room lit up with laughter and animation as the men told each other of their best friend’s styles and qualities (and maybe foibles!).
Then I asked the men to write on their list the number of months or years that it had been since they had spent time with that friend. Each group was then to average their number of months or years.
For most in each group they hadn’t spent time with their five best friends since high school. Most didn’t even know where their “best friends” lived, or what they did for work, or if they had kids.
The average age of the group was probably around 40 years old.
A nationally known counselor said that what makes our world different from 50 years ago is that now adult women are losing the skill of making good friends just like men in our culture. What is sad is that if you watch kids, we are made to be social, and most of us had the tools of community in us at one time.
For me what is most peculiar is that most men in that group seemed to not think of themselves as lonely. Now most of us fall into one or two of three common modes: lonely and noticing it; lonely for meaningful friendship but keeping so busy and distracted as to avoid noting it; or living all our friendships out at a very shallow level with workmates or over kid’s play dates until we retire.
Yes, I know, great friendships develop slowly, and are discovered almost like trolling for fish. You drag your line through the water and keep moving slowly until you find something. What is different from the analogy is that we often don’t know we have a good friendship for a long while after we have found it. But trolling is a good analogy in that it suggests on purpose.
I have friends in the church I serve that are so good at making and keeping friends that I have to resist the urge to send all my new acquaintances to them. They are almost full of time slots just enjoying their sacred connections. But most folk I know don’t even know how to begin.
What to do? Well, at least we get started by recognizing what our culture has underequipped us to do … or even underequipped us to even want to do!
And of course, it helps a lot to have a few places on our calendar we show up in regularly where we might possibly make a friend or two … places like church, hobby groups, sports teams, even volunteer task groups and community organizations. Just not bars! I have few issues with drinking in healthy ways [see the archive blog about drinking], but I have seen so many downhill journeys begin with people feeling needy walking into bars.
I also recommend we take our extended families more seriously. Calling or visiting, I mean. Actually hearing voices!! Email is not what we evolved to do, even though it’s nice. Really, when we honor our family commitments well, we grow in ways we can open ourselves to others.
And I recommend we become generous in time and gift giving in our neighborhoods. Few of us will make close friends of neighbors, but again, we are trying to learn the ways of the human family again, and neighbors used to fill a bigger slot by far than they do now.
I am not lonely, so it feels cheap to write too much about it. It solves so slowly in a day in which we move so often, and have so little time uncommitted, as do the others we could know better!
I am embarrassed by how in love I feel, and how much I receive from virtually anyone I meet. I wish I could give this experience to everyone I see. My closer friends leave me so satisfied, too. I have a few real close friends I see casually a lot (common interests), and intentionally as well. I also keep up on several in my family by phone, which is powerful to me.
Don’t lie to yourself: the electronic world has many benefits [you’re reading a blog, for heaven’s sake!], but it is also a terrible drain on our souls. It is a box. We can open our electronics, from radios to televisions to computers to MP3 to … you get the idea … and never turn away from them again. They will suck us up and leave us numb and tired and keep us from walking outside and speaking to a neighbor or calling a friend or from watching a child play. I have an acquaintance that complains of having no friends, who spends three to five hours a night watching TV. If this is you, you’re in a different fix than other lonely people. You need to turn it off. Go call your mom/uncle/aunt/first grade teacher … SOMEbody! For the rest of you, take care of your soul. Do what you can. Keep trolling. Keep open to the loves of God. More and more you will find people to whom God will pass along that loving through you.
And maybe add the rituals of talking about all the good moments you do have with people, and remembering those moments on purpose. Cherishing time with others is a two step process: first, enjoying them when they are there; second, enjoying them after you leave them. Add more of the second. Great relationships leave a great taste in your soul. Don’t be too quick to let go of that flavor.
Do well.
Then I asked the men to write on their list the number of months or years that it had been since they had spent time with that friend. Each group was then to average their number of months or years.
For most in each group they hadn’t spent time with their five best friends since high school. Most didn’t even know where their “best friends” lived, or what they did for work, or if they had kids.
The average age of the group was probably around 40 years old.
A nationally known counselor said that what makes our world different from 50 years ago is that now adult women are losing the skill of making good friends just like men in our culture. What is sad is that if you watch kids, we are made to be social, and most of us had the tools of community in us at one time.
For me what is most peculiar is that most men in that group seemed to not think of themselves as lonely. Now most of us fall into one or two of three common modes: lonely and noticing it; lonely for meaningful friendship but keeping so busy and distracted as to avoid noting it; or living all our friendships out at a very shallow level with workmates or over kid’s play dates until we retire.
Yes, I know, great friendships develop slowly, and are discovered almost like trolling for fish. You drag your line through the water and keep moving slowly until you find something. What is different from the analogy is that we often don’t know we have a good friendship for a long while after we have found it. But trolling is a good analogy in that it suggests on purpose.
I have friends in the church I serve that are so good at making and keeping friends that I have to resist the urge to send all my new acquaintances to them. They are almost full of time slots just enjoying their sacred connections. But most folk I know don’t even know how to begin.
What to do? Well, at least we get started by recognizing what our culture has underequipped us to do … or even underequipped us to even want to do!
And of course, it helps a lot to have a few places on our calendar we show up in regularly where we might possibly make a friend or two … places like church, hobby groups, sports teams, even volunteer task groups and community organizations. Just not bars! I have few issues with drinking in healthy ways [see the archive blog about drinking], but I have seen so many downhill journeys begin with people feeling needy walking into bars.
I also recommend we take our extended families more seriously. Calling or visiting, I mean. Actually hearing voices!! Email is not what we evolved to do, even though it’s nice. Really, when we honor our family commitments well, we grow in ways we can open ourselves to others.
And I recommend we become generous in time and gift giving in our neighborhoods. Few of us will make close friends of neighbors, but again, we are trying to learn the ways of the human family again, and neighbors used to fill a bigger slot by far than they do now.
I am not lonely, so it feels cheap to write too much about it. It solves so slowly in a day in which we move so often, and have so little time uncommitted, as do the others we could know better!
I am embarrassed by how in love I feel, and how much I receive from virtually anyone I meet. I wish I could give this experience to everyone I see. My closer friends leave me so satisfied, too. I have a few real close friends I see casually a lot (common interests), and intentionally as well. I also keep up on several in my family by phone, which is powerful to me.
Don’t lie to yourself: the electronic world has many benefits [you’re reading a blog, for heaven’s sake!], but it is also a terrible drain on our souls. It is a box. We can open our electronics, from radios to televisions to computers to MP3 to … you get the idea … and never turn away from them again. They will suck us up and leave us numb and tired and keep us from walking outside and speaking to a neighbor or calling a friend or from watching a child play. I have an acquaintance that complains of having no friends, who spends three to five hours a night watching TV. If this is you, you’re in a different fix than other lonely people. You need to turn it off. Go call your mom/uncle/aunt/first grade teacher … SOMEbody! For the rest of you, take care of your soul. Do what you can. Keep trolling. Keep open to the loves of God. More and more you will find people to whom God will pass along that loving through you.
And maybe add the rituals of talking about all the good moments you do have with people, and remembering those moments on purpose. Cherishing time with others is a two step process: first, enjoying them when they are there; second, enjoying them after you leave them. Add more of the second. Great relationships leave a great taste in your soul. Don’t be too quick to let go of that flavor.
Do well.
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