{"id":769,"date":"2025-04-01T21:24:38","date_gmt":"2025-04-01T20:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/?p=769"},"modified":"2025-04-01T21:24:39","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T20:24:39","slug":"only-connect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/?p=769","title":{"rendered":"Only Connect"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Reflection #100 (2nd March 2025 at Essex Church \/ Kensington Unitarians)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I said at the top of today\u2019s service, our exploration today is around the need to nurture meaningful connections, in a world where many are lonely, alienated and disconnected. Even in this densely populated city \u2013 we must be getting on towards 10 million Londoners now \u2013though we bump up against each other every day it\u2019s still so easy to feel anonymous and isolated. And in theory we\u2019re very connected in a virtual sense too, to the whole world, via the internet. But despite this, I suspect most of us would acknowledge that true connection isn\u2019t always easy to find. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Think of how it is \u2013 what a lack it is, or would be \u2013 not to have significant connections in your life. To be without friends or companions with whom you can share mundane moments, talk about nothing in particular, tell of what\u2019s happened in your day, all the joys and frustrations, and have them know and care about your story as it is still unfolding. To feel it matters to someone. That you matter. I would imagine that many of us have experienced such loneliness and disconnection at times in life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Philosophers typically talk about different sorts of loneliness: transient, situational, and chronic. \nTransient loneliness is the sort which might come upon any one of us at any time, a passing feeling, a lonely moment, maybe when we\u2019re alone in a big crowd, or temporarily stuck at home alone. Situational loneliness has some identifiable external cause, like a bereavement or a break-up, and it tends to last for a longer period, maybe months or years, after the triggering event. Chronic loneliness is a long-term situation which is often related to having built up insufficient ties with others. The reasons for this may be \u2018rooted in the self\u2019 in some sense, in a person\u2019s personality traits, or an inability to reach out to others and make personal connections, but there\u2019s more to it than that.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are numerous contextual, political and economic factors which increasingly play a role\nin creating a climate where many are socially excluded. George Monbiot has written powerfully and movingly on how decades of neoliberalism have ushered in what he calls \u2018The Age of Loneliness\u2019 \u2013 just think back to those infamous words \u2018there is no such thing as society\u2019 \u2013 but Monbiot says: \u2018Structural changes have been accompanied by a life-denying ideology, which enforces and celebrates our social isolation. The war of every man against every man \u2013 competition and individualism \u2013 is the religion of our time, justified by a mythology of lone rangers, self-starters, self-made men and women, going it alone. For the most social of creatures, who cannot prosper without love, there is no such thing as society, only heroic individualism\u2026 having consumed all else, we start to prey upon ourselves. We have destroyed the essence of humanity: our connectedness.\u2019\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a world of job insecurity, and short-term or zero-hours contracts, where relatively few people can expect to stay put in one place for long and put down roots, where working hours are often long and antisocial, and shift patterns are such that it\u2019s hard to sustain regular social commitments \u2013 and where those who are out of work are hit by the lack of affordable places to meet and make connections, and all those other life-constraints that come along with being under financial pressure in austerity, (thinking, for example, of those whose disability allowances have been cut, limiting their mobility) \u2013 well, in these conditions, loneliness and alienation will most likely result. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Catholic theologian Gerald Arbuckle has written at length about this political aspect of loneliness and disconnection, and argues that, whether or not we are personally lonely at this instant, we have a responsibility to help alleviate the conditions which bring about loneliness \u2013 by working for the common good, seeking truth, fighting prejudice, welcoming the stranger, resisting the culture of individualism \u2013 and more generally doing what\u2019s right for the most marginalised people in our society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever the root cause of loneliness for a person \u2013 situational, structural, or \u2018rooted in the self\u2019 \u2013 it can lead to a vicious cycle that\u2019s hard to break out of. The more pressing and evidently desperate our need for connection, the more it can cause others to recoil, to back away from us, and the more we experience such rejection the more likely we are to misread social cues out of learned pessimism. Or we can get into a mindset of \u2018I can\u2019t do right for doing wrong\u2019 \u2013 I know this one \u2013 and we withdraw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kira Asatryan, in her book \u2018Stop Being Lonely\u2019, makes the simple but astute point that loneliness is not a lack of people but a lack of closeness. This is why you can feel lonely in the middle of a crowd, or in a city of 10 million people, as we Londoners know. She says that closeness consists of two things: \u2018knowing\u2019 and \u2018caring\u2019 (and being known, and being cared for, it has to go both ways, there needs to be a sense of give and take). Both knowing and caring are verbs \u2013 things you do \u2013 they\u2019re not states you fall into accidentally \u2013 they require intentional and sustained action. And the good news is that you can consciously work to build closeness with anybody who is at hand (and who responds positively to your overtures \u2013 we need to be attentive to boundaries and respect them \u2013 of course nobody is obliged to become intimate with us). By \u2018knowing\u2019 she means \u2018understanding another person from that person\u2019s perspective\u2019 and some key things which make that possible are engaging in deep and real conversation \u2013 authentically speaking and listening about the stuff that really matters \u2013 and consistent presence \u2013 reliably showing up, spending time, living life alongside one another. By \u2018caring\u2019 she means \u2018being able to feel and show that the other person\u2019s well-being matters to you\u2019 \u2013 not by trying to fix their problems \u2013 but paying attention, noticing how they\u2019re doing, checking in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I only have one significant quibble with this book, which I\u2019ll mention in passing \u2013 the author is a bit down on technology and suggests it causes loneliness. But I\u2019d argue that prior to being able to engage in \u2018knowing\u2019 and \u2018caring\u2019, as she suggests you do, need to be able to have contact, to be present in some sense, with another person. It is clear to me that there are plenty of people who through no fault of their own are physically isolated (through reasons to do with illness, disability, neurodiversity, economic factors including overwork, and so forth) and you probably won\u2019t be surprised to hear that as far as I\u2019m concerned technology can provide a valuable channel through which to connect. It\u2019s just a tool for us to use. Though we do need to be thoughtful in how we use it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, all that said, if we\u2019re feeling lonely, isolated, disconnected, what might we do about it? Perhaps we can start with the words from John C. Maxwell I shared earlier, and which are on the front of your order of service. He said: \u2018When you understand that being connected to others is one of life\u2019s greatest joys, you realize that life\u2019s best comes when you initiate and invest in solid relationships.\u2019 From that I take three things: First, we need to understand how truly important it is to cultivate real, meaningful, connections \u2013 how they are often life\u2019s greatest joys. Second, we need to realise that, unless we are incredibly lucky, such deep connections won\u2019t just fall into our lap, we need to be proactive and initiate them, reach out to others \u2013 which is inevitably a risky business as it comes with the possibility of rejection and disappointment \u2013 we might attempt to open up our true selves to connect with another and find they\u2019re not that interested. It\u2019s painful to have our interest rebuffed. And third, we need to invest in those connections, put the work in to maintain them, so they will last, hopefully deepen, over the course of a lifetime. Again, easier said than done, we\u2019re all so scattered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want to add a note from Andrea M. Darcy here \u2013 she makes a distinction between real connection and something else that often masquerades as connection \u2013 something more surface-level. She writes: \u2018Real connection is more than just talking to others or sharing interests. After all, we might talk for over an hour with someone about sport or TV, even if we secretly can\u2019t stand them. Connecting with others is a sense of being open and available to another person, even as you feel they are open and available to you\u2026 There are other behaviours which might look like connection on the surface but they often aren\u2019t connection at all. Perhaps you are always trying to connect with others by being interesting, funny, or smart, and you are always looking to others\u2019 reactions to know what to do next. In your need to feel accepted, you are not truly being yourself, or are even manipulating others for attention. That\u2019s not connection, it\u2019s showmanship.\u2019 An interesting perspective from Andrea M. Darcy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And this staying-on-the-surface, getting stuck in small-talk, is just one of many things that has the potential to block true, deep, connection. One of the most obvious blocks is not putting ourselves out there, not meeting and talking to people, whether that\u2019s in-person or online. If we withdraw into ourselves, if we\u2019re out of circulation, then any possibility for connection is nixed before it\u2019s started. As I previously mentioned this can be a paradoxical effect of loneliness; we may feel so sad and lonely \u2013 or so wounded by past troubles \u2013 rejection or exclusion or trauma \u2013 that we just can\u2019t face putting ourselves out there again. We need to break out of that trap. Take small steps. Another block to connection is a kind of ambivalence \u2013 perhaps even a fear of entanglement and commitment \u2013 we want connection, and support, but maybe we\u2019re wary of what it might demand of us if we become emotionally involved another person, or a community, and care for their well-being. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Taylor Nicioli said, in the reading we heard from Brian, it\u2019s important to pay attention to \u2018bids for connection\u2019. These are all the ways that we reach out to each other \u2013 not necessarily through grand gestures, just little daily opportunities to connect, get closer, build relationship (like Nicioli\u2019s example of pointing out an interesting bird to her friend, who responds positively by turning to look at it). These ideas on \u2018bids\u2019 come from the well-known relationship psychologists John and Julie Gottman. If we\u2019re on the receiving end of such \u2018bids for connection\u2019 we have three choices: we can turn towards (acknowledge the bid and be warm and receptive), we can turn away (ignore or brush off), or we can turn against (a more actively hostile and irritable dismissal response). And if we want to build a deep connection with someone we need to notice that these \u2018bids\u2019 are happening and respond positively towards them more often than not. And of course we can\u2019t just sit back and wait for these bids to come to us. We need to be courageous and reach out to make those bids towards others. And it does take courage to reach out and to respond. And it does also take courage and resilience to accept it graciously when the answer is \u2018no\u2019. Not everyone will want to connect with you, for whatever reason, and that has got to be OK. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a sense, as Victoria Safford said in the reading we heard from Antony, we are all ultimately alone. But making meaningful connections \u2013 whether that\u2019s connecting to our deeper selves in solitude, with others in one-to-one relationships, or more collectively in community, and with God (or something beyond, however we may conceive of it) \u2013 this making of meaningful connections is truly a religious act. The most sacred stuff of my own life has come to me through connection, I know. As Safford said, \u2018When I say God I mean that place of meeting, that place where solitudes join\u2026 God is the space in between, the bridge between solitudes, the ground where we meet, you and I, or any two, by grace\u2026 all of us, together, are alone, and the emptiness between us is waiting to be filled.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, if you are already blessed with connection and closeness\u2026 treasure it. And maintain it. \nConsider what you might do to nurture and deepen the web of relationships you already have. \nAnd if you\u2019re not so blessed in this regard\u2026 then lament, if you need to, let yourself be sad about it. But think about reaching out too. If you\u2019ve been disappointed, pick yourself up, and try again. Think about trying something new to connect and find closeness. Be brave, and ask for what you need. And perhaps, as we return to our daily lives, each one of us can reflect on the part we might play to help create a less lonely society, through the choices we make \u2013 both personal and political \u2013 in the week to come. May it be so, for the greater good of all. Amen.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reflection by Jane Blackall<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n