It was a heavy week back in 2004—my neighbor asked me to go with him to the hospital to pray with his friend—she was dying of cancer—alone—she had a brother, but they’ve not spoken to each other in 17 years. She called him and he replied, “don’t call back”—that is the tragedy of our days. Certainly people in former years had splits and refusals to communicate, but on the most part, lives were such that we had at least friends and connections from our lives. Now we live so apart from each other.
And the danger is we remain alone. I’ve spent the past 12 years of Numinous, Inc hammering on the point that the call of the Christian is TOWARDS each other. A study on the Spiritual Disciplines is an empty intellectual, religious exercise if, in the end, we are not moved, in tears, closer toward one another.
Our society needs this. You think I say this stuff for God and spirituality’s sake, but it is also because of my great fear of the direction of our society. Make no mistake, there are horrible forces arrayed against us, against good people, with a design to ruin us. In fact, my friend Greg Coleman just sent me a link to a research report that confirms what I’ve been saying—we need community and healthy deep relationships for good mental health. The study looks at children and reports that even though poverty in America has gone down over the past 30 years, mental health issues in children over that period (meaning, our generation to current kids) has skyrocketed. Why? Mostly because children in those 30 years have been raised with only one parent, or unhealthy parents and poor connections. It goes on to state that the need is not just for a good parent, but an “Authoritative Community” to under gird the development. In essence, my daughters are being raised to good mental health because of the connection with our church through Numinous, Inc. I would offer that the atmosphere for good mental, emotional and spiritual health impacts us way past the age of 18—I keep thinking of a poor lonely lady lying in the nursing home, waiting to die, alone. She didn’t just get there alone in a short period of time; she built that world with a lifetime of poor choices, choices that isolated her from others. It’s The Beatles’ song “Eleanor Rigby” come to life.
My wife and I had watched Tears of the Sun 
In my Western Civilization class that I teach at Valencia Community College, we are studying Rome and Greece. Simply put, the downfall of both Athenian democracy and Roman republicanism began, at least at the heart, with a loss of the concept of the civic virtues and morals that had been the underpinning of the society. In both cases, the democracy of Athens and the republic of Rome also began to pursue a larger empire in which the people began to feel distant from the connection, the need for them to be a part of the nation, of the society. Sound familiar? But what was first, the empire building or the loss of the social contract? Maybe chicken or the egg, but in the end, it took both.
Our society grows closer to that position of a loss of connection to the ancient social contract that has grounded us for almost 400 years. This is evidenced by the multitude of people who think individual first or family first, rather than larger grouping first (church, city, neighborhood, etc.,..) Robert Putnam’s excellent book, Bowling Alone, is a powerful expose of this, yet his work is not alone in uncovering this emotional malaise.
We think it the norm to focus first inwardly; then at the end, we lie in a hospital bed, alone, with our brother refusing to talk to us, with no real friends and only vague acquaintances to comfort us. When we refuse to bend, to humble ourselves today, we rarely think of that day 20 years hence when we shall find ourselves alone. Our forefathers knew that to survive over here, everyone had to work together as a community, a civilization. Certainly they had to be rugged and willing to be alone at times, but the call of the Mayflower Compact and the Jamestown experience were clarion in demanding working together.
Can we fix our society? I’m not sure. There seem to be many powerful forces arrayed against us. But, we can make the attempt and as with other things, the effort starts with fixing us, with fixing “me.”
http://www.assoc-amazon.com/s/link-enhancer?tag=numinous&o=1
