Are You Lonely Tonight?

Some of the loneliest people I know come from the largest families.

It seems counterintuitive, I suppose. If there are lots of people, lots of blood relations, then relationships should be easy to come by and to maintain. But the more I talk to people, the more I begin to see the pattern: the bigger the family reunion, the scarcer the attention.

Here is an example.

I'm not sure how old I was when my parents were invited to 'Ye Olde Family Reunion.' For most kids, the words 'family reunion' are a source of trepidation. To engage with the extended family was not what young people would call a good time. To mix with long lost (or never met) relatives, eat hotdogs and chips and gather together at the end of the day for the dystopian family photo where seventy-five sweaty people are crammed together in a kind of multi-layered genetic sandwich (so everyone could have a photo of great grandpa and grandma with all their progeny before they died) was not what I would have called an optimum way to spend a summer afternoon. 

On that day, going to my dad's cousin's house, who none of us could have picked out of a police lineup, we packed a potato salad, a watermelon and a two liter of Sasparilla into the back end of the station wagon and drove two excruciating, hot hours to Cousin Eddy's house.

Everything went as predicted: the adults mixed and visited (my least favorite word) while the next generation of children, very few the same age, tried to engage in various nefarious activities to gain the attention of the adults, even just to hear them yell, "You kids, get out of the grain wagon! You're going to get stuck and then I'm going to have to come in there after you!" This would have been a great source of amusement to watch Cousin Milo shush us out like rats in a basement.

For the most part, extended family reunions are lonely places because in general, kids just want the approval and attention of their parents. That's why (unknowingly) they spend a decent amount of time running back and forth from aforementioned activities to a parent's side tugging on their sleeve and pointing to say, "Mom, Dad, watch me! Watch me!"

We've always simply wanted the attention of our parents, and the more people there are, the harder it is to attract that attention.

Thus it was in Jacob's family.

Jacob desired to have his parents' approval. Already, his mother was willing to give it to him, but his father steadfastly desired to favor Esau, the older. This required Jacob to (in essence) tug on his father's sleeve and say, "Dad! Watch me!"

When the boys grew up, Esau became an expert hunter, an outdoorsman, but Jacob was a quiet man who stayed at home. Isaac loved Esau because he had a taste for wild game, but Rebekah loved Jacob.

As the story goes, it seems as if Jacob is so desperate for his father's attention that he robs his brother of his birthright over a bowl of soup. Because of this paternal isolation, Jacob drives an even larger wedge between Esau and himself. Instead of solidifying the relationship with compassion and brotherly love, Jacob lives out his jealousy by making Esau despise his own birthright. We begin to understand how difficult the relationship is for these twins. They are both lonely, both seeking approval and both having a difficult time feeling love from their father because they believe that their father's attention only falls on them when they are productive.

In large families, the children often establish a pre-disposed system of dominance and attention grabbing techniques. I won't go into birth-order dynamics, but let's just say some of them fit pretty well. Each child, no matter birth order, desperately desires to be noticed and to be loved by their parents. Each child wants to hear, "Oh, aren't you clever, or witty, or talented, or..." fill in the blank, while at the same time they want to feel, "I love you no matter what you do simply because you are my child."

But human parents and human families are limited by both space and time. Divvying up attention and encouraging words is taxing. It's a very hard thing to be a parent. But some of the most basic and fundamental responsibilities of parenting are being present and being loving. Finding - no, making - time for each child and reminding them that they are loved is time well spent.

In the book of Genesis, in the narrative of the patriarchs, we find that the larger the families get, the less present and less attentive the parents are, or seem to be. Perhaps in Isaac's case, permanently scarred from his near-sacrifice ordeal, his ability to trust was perpetually stunted and this passed itself down the line. I'm no psychologist, but we see an amazing lack of trust in the life of Jacob. In the next few blogs we will explore how this lack of trust (and selfish deceit/ambition) lead to ruined relationships and loneliness - especially in the lives of Jacob's wives (his cousins!) who are sisters.

Then, as we close our discussion on the Patriarchs, we'll see how incredibly similar large families and large churches act and react in similar ways.

This will be interesting and fun. Please feel free to comment, if you wish. There are always ways we can learn from each other.

He Grasps the Heel

My mother found out she was having triplets a week before we were born.

As the story goes, she went in for a routine check up for her twins. Back in 1973, ultrasounds were just beginning to be widely utilized (but not in Blue Earth, Minnesota). As my mother trekked into Dr. Schotzko's office, she wondered with him about some of the movements inside of her. Her twins seemed awfully active.  The doctor ordered an X-ray, which was the method of in vitro sight in Blue Earth at least, and was surprised to discover a fourth backbone: one mother and three children.

My mother thought it best to tell my father in a more subtle way so she wrote him a note. I can see my mother's smirk now as she, a twenty-four-year-old teacher, handed the envelope to the front desk at the school where my father, a twenty-three-year-old teacher at Rake High School, taught. Supposedly it was delivered in person to my father in the staff lounge, a pistachio green basement filled with both fake leather sofas and cigarette smoke (it was the 70's after all). As he opened the epistle, his face turned ashen and his co-workers, all the teachers who knew that this young, rosy cheeked newbie teacher who was about to have twins, wondered if he was all right.

Pacing back and forth, my father put one hand on his hip and one on his thinning hair. "I've got to find another crib. I've got to find another crib."

Most families don't grow in this way. Incrementally they generally expand by one, but in the most blessed cases (I say that tongue in cheek) by two or more. I have always wondered how my parents dealt with the expansion. Were they overwhelmed by noise, or mouths to feed, or inconsistent sleep (if any at all)?

My guess is, they were all of those. Even with single children, a disruption of sleep, a disruption of meals and a disruption of quite solitude can be a challenge. But multiples offer a distinct other pressure.

As we find out from the story of Jacob and Esau.

To be honest, there aren't many biblical families that suffer more loneliness than Jacob's family. Prone to fits of deception, selfishness and fear, Jacob profiles to me as someone who you really want to like, but can never quite get there because you can't trust him. In essence, Jacob finds a way to isolate himself from almost everyone important in his life and his (and their) loneliness is apparent in the book of Genesis.

Right from the beginning, at birth, Jacob doesn't want his brother to get anything that he doesn't have. As Esau is exiting into the world, Jacob is grasping his heel (which is what the name 'Jacob' means - 'He Grasps the Heel'). Esau gets his name from his redness. Supposedly when he was born he had a full carpet of red hair and a shining red face. I think it's interesting that couples back then seemed to wait until their kids were born and then named them, rather than going through the lists of most popular names for the year 1840 B.C. and thinking, hmmm, we're really stuck between Mephibosheth and Maher-shalal-hash-baz.  What do you think?

I suppose it's best to point out the obvious at this point: family dynamics prove that there is no such thing as a 'normal' family. Throughout the scriptures, families struggle to thrive and survive in a harsh world and sometimes the difference between success and failure is putting oneself in the right place for blessing regardless of one's right to that blessing. Rebekah's chosen son, Jacob, who comes across as a beautiful, impish momma's boy, was about to be left out of the inheritance to his hairy red brother, Esau, who was Isaac's favorite.  Thus, Rebekah, forces the hand of her almost blind and slightly-deaf husband.

Perhaps it's just me, but I get a sense of loneliness in Rebekah and Isaac. In the midst of their wandering through the wilderness of life, we aren't told much about their interactions. Abraham gets roughly thirteen chapters to tell his story; Jacob gets about twenty-five. Isaac gets roughly three. Yet we find a pulsing narrative devoid of large amounts of speaking. This couple doesn't seem to talk and it repeats itself in Jacob's wives later on.

But for the moment, the twins don't really seem to get along. Their differences seem to be too great. And so these differences in interests, family dynamics and tradition all seek to cause a wedge of distance between them.

For Jacob and Esau, the stick that breaks the donkey's back is the deception over Isaac's blessing. On a very important day, Esau was to go out and bring back some wild game with his bow and arrow, prepare it for Isaac and then his father would download his blessing onto him. Did you ever wonder why the rest of the family was not invited to this momentous occasion? It feels like Rebekah and Jacob should have at least been invited to be in attendance, but from Genesis 47, it seems like this was a father/eldest son kind of meeting.

Would Rebekah have felt rejected that her favorite son would receive nothing? Would she have been lonely? Would Esau have felt isolated from his mother and twin brother? Perhaps those are 21st century questions placed on the backs of 19th century B.C. people. But it seems like this penetrating scourge of rejection, abandonment and isolation incubates an epidemic of loneliness that causes people to make difficult (and not always positive) choices.

As we continue the story of Jacob and Esau through the next days, reread these texts and begin to look at these narratives from the perspective of isolation: What would this text have looked like if the narrative told us about Isaac and Rebekah's journey in marriage which included mutual respect and communication? What would this have looked like if Jacob would have sought his brother's well-being rather than cheating him out of his birthright for a bowl of soup?

In my isolation, what are the things that cause me to be selfish instead of looking out for others?

The Issue of Isolation

There is a spectrum that is starting to reveal itself in these days. I'm thinking of calling it 'The Isolation Spectrum.' Each person who has ever lived has traversed the spectrum. The positioning changes from day to day, sometimes hour to hour, but we far too often recognize where we are on it and what it means for our life.

Now, this is something that I've made up. I am not a psychologist and certainly not an anthropologist, but I, like many people, have an awareness of others' placement on this line, but first, perhaps we'll take a shot at putting some points on the continuum.

I'll be using the life of Jesus as a template for loneliness. No one in history has run the full gauntlet, so it will look something like this:

Solitude - Testing - Self-Isolation - Cultural Isolation - Familial Isolation - Outcasting - Exile

____I_______I___________I_____________I______________I_______________I_______I____

From left to right, the difficulty of being alone worsens. From Solitude, a purposeful, self-chosen short term event to Exile, an indefinite utter external rejection and abandonment by all. This spectrum allows us to see where we are at various times, what might be occurring spiritually and emotionally and then some opportunities to discuss ways to work through being isolated.

There are many other spots on this continuum that we could label, but to keep things manageable, let's have working definitions from these seven and place Jesus at those moments.

Solitude: Although the dictionary states that solitude is the 'state or situation of being alone,' I think it falls short in the fact that solitude, especially self-chosen, is one that is necessary and functional. There is a reason that Superman went to the Fortress of Solitude and not the Fortress of Isolation. Solitude carries with it a necessary 'aloneness' so that one can find oneself and have some space to understand the future.  (Mark 1:35)

Testing: If, when you were in any kind of class, testing was often done solo and separation was necessary. Think back to whatever test, written or oral, and the difficulty of relying on one's own resources to bring about success. In this time of isolation, we get a feeling of who we are and where we are in preparation for the future. (Luke 22:39-46; Luke 4:1-13)

Self-Isolation: This phrase has become a catch phrase over the last months in an attempt to gain control over the spread of the coronavirus. Interestingly, the person in Self-Isolation often is more connected with others because of an internal response of being deprived of communal interaction.  (Matthew 14:22-32)

Cultural Isolation: Administered by the community, or the government, one who offends the ruling body, or the power of the corporate is isolated from most aspects of society including clubs, religious institutions, economic opportunities and events. The person isolated by culture might still have the support of family and friends. (Matthew 23)

Familial Isolation: On this part of the spectrum, it is not only the surrounding culture which has rejected the person, but his or her closest relationships. As these relationships break down, the one who has been isolated from family and friends feels abandoned and emotionally shipwrecked on a deserted island. Still, the one isolated may make connections with others who are in the same circumstance. (Mark 3:20-35, 6:1-6)

Outcast: Like a leper, not only is the outcast alone, but only allowed contact in scarcity. Seen as a blemish on society (and is often of the same opinion) the outcast must skirt the edges of human relationships. Scorned and derided, the outcast finds a spiritual, emotional and psychic fence between him/her/other outcasts and the rest of society. (Luke 22:47-62)

Exile: No one chooses exile. It is abject and utter separation from all things and all people. Once one is given the sentence of exile, despair is often experienced. All connections are severed - it is the ultimate expression of loneliness and hopelessness. (Mark 15:33-41)

In the next weeks we'll ponder the ramifications of isolation. We'll ask questions like: Where is God in my loneliness? Even though I am isolated, how can I maintain connection with others? What do I pray for? What don't I pray for?

As we look through some biblical stories, we'll place the episodes on the continuum and ponder what the people are feeling, learning, doing and hoping. Then, perhaps, we may begin to shed some light on what our own 21st century opportunities of isolation offer us.

As of this moment, where are you on the Isolation Spectrum?