Rupert’s Blog

ok, i’ll be contriversial and say i don’t feel lonely. I have friends who i feel i can be honest with, i have support networks, i find the christian life one that is healthy and growing and provides connection, purpose, contact, service etc.

That would be now - i can see times in my past where i kept people at arms lengthm played the looking good game and slowly was dying on the inside. It’s been painful learning to be honest, to take risks, to share me and my weaknesses and to realise that there are people and places i can do that within.

In terms of your Qs there can be all sorts of reasons - i think modern life sets us up to be in charge of our own lives and to look after ourselves as it it tells us no one else will - that can be lonely.

I think it can be about a level of self realisation - i don’t feel lonely cos my life is full but if stopped being busy, didn’t go to work or church or whereever would anyone bother contacting us, would we bother contacting them?

We are also short term about these things but how much of our future are we setting up to be a lonely isolated old age?

I think you are right that we have more and more means to be in contact, blogs, msn, myspace, voice over the internet etc but at the same time we are losing something of that ability to relate, share space, life etc.

A good Q i find is to think about how many of us would go alone to the cinema say 10 yrs ago and how many of us would go now - we seem to like more activities on our own - there’s that book ‘bowling alone’ which i think looks at this…

Hmmm hope that helps

Paul - thanks for you thoughts. I was being a little provacative in my post, so very happy for you to be provacative back! I wanted to get a bit of feedback!

I am sure that good Christian community is a place where we can find authentic relationships. True authentic community is wonderful. However i do wonder sometimes if our activity and business covers over a longing for deeper relating and we don’t create that kind of community. Do you see this at work at all in the churches you know?

Love your observations about our culture. Thanks.

it’s a great Q Rupert - i’m sure it happens in church and i know it has happened to me in the past - particularly when it is easy to feel like I belong because I am busy - which of course is is partly true but then relationships can only happen at the superficial level cos of the time committed elsewhere.

One of the things that having dan dedicated on sunday brought home to us was how we have become part of a new church family, especially when people came up to pray for us, some of whom we don’t know that well. It was very moving that these folks cared enough to come forward

Well said! I wonder if the size of church makes a difference too Paul. It is often said that people feel more lonely in a city than in a village, and i wonder when churches get too big, they can be more like a city that a village, where everyone knows each other (at least by name) and it feels like family. That seems so much harder in my experience to maintain in larger churches - not impossible, but harder.

I’ll chuck in my two cents worth here.

I don’t really feel lonely at all these days, and haven’t for some time. Being married really helps

Regarding cities and large churches being more lonely, I would say that the issue for me is that loneliness for me is not the absence of company but the presence of company which ignores you. Therefore I have felt lonely in large groups where no-one was being pro-active to talk to me. I have experienced this quite often in church like settings.

So actually church meetings can be the worse! And I don’t think that size directly correlates to the amount of loneliness, only that its easier to be lonely the larger the group becomes.

I’ve heard some people talk about not wanting Christian communities to grow because of the need for an intimate community. This to me seems like a case of mixed priorities. Our biblical mandate is to make disciples, which means we should always see growth. I’m all for intimate community, but not at the expense of fulfilling our mandate from Jesus. Besides, I think the “small group” context is the only serious way to develop true friendship and community. Its very hard to feel lonely in such an intimate environment!

good Q on does size matter, rupert. It makes me think about the space in which we meet - some people are gonna prefer that crowd feeling which for others would jus kill em and the same for say house churches, some people will thrive there and others would hate it… i think we need to realise we need churches to inhabit all the spaces, intimate, private, public etc and realise that not all churches will be able to be in all those spaces and therefore churches need to recognise and encourage each other for being able to reach folk that they themselves can’t - hmmm forgive me for beating my deep church drum

churches need to recognise and encourage each other for being able to reach folk that they themselves can’t

Hi Paul, can you further elaborate on this? I’m not clear on what you mean. Is this connected to the meaning of “deep church” ? Cheers!

Alastair and Paul - thanks for the comments. Good comments about church and feeling lonely. Isn’t it ironic that the one place people should be able to come for connection and community often can be the loneliest?

Good comment re marriage alastair … i too feel that way. Although i think marriage can be the loneliest place of all for some … again the very place they expect to find real connection and friendship, actually can be a prison of walls and silence.

It is interesting that in these comments it seems the presence of people doesn’t actually allievate loneliness, but can actually increase it. What does make the difference is authentic friendship with people: sharing, allowing people to be part of lives, to see us good and bad, to give to others when in need. What the bible calls fellowship in my book!

Re. church - this could go off topic … but here’s what i am exploring. I wonder if all these different spaces can exist in one church (if the church is large enough). It does require a fairly organic approach that doesn’t require people to part of one space or another. Some people hate small groups, and would much prefer to meet with a couple of friends to pray. Why not? Others like mid-sized groups … and meet a number of people there, that they can develop stronger relationship out of the meeting context. Again why not?

rupert, i think church can encourage inhabiting of all those spaces - i think it has to be modelled and the message repeated that sunday is just one space and their are other equally important ones that take place in the life of the church…

Right, some reflections that have emerged for me…. Sounds like a Zombie movie or something! I’m not sure exactly what loneliness means. I do know you can feel it whether you’ve got friends or not, are married or not and I suspect that some settings can be more likely to be destructive and others more likely to be constructive for us. Awareness of such settings and tendencies around and among us should be a prod to become more familiar and close. Maybe being deprived of touch, of sight, of a hearing, of human contact (care!) is a kind of slow death (too dramatic?). And that should be a spur for reaching out in friendship to each other surely. Isn’t there an account of a culture where there was no jail as such but simply being separated form the community was felt so strongly that individuals would just wilt away? Hughes story?

I guess we expend an inordinate amount of time, energy and thought in fending off even the approach loneliness. We are fearful of it. Is there a stigma or embarrassment attached?. Is it being left in silence and solitude, such a foreign environment, that scares the Marks and Spencer’s Y-fronts off us? Richard Rohr has written of us living on the circumference of our lives. Gerard Hughes’s words also come to mind, “God is closer to me than I am to myself”. Maybe we are more afraid of us than God is. Maybe he’s less intimidated by our innerness, our insides than we are? Obviously? Maybe God is more comfortable with me than I am with me? Maybe I’m more intimidated by me than I am of God, even with my mismatching socks, drool and all?

I wonder, if I’m particularly successful in crowding out solitude is there the possibility that I am also crowding out God and myself?

A question comes to mind, Do I think Jesus was lonely? When I watch Jesus walking and talking through the gospels there are some scenes that come to mind – during his period of temptation, in the Garden of Gethsemane prior to his arrest and on the cross. And in fact on his many occasions with his disciples where they did not understand him or what was happening around them? He desired and experienced companionship but was, it seems to me, also lonely. That’s a wee revelation for me.

There may have been an element of remoteness with his disciples due to the difficulty in the disciple’s inability to share a number of Jesus’s experiences – some sympathy would be in order I feel- but there would have been no remoteness with his relationship with the Father; a key difference between us and Jesus?

Coming across a proverb that I recall as “no-one can know the heart ache of another” but is possibly on scratching about for it (Proverbs 14:10, (Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can share its joy) was a bit of a watershed for myself and Kirsty in the early days of the best part of a decade being ill. Sure there were a few people who had had the same illness and that was a relief, even a stimulant, but its your own stuff in your own head and your own body and its unique. More to the point the proverb was asking questions about my expectations of Kirsty and any one else, and Kirsty in turn of her friends and colleagues. Was it reasonable for them to understand to the degree I/we wanted them or expected them to? There was a lot of letting go there that as exceedingly helpful for us there.

I wonder if being lonely is inevitable because of our uniqueness. We perceive, receive, interpret our world and make certain conclusions that can vary tremendously from one person to another even when circumstances are similar. We can empathise and others can empathise with us (2 Corinthians 1 stresses its importance and intent) but our uniqueness is such that there will always be some part of us that will not be understood by or felt by another person, bar God.

So maybe loneliness is an enemy, is inevitable and is also a friend?

Paul - thanks. I really agree that we need to say that sunday is only one space that live in.

Andrew - thanks so much for posting. Your comments and vulnerability is really appreciated. I particularly love the stuff on Jesus, and that was somethign that i brought when i spoke on sunday. I had never considered Jesus being lonely before.

You makes so many other good points that i feel a bit of chump only picking up that one point …