What Does Spiritual Maturity Look Like?

Resistance to loneliness as a spiritual concept may have to do with the lack of research clarity around social isolation as opposed to the FEELING of loneliness. It turns out that deep dives into the data around loneliness points out correlation but not causation.

These mega data dumps indicate that lonely people often live shorter lives. But that does not mean it is the cause. Maybe people in poor health have less energy or inclination to maintain contact with others. Perhaps these folks are dying of poor health and loneliness is a consequence of their disease not the cause of their death.

Take for example a 2012 study that reports that Denmark’s inhabitants are among the happiest and longest living populations in the world. And guess what? They have a high rate of loneliness (30% according to Keming Yang’s book Loneliness: A Social Problem).

Now, why does this matter?

Because if we identify loneliness as a problem, we might seek to solve it with magical potions and scary warnings to NOT BE LONELY. And what if we “cure” loneliness? And what if “loneliness” is a necessary component of developing maturity? Oops. That would be a bit of a snafu. We might end up with an entirely different sort of problem with even fewer people to serve as spiritual guides for souls interested in seeking after a faithful life. More personally, we might be blaming our loneliness on our spiritual malaise instead of taking the time to inquire about what spiritual fulfillment means, how it really feels, what thoughts we actually have along the way and how it changes our behaviors. Maybe, I am suggesting, spiritual maturity looks wildly different than we ever considered.

At daybreak, Jesus went out to a solitary place. The people were looking for him and when they came to where he was, they tried to keep him from leaving them.

Luke 4:42 NIV

Intentional Solitude?

From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense to have a primal fear of loneliness. We are safer running in a pack than living in isolation. There is a reason we think the phrase “lone wolf” signifies risky behavior.

We fear loneliness, but we also long for it. Ask any parent of toddlers and they will tell you that their most provocative fantasies include grocery shopping solo or a weekend of bedrest.

Christopher McCandless gave up everything to live alone (read about that in the book Into the Wild) and it killed him. It also turned him into something of a legend. We fear loneliness and obsess over the possibility that we might squeeze out a few minutes each day for ourselves.

I wonder if running from loneliness might be a symptom of a deeper problem. Maybe our terror over our covid-disrupted routines may have more to do with our distractibility and lack of spiritual sturdiness than we would like to admit.

So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place.

Mark 6:32 NIV

Solitude, which inevitably will stir up latent feelings of loneliness, is a spiritual practice that is encouraged by those who have walked the spiritual paths long before we were born. Silence and stillness are equally encouraged as daily spiritual practices.

What better time to test them out?

During this winter of the pandemic, what if...we carved out time for solitude, silence and stillness? Get quiet. Don’t use a guided meditation or play music while you walk. Don’t distract yourself from yourself in any way. Sit in homage to God. Sit as one who waits for a dear friend or lover, eager to hear the car pull down the driveway, the sound of the key rattling in the lock. Sit still and just be you.

The Inevitability of Loneliness

Just to review, I’m (Teresa) exploring this idea that what we have historically thought of as wisdom and maturity and how to acquire it may be...not quite right. I’m suggesting that we rethink what the experience of spiritual growth is versus how we imagined we would feel once we achieve it. As an example, I am picking on loneliness and our notion that it is a bad thing. I’m going so far as to suggest that loneliness may be an inevitable part of growing up. The reason I suggest this is partially because the book of Romans keeps reminding us that our culture gets it wrong and we often go along with its current hypotheses about life without thinking.

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you:

Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

Romans 12:1-2 The Message

Loneliness has become a cultural bad boy, like gluten or wearing hose (not leggings). In 2017 Theresa May (British prime minister at the time) appointed a “Minister for Sport, Civil Society and Loneliness. Health experts in Germany declared an “epidemic of loneliness” and called for an appointment of a commissioner for loneliness (to eradicate it, not promote it, I presume). Scientists are even working on an anti-loneliness pill to reduce or even eliminate the feeling of loneliness!

I wonder if we have all gotten just a titch off course.

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.

Mark 1:35 NIV

The Truth About Loneliness

It FEELS like loving people should not be lonely. It FEELS like loving our spouse and kids and friends and community should fill our love buckets to the brim and overflowing. And if I have to choose between the life I have - one with a spouse who is still my boyfriend, great kids who keep providing me more people to love by marrying and having children, friends I have had and loved for eons (one since we were months old) versus a life of isolation - I CHOOSE MY LIFE. My love bucket is filled to the brim and overflowing and I know how absolutely blessed I am to have it.

And I am lonely. Not all the time, but enough to know that loneliness is not an indicator of how much one loves or is loved.

Loneliness has been demonized as a function of depression or seasonal affective disorder - and I am sure that is true and good to know. Loneliness is a feature of postpartum depression and dementia and alcohol use disorder. If you google it, nothing positive pops up. There are loneliness quotes, synonyms and symptoms. There are articles on the science of loneliness and how it can kill you. All very dire stuff and probably true enough.

Monophobia is a disorder that describes an extreme fear of being alone and it explains that sufferers are incapable of functioning solo. Deprived of company, they experience panic attacks and are often gripped by a paralyzing fear of death.

I wonder if all this fear mongering about loneliness has marginalized us from some of the more healthy spiritual practices that might just help us grow spiritually?

I continue to be struck by the outrage of Americans demanding to return to church in the middle of a pandemic. Are they right? Is failing to congregate going to be as deadly as COVID-19?

Let’s explore that. Stay tuned.

When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place.

Matthew 14:13 NIV

Certainty is a Security Blanket...

Don’t surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn’t true anymore.

Cheryl Strayed

I often ask people I Zoom with about what they want - from me, for their life, to change. It’s a serious question. Here are some of the answers I have heard this past month:

I want to get my kids back from social services.

I want to lose weight so that I can feel good about myself.

I want to save my marriage.

I want to escape my marriage.

I want to travel again.

I want to find my one true love.

I want a job so that I can move out of my parents’ house.

I want to express my passion through a job that fulfills me.

I want to take a nap or sleep through the night again.

I want my brother to talk to me.

I want my mother to not be dead so that she can see me grow up.

Sometimes I feel like the best thing I can do for others is to scavenge through their memory banks and haul out moments of joy to remind them that life is not always about what is missing. Sometimes I feel like the hardest thing I do for others is to hold up a mirror while yelling (in my head), “Do you see this? This here? Are you paying attention? You are not going to get your kids back if you keep smoking crack. Is really and truly the most important thing about you how much you WEIGH for god’s sake?” On and on my questions go. Questions I ask myself on days when how much I weigh does indeed feel like the measure of my worth. Questions I ask myself about why my baby brother and I no longer speak. Questions I ask about so many of the people I have cared about who are no longer with their loved ones - lost to life in ways that feel….preventable, unnecessary, a mistake.

It is good to dig for joy; it is also important to dig deep and confront ourselves about our notions of truth, reality, and certainty. I’m told by people who study such things that certainty is not a sign of wisdom or even maturity. It’s more like a security blanket we use to protect ourselves from hard truths and painful feelings. Let’s crawl out from under the oppression of our certainty and see what God might be willing to do for us.

Love many, trust few, and always paddle your own canoe.

American proverb of unknown origin