Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Relishing Relationships

        My wife and I just came back from whitewater rafting in West Virginia where we had an incredible time getting to know two young couples at our church. 
         Such relationships bring joy.  While we may experience a deep connectedness to the land by spending time by ourselves, hermits are seldom happy.  A 2015 Harvard study shows that happiness, rather, depends most upon strengthening the quality of our close relationships.
       As a culture we are currently digesting statistics about what happens to inmates who are placed in solitary confinement.  Like babies who are not held and older people who spend too much time alone with their thoughts, we see that all of us need constructive interaction to heal and thrive.         
       Isolation is toxic.  Even the great mystics who recommend extended periods of silence generally see spiritual retreat as a means of preparing for more meaningful engagement with others.     
       Charles Taylor, in The Ethics of Authenticity, suggests that even the most rebellious young people don’t develop their identities through mere experimentation, but through struggling with a community of persons with a gridwork of existing morals.   
      One of the challenges of our age is that people don’t work together with generations of family on the farm anymore.   Now, we grow up by “moving away from home.”  The cashier at the local grocery once knew us. Now we just order food delivery from the internet. 
       Consumer convenience has created a toxic loneliness of which we are barely aware… until we go rafting with friends.  It’s then we realize how much we need the church to resist the market forces which create isolation. 

       It’s one thing not to know a cashier.  It’s quite another not to know the man who stands in the pulpit.  The shape of a pastor’s life is what gives her words power.  We intuitively know a shepherd will not leave the 99 sheep to seek us out when we stray if he doesn’t know us well enough to specifically cherish us as individuals.  No pastor can love sheep he doesn't know as friends.  Deep within we know that it is relationship that counts.

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