Pastoral Thought--October 28

Today I want to share the words of Political Science professor Thomas L. Dumm. I believe that his words can be helpful to the church as we consider our culture and how we remember, and stay in contact with, others. 

He wrote: 

"We are marked by loneliness when we register the death of others to us, when we cease to be connected to the things that surround us, and when we notice that we somehow have become something that we no longer recognize as ourselves. Loneliness is akin to the experience of skepticism. Its intellectual affect suggests a gesture toward doubting the very possibility that the world we inhabit actually exists. . . Loneliness is not death. Yet me might as well be dead when our only possibility is to be alone, because the worst aspect of loneliness is that it ends the possibility of meaningful experience by translating the inner dialogue of solitude into a monologue of desolation."

“A monologue of desolation” I think that we know what this looks like personally. I suspect that you know exactly how that feels, and how it is registered in the face of someone that you love and care for. 

Much of what I witness on the news, or read on social media, or hear while shopping, or listen to on the radio, reflects Dumm’s idea back onto me. Desolation. . . Isolation. . .  Loneliness. . . Not only does the physical death of those that I care about bruise my soul, but so much of what we as the church can witness, feels isolating. We can lose hope and retreat back into ourselves. The way a coworker speaks about an issue when we are not around, the look that another driver gave you as they cut you off, the way a clerk is short with you, the individual who berates you because you are wearing a mask and they don’t see the need, all of that puts us on an island where we might be skeptical that God is at work around us.

But behind Dumm’s words, I think, is the opportunity for affirmation. If we are so lonely. If we feel so set apart, then we do have an option. We have something to hope in. We can take deliberate steps to reconnect with another person. We can make that phone call. We can send that text. We are affirm someone in public when no one else is doing anything except muttering that this pandemic, and the government’s response, is unfair. We have the choice to deliberately ‘be with’ those who we agree and disagree with. We can build community when no one else around us wants to engage that work. We can be present when the pacing of the world makes this hard—if not impossible.  

I hope today that you will take some time to consider Dumm’s words. And if you are feeling like he describes, then make the choice to engage someone. Talk to them. Connect with them. Listen to them. As you do so, you participate in the redemptive work that God calls each of us to do.

Blessings

Rev. Derek