Loneliness

Review: Beyond Ethnic Loneliness

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Cover image of "Beyond Ethnic Loneliness" by Prasanta Verma

Beyond Ethnic Loneliness, Prasanta Verma. InterVarsity Press (ISBN: 9781514007419), 2024.

Summary: An Indian American immigrant describes the distinctive experience of ethnic loneliness and steps those experiencing that loneliness and those who care for them can take toward healing.

” ‘Go back to Indiana, or wherever it is you came from!’ she hissed.

Imagine you are the little girl whose only memories are growing up in Alabama, whose family immigrated from India. It was a devastating message that the author of this work has never forgotten, even with the mistaken notion that Indian Americans must be from Indiana! She spoke English like an American but looked “different” from others. She found herself asking the question “What am I?” And in living in this place on the margins, it led to a peculiar kind of loneliness–ethnic loneliness. It is the loneliness that Blacks, Indigenous people, Latinos, Africans, Middle East and North Africans and Asian American and Pacific Islanders who live in a White majority country struggle with.

In Part One of the book, Prasanta Verma takes this question of “what are you” and delineates the particular nature of ethnic loneliness. In defining ethnic loneliness, one of the striking aspects to me was its chronic, rather than episodic nature that may be experienced as cultural isolation, lack of connection, identity conflicts, loss of cultural identity, social exclusion, marginalization, language barriers, and integration and assimilation. Verma discusses the experience of disbelonging, being uprooted from a place where one belongs to and with others. She poignantly describes her own struggle where her particular beauty clashed with the dominant white culture–she with dark skin without tanning and dark curly hair. She wrestles with identity theft, being the perpetual foreigner in America and a tourist with an American passport in India.

She shares what it is like to be isolated and othered in a racialized society–the racial stereotypes (in her case, the model Asian) and the microaggressions (“where are you from?” which is asked because of one’s different appearance). There is even the struggle of names–does one choose an American name to fit in, making one a traitor to one’s own ethnicity. She chronicles how ethnic minorities are marginalized in institutions: lack of diversity and representation, cultural insensitivity, discriminatory policies, microaggressions, lack of access, language barriers, and more. She concludes this part with summarizing the experience as one of exile. Throughout, Verma draws on how scripture addresses such loneliness, and here points out how God was with exiled Israel, the despised Samaritans and others on the margins.

Part Two of the book explores what may be done. Her focus is on the ethnically lonely person and a key is moving from disbelonging to belonging.. She begins with the healing of different forms of racial trauma, which she names, as a kind of belonging to oneself. She also encourages finding people to be safe with while also setting healthy boundaries in one’s life. She emphasizes the importance of stories, including reading the stories of others, offering a great bibliography. A good rule in such situations (and especially for majority culture people) is: “Don’t deflect racism/Don’t defend racism/Don’t deny racism.” She discusses the ways individualism and fear create barriers to moving from disbelonging to belonging and offers an extremely helpful list of what churches and community organizations can do. Her concluding chapter describes living in the already/not yet of longing for “the better country” of Hebrews 11:13-16–the loneliness that opens us up to the beauty of community, the glimpses and the long haul to see the changes we dream of.

At the end of each chapter (along with questions and a writing prompt) is an answer in verse to the question “So, What are you?” which are wonderful meditations allowing the chapter’s truth to sink deeply into one’s life. Here is the one from the final chapter:

SO, WHAT ARE YOU?

You are beloved
You are not invisible
You are whole
You are wanted
You are seen
You are loved
Just the way you are
You belong to yourself
You belong to others
You belong to God
So, what are you?
You are a gift of joy
You eat at the table
Of belonging
You are a Home
Of belonging
To others
And yourself

Prasanta Verma addresses hard realities of loneliness and trauma with stories of her own life and those of others. She offers biblical re-framing and practical suggestions wrapped in beautiful rhythmic prose and verse. This is an important book not only for those who struggle with ethnic loneliness but for any who care enough to want to understand and accompany those who struggle. And I can’t help but wonder if the insights and practices in this book, if applied, might also begin to address the larger loneliness pervading our society.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Loneliness Epidemic

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The Loneliness Epidemic, Susan Mettes (Foreword by David Kinnaman). Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2021.

Summary: A study of the prevalence of loneliness in America, misconceptions about loneliness, and steps leaders and individuals in the church can take to address loneliness.

Loneliness is epidemic in America. Over half the population feel lonely at least once a week and fourteen percent all the time. Forty-five percent describe their feelings of loneliness as somewhere between intense and unbearable. Loneliness is linked to depression and suicide and affects not only mental but physical well-being. It contributes to heart disease, weakened immunity, stress, sleep disorders, and dementia.

Susan Mettes introduces us to this data, much of it drawn from Barna Research. She offers this definition of loneliness: “the distress someone feels when their social connections don’t meet their need for emotional intimacy.” She describes two kinds of loneliness. One is that for a buddy, and almost any buddy whose company we enjoy will do. The other is our longing for intimacy, not just sexually, but with people we can be our truest selves with.

One of the most fascinating parts of her study were the ways in which it punctured our stereotypes. We often think of the old as lonely, but actually, aside from the bereaved or disabled, young adults are the loneliest. The emphasis on deferring marriage to focus on education and career may contribute. We think the solution to loneliness is finding true love. While marriage can help, the quality of our relationships, single or married is most important and cultivating community that includes singles is vital. We need both privacy and belonging. Loneliness and the lack of privacy actually rise together. It is insecurity, which may have to do with status as well as self-talk, rather than poor social skills that contributes to loneliness.

Social media can supplement in-person relationships but can also make people jealous and lonely if it becomes a replacement for those relationships. Contrary to the belief that church makes people less lonely, Christians are generally as lonely as non-Christians (and may under-report due to stigma). Yet the pandemic also revealed a striking finding: that practicing Christians exhibited a resilience against loneliness when it was not possible to meet in person.

The third part of the book looks at what leaders may do to address loneliness. One is to foster belonging. One key idea here is that we often fail to follow up with those we meet to do something of mutual interest together. Another is closeness, which may be nurtured as we practice hospitality, appropriate physical touch, and neighborliness. We can also help by setting real-world norms and expectations including the reality that we all experience loneliness (even Jesus) as well as the steps that help address this, like inviting people over while puncturing unrealistic, social-media fed expectations about “living my best life now.” At several points, Mettes challenges leaders to model a healthy relationship with devices, and ways we keep them from getting in the way of people.

This is an important book for churches thinking about the renewal of community, even as some are walking away from relationships. Authentic hospitality, enjoying shared interests together, even appropriate hugs never go out of style. Some of us may have gotten rusty in our relationship skills and coaching in community may help us get out of our rusty ruts. Creating a culture that includes singles and the bereaved makes sense when marriage is delayed, and the pandemic has taken so many. Perhaps it is time to think about how we may foster a community epidemic in a lonely, hostile, and divided nation.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: Wait With Me

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wait with me

Wait With Me, Jason Gaboury. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press/Formatio, 2020.

Summary: Proposes that the experience of loneliness is an invitation to grow in our friendship with God.

“To be human is to be lonely.” These words, spoken by Friar Ugo, the author’s spiritual director, open the book. Jason Gaboury, perhaps like all of us, experienced loneliness from childhood. He describes growing up amid domestic strife from which he ran away at one point, and that ended in divorce. Friar Ugo poses this question:

   Have you ever considered . . . that the loneliness you’re experiencing is an invitation to grow your friendship with God?

That led to a journey to exploring how God meets people in their loneliness in scripture,  and to a startling insight that “flips” his perspective of God.

In one-word titled chapters, Gaboury takes us through Abraham’s experience of leaving home into a new relationship with God, of the encounters of Hagar and Moses with God in the desert, of the grasping ambition of Jacob that found its resolution in the grasp of God, and the desolation encounter of Elijah in the silence where he hears God’s voice. We are invited to consider our griefs and losses in the grief of Ezekial for his people. We explore how God may call us into the loneliness of risk leading us to a new place of trust through the story of Esther. We learn with Mary what it means to respond to profound and disturbing news with a heart that ponders before God. We watch as the leadership of Saul the persecutor is deconstructed and formed anew as the follower of Jesus during three days of blindness after the Damascus road.

Gaboury mixes his own experiences with biblical reflections–the loss of an ambitious friend to suicide, stepping into church leadership after the forced departure of a pastor, and learning to follow afresh as God revealed the dysfunctions of the leadership of which he’d been a part.

All this leads to another conversation with Friar Ugo. Gaboury had been describing some of his insights from scripture of God meeting people in their loneliness, all the ways Jesus enters into our pain. Then:

   Friar Ugo smiled, “I’m glad for the consolation you feel as you enter into the Scriptures, but I don’t think they’re the point. What if the loneliness that drives you to seek consolation was meant to expand your heart in compassion for Jesus?” He paused again. “You can’t love someone you don’t know, and you only know someone whose experience you’re willing to enter into with empathy and compassion.”

Gaboury proceeds to reflect on Jesus in Gethsemane asking the disciples to “wait with me” through his agonized prayer. Instead, they slept and abandoned Jesus, even before his arrest, trial, and forsaken death. Instead of considering how Jesus enters into our loneliness, Gaboury invites us to enter into the loneliness of Jesus, where Jesus ceases to be our therapist and we become his friends.

This is a startling insight for me, one I’m still weighing even as I write about this book. It reflects not only a different and true insight, but one that comes out of a deep reading of both scripture and life by the author in the company of a spiritual friend. Gaboury invites us to join that journey both in text and questions for reflection that invite us to sit with what we have read and to wait with God. But there is one more thing. Gaboury invites those transformed by waiting with God to compassionate witness to the God who invites us to wait with him in our loneliness–and His.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

 

Review: Three Pieces of Glass

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Three pieces of glass

Three Pieces of Glass, Eric O. Jacobsen. Grands Rapids: Brazos Press, 2020.

Summary: Focuses on loneliness and belonging and the influence of cars, television, and smartphones on the experience, and even design of community and the choices we may make to foster belonging.

A recent commercial for a pizza chain reprises a classic TV scene in which a figure of a somewhat heavy set man who walks into an establishment. In the classic version, he is instantly recognized and everyone calls out “Norm.”  In the contemporary version, no one knows his name because he hasn’t created an online profile tracked on his phone. In the old neighborhood bar, “everybody knows your name.” Now belonging is increasingly mediated through a screen.

Eric O. Jacobsen didn’t anticipate the commercial, which underscores the theme of belonging represented by Norm that runs through this book. He contends that three pieces of glass, the windshield of the automobile, the screen of the television, and the screen of our smartphones, tablets, and computers have fundamentally influenced our experience of belonging in society.

Jacobsen begins his discussion by exploring the nature of belonging as having to do with relationship, place and story, and levels of belonging from intimate and personal to social and public and how intimate and personal are not enough. He explores the way in which experiences of social and public, together referred to as civic belonging, offer foretastes of kingdom belonging.

The second part of the book then sketches out the nature of kingdom belonging which he characterizes as unconditional, covenantal, invitational, compassionate, diverse,  transformative, delightful and productive. He contrasts this with worldly belonging and highlights the inclusive (the images of the feast and the table) and the covenantal relationship character of the kingdom.

Part three considers the gospel and belonging and shows how through the gospel, broken relationships are restored and there is healing for the epidemic of loneliness. For people who feel estranged and exiled, there is a promise of homecoming. And for those living in a story of meagre existence, there is a better and grander story.

The fourth part of the books addresses how the “three pieces of glass” have contributed to our crisis of belonging. The automobile has changed how our living spaces have been configured, from the design of our homes, to the walkability of our neighborhoods, and the location of where we shop and work in relation to where we live. Television changes how we view real people versus our “TV friends.” Our smartphones and other devices have led us to substitute virtual for face to face interaction. These have led erosion in the civic realm and an epidemic of “busyness.

The last two parts consider, first, the influence of our choices on our communal life, our public policies, and on our liturgical life and second how we may encourage belonging. The last part reprises ideas elaborated at greater length in Jacobsen’s earlier books, Sidewalks in the Kingdom and The Space Between, both influenced by the new urbanism. He looks at the design of our communities, advocating for walkability, our proximity, which includes a parish vision for the church, the making of meaningful public places, and a local culture reflected in language, shared stories, and events.

Writing this review during the Covid-19 pandemic gives me a different perspective on this book than I might have had during “normal” times. The latter two pieces of glass have taken on critical importance both as sources of information (although we have to watch for media overload), and as the one means of connection, or belonging most of us have when we must practice physical distancing–particularly in connecting with family, friends, our church community, our work colleagues, and even our political leaders. For many of us, we can work from home (and this may not even represent a change for some of us.)

By the same token, people are walking their neighborhoods at safe distances, in some cases meeting neighbors they never knew by name. I know of one neighborhood where a local folk singer set up in his front yard and staged an impromptu singalong. When we can’t go to restaurants, sporting events, and many of the other places our cars take us–we are left with walking and a kind of “neighboring” occurs. By the same token, I wonder if fights would have occurred over essential goods in the neighborhood markets I grew up with that occur in our megastores where people come from miles around and it is rare you meet someone you know. You shopped with people you knew in those neighborhood groceries and, perhaps we would be more considerate of the needs of others and neither hoard nor fight. After all, we lived with those people and we would be publicly shamed if we took more than our fair share!

Jacobsen’s book makes me wonder whether we will be more mindful about this question of belonging, as we realize how dependent we are upon both in our churches, and in the civic sphere. It makes me wonder if we will take a fresh look at our neighborhoods, both what is good about them, as well as what could be better about our places, and how we connect with each other. With internet connected devices, I suspect it is a bit more complicated. It would not surprise me if life becomes more oriented for more people around these devices. We are doing more education through them, more commerce, more business collaboration, and even more religious activity. While we discover that the church is not a building, will we also jettison the physical encounters that are at the heart of Christian community, from the breaking of bread and the cup to all those meals and potlucks that are some of the best part of our lives? Even before this crisis, I was in conversation with those who talked about declines in church attendance, in which someone pointed to their smartphone and said, “that’s because many think they carry church in their pocket.”

Yet Jacobsen reminds us of our epidemic of loneliness. He raises the critical question of whether belonging can be mediated through a smart device, or whether the proximity necessary for social and public belonging can be created in a car culture. We may love our TV friends, but will they love us back? Jacobsen’s book raises a series of inter-related questions for how the church understands its message, how we steward our technology, and how we configure the places where we live. How we answer those might well make the difference between places where nobody or everybody knows our names.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. The opinions I have expressed are my own.