To be connected
the dream, the need
To be accepted
but not to lead
I went out for dinner with my best friend last night, and at one point I commented that I'm thinking I may stop going to my small group. I've been going for over a year, and I don't feel any more connected to these people than I did when I started. I don't feel any more understood by any of them, and I don't feel like they know me really at all.
I suppose some out there would say that quitting a group because of this is silly, and very shallow of me, but I don't think that it is. When these small groups started, it was specifically stated that they were meant to provide us with a source of connection to the greater community. That is not happening here. I don't feel any more connected to my church than I did when I first started attending there, back in 2003. Which is fine, because I don't go to church for people, I go for God, but is probably somewhat telling of the ability of people, in this day and age, to reach out to those outside of their current circles. And since the point of the small groups was to forge connections, I think I am well within my rights to leave a group to which I do not feel connected.
I have always felt somewhat disconnected - from other people, mostly, but sometimes from myself (I have written about the latter previously). But what is connection? Why do human beings need it so much, and how do we achieve it?
I am going to write a series of posts on this topic, and I will tackle each of these questions in turn. Hopefully this examination of connection will be enlightening for us all.
Part One: What is connection?
Part Two: Why do we need connection?
Part Three: How do we achieve connection?
1 comment:
Here is a topic I look forward to seeing you examine. My whole life I have felt alienated from others--even from those closest to me. I used to lead a small group at the church my wife and I were going to, and although everyone else seemed to be very connected to each other, I always felt like an outsider--though they were looking to me for leadership. My wife and I went to this church for eight years, seeing it grow from 18 people on a Sunday, up to nearly a thousand. That whole time I felt like an outsider, though I was always considered an "insider" by others. As with you in your small group, it got to the point where I couldn't go to the church any longer. The pastor (a good friend) felt a sense of abandonment by me, but I was dying of loneliness among the crowd of people. What is this source of alienation? Is it our sin? Are there some people so conscious of their failures, of their deep well of sinfulness, that they always feel unknown by others? Or are we all so complex and unfathomable that we can only be known by God? Perhaps we're afraid of being hurt, and so we hold back. I don't want to get "psychological," as you called it before (I teach philosophy at a local college, not psychology!), but the issue of connectedness is about the "psyche" or soul. It's not a superficial issue, but is probably the problem that most defines my own relationship with God. I hope you do tackle this topic. I look forward to seeing what insights you discover about our deep disconnection from one another, as well as our capacity for authentic connection.
David
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