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Overcoming Loneliness
A Sermon Given
by the Reverend Roger Fritts
on September 24, 2000
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
In a Peanuts cartoon Lucy is sitting in her small booth with the
sign: "Psychiatrist, five cents." Charlie Brown walks up and asks
Lucy: "Can you cure loneliness?"
She answers: "I can cure anything."
Charlie Brown says: "Can you cure deep-down, bottom-of-the-well, black-forever loneliness?"
Lucy responds: "All for the same nickel?"
It is easy to find evidence of loneliness. For example, the personal
ads in newspapers and magazines and now on the internet, speak of
the hunger men and women have for relationships.
In a section called "Women Seeking Men" a young lady writes
"Washington woman, Catholic, refined, engaged in postgraduate
study, desires to meet educated scholar and theocratic spirit with
traditional values and reflective attributes." It sounds like the
description of a Jesuit priest.
In the section called "Men Seeking Men" someone wrote:
"Attractive, 32-year-old scholar, whose passions range from the
authors Marcel Proust and Henry James to Frank Sinatra, seeks a
relationship with a young man who is not averse to fun and the
gaining of wisdom." I wish him luck. However, anyone who
includes Frank Sinatra in a list of famous authors is himself in need
of wisdom.
In the section called "Women Seeking Women" this ad appeared:
"Stimulating PhD seeks an unattached woman capable of warm,
loving relationship, with an interest in films, food, travel, and
skiing--but none of these are essential." She is not going to be
choosy.
In the section called "Men Seeking Women" A poet professor says
he is seeking "a Margaret Mead type," which suggests a
relationship with a short, highly opinionated anthropologist--a
limited category. He better have a sense of humor.
Another man writes: "Engineer, forty-five, thin, likeable, and
intelligent, seeks a slender, sensual woman, IQ greater than weight,
for committed relationship based on love and respect. One night
stand OK too." He will compromise.
The authors of the personal ads are only publicly expressing what
lies in the hearts of most of us. I admire their courage in asking
directly and openly for what they need. Their words spring from
the depth of human feeling, from the terrible fear of isolation, from
the need to be accepted by another human being.
In one survey 25% of those interviewed said they had suffered
from the pain of loneliness within the past few weeks. In another
study one in nine of those interviewed said they had suffered from
serious loneliness as recently as the past week. And when
researchers asked elementary school children what bothered them
the most, their primary complaint was that they were lonely.
What is the origin of loneliness? My own theory is that loneliness
begins when others hurt us as we grow up. We learn from painful
experiences in our families, or in the school yard or in the
classroom, to protect ourselves by holding back. And this holding
back isolates us. As children we learned to lock our most private
selves away. Our fear of being emotionally hurt by others keeps us
from sharing our joys and our pain. We are afraid to touch or to be
touched by another human being. Therefore, at times many of us
experience profound loneliness.
In his book, The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm wrote that the
Biblical story of Adam and Eve eating from the tree of knowledge
is a symbolic description of the anxiety that we feel when we
realize that each of us is separate, different and alone. He said:
After Adam and Eve have eaten of the 'tree of
knowledge of good and evil,' . . . after they have
become human by having emancipated themselves
from the original animal harmony with nature. . . .
After man and woman have become aware of
themselves and of each other, they are aware of
their separateness, and of their difference, . . . But
while recognizing their separateness they remain
strangers, because they have not yet learned to love
each other. . . . The awareness of human
separation . . . is the source of . . . anxiety.
The deepest need of human beings is our need to overcome our
separateness, to leave the prison of our aloneness. I first read
these words of Erich Fromm's when I was about fifteen years old,
and they became central to my own efforts to understand human
behavior. The deepest need of human beings is our need to
overcome our separateness, to leave the prison of our aloneness.
People of all ages and cultures struggle with the same
question--the question of how to overcome separateness, how to
reconnect with others, how to transcend our individual life.
We humans try to deal with the anxiety we feel when we are lonely
in many ways. Drugs including the drug alcohol, can free us from
loneliness for a time, although when the drugs wear off loneliness
can return. Sexual contact, like drugs can free us from loneliness
for a time, but just as with drugs, when the sexual activity is over
the loneliness returns, often with even more intensity. Gambling,
like drugs, can relieve our loneliness for a short time. Shopping can
give us temporary relief. Eating can have the same effect for some
people. Powerful rituals, such as the rituals of religion, or sports or
politics the military, can for a time, overcome the feeling of being
separate and different. Work long hours can also be a temporary
solution to loneliness. Conformity with a group is still another way
that we humans cope with our anxiety about being alone. As an
adult I see this desire for conformity in my children, who are
passionate about the brands of clothing they will or will not wear to
school. Of course, they see the same conformity in their father
when I follow the rules of the book Dress for Success in selecting
my conservative button down shirt, my tie, and my suit. It is all
part of my effort to avoid the anxiety of loneliness.
In contrast, to these solutions, the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber
suggested three healthy ways to overcome the feeling of loneliness.
- First, we can overcome loneliness by engaging in creative
activity, such as painting, or singing, or writing a poem, or
acting in a play. For example, suddenly a piece of music
can reach out to us, and can shatter our loneliness. Hearing
the music we will feel a unity that binds us together with
others.
- Second, we can overcome loneliness by communing with
nature--taking a hike in the woods, or watching a sunrise,
or digging in a garden.
- Third, we can overcome loneliness by entering into healthy
relationships with others. These are relationships where we
treat others with care and respect, while simultaneously we
preserve our own integrity. In healthy relationships we care
about others without losing our own identity.
Starting out about forty-nine years ago, the founders of this church
set out to establish a safe place where people could overcome their
feelings of loneliness in these three healthy ways, through creative
activity, through relationships with nature, and through
relationships with other people.
In the winter of 1950-51 All Souls Unitarian Church on
16th street
in Washington was struggling with a waiting list in its church
school and standing room only in its sanctuary. Rev. A. Powell
Davies recommended that rather than add more Sunday services or
try to move to a larger building, they should start a new church in
Montgomery County, Maryland.
The Board of Trustees of All Souls Unitarian Church voted in June
1951 to support the formation of a Montgomery County Unitarian
Center. All Souls agreed to furnish ministerial services. It supplied
printing, publicity, the use of mailing lists, the use of office
equipment and staff support. The Greater Washington Committee
for Unitarian Advance gave the new congregation $1500 to provide
high fidelity telephone equipment for the transmitting of the
services at All Souls to speakers at the Chevy Chase Woman's
Club, which the new church rented Sunday mornings for services.
The speaker for the sound system was hidden behind flowers.
The first Sunday, September 24, 1951, the Sunday School for
children, which they called the School of Religion, was unable to
open. They had planned for an enrollment of about sixty children.
However, parents registered one hundred and seventy children, and
twenty other children were placed on a waiting list. The founders
delayed the opening of the School of Religion for two weeks while
they gathered more teachers and materials.
In the next few years this church grew quickly. Recognizing their
financial limitations, in 1958 the founders built this auditorium as a
temporary worship space, with the hope and the dream that future
members would build a sanctuary. People poured their time and
energy into building this community. Men and women, often new
residents of the county and for the most part strangers to each
other, served on projects and committees and task-forces of the
church. They built social and personal relationships by means of
which they could overcome the loneliness and isolation many were
feeling. In this religious community, men and women who were
geographically, and sometimes emotionally, distant from their
families of origin, established new friendships based on shared
experience and shared need. Some of those friendships have lasted
forty-nine years.
Relationships with people, with nature and with the arts have been
important throughout the history of this congregation. Our
buildings are located in a lush forest of trees. Our congregation is
home to Cedar Lane Stage, and to a wonderful choir, and
occasional art displays. Forty-nine years after our founding, Cedar
Lane Unitarian Universalist Church is a powerful ally in the battle
against loneliness. Not only Sunday mornings, when we gather for
common worship, but in the fellowship of the church dinners and
social events; in the friendship of the singles group and the mens's
group; in the companionship of the aging support groups and our
pastoral care visitors; in the stimulation of the adult education
classes; in the care and sympathy of the pastoral counseling
services; in the religious education of children; the mental
endeavor of bridge and the emotional satisfaction of flower
arranging; in the sacred ceremonies of birth, marriage, and death
--the battle against loneliness is fought on many fronts.
The healthy church is a vast network of contacts and connections,
of unions and associations, of warm relations and spiritual
harmonies. We are, of course, not a perfect community. We make
mistakes. Still, we do our best to maintain a religious community
so that to some significant degree we reduce the feeling of
loneliness in those that seek us out. Here we try to maintain a
community where reaching out to each other feels safe, in contrast
to our childhood experienced in the school yard. I look at the past
forty-nine years of this church, and I say a prayer for the future:
- May our church continue to be a community where we will
accept each other, where we will laugh at each others jokes
and listen to each others nightmares.
- May we continue to love our energetic children, our
dedicated workers, our quiet teenagers, our elderly
neighbors, and our shy newcomers.
- And may we find here a place for the healing power of
love. Amen
Rev. Roger Fritts
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