Feeling Alone

For many of us introverts, the most likely place to feel alone is in a group of people. When we are with a group of people, the odds are often infinity to one that we will find someone that thinks or reacts like we do, and wants to talk about what we know are the really important subjects. When we are by ourselves we have all the people in all the literature of all time to choose from and to converse with, on all the things that are most important to talk about.

You would think church should be an exception to this. It is not. Church is so often full of self absorbed people who don’t listen to each other but manage to think they all agree about everything, and if you don’t you keep quiet instead of getting ostracized for thinking that people might actually apply logic to a situation instead of common nonsense.

This past Sunday was a time for feeling alone for Jasini and myself. It was the second Sunday since the Hamas violence against Israel had started again. Every other flash of violence in news around the world had always gotten a mention from the pulpit, or someone in the congregation asking that it be added to the prayer list. But not that first Sunday after the Hamas attacks. So midweek Jasnini had sent in via e-mail for Israel to be added. But on Sunday it was not mentioned, nor did anyone else ask for it to be added.

The alone feeling, the feeling of invisibility, descended like a palpable net to ensnare. We could hear it, and it was descending on everyone, but they couldn’t hear it or see it. Because we were the only ones who could hear it, and the only ones made invisible by it. (At least, any others made invisible were already invisible when we got there, and so we had never seen them to know that they had been made invisible before we got there.)

Other ways to make people alone and invisible (as if they needed any more ways), are stygmatizing and the straw man (straw non-binary person, anyone?) Something happens to someone where they need compassion and understanding and encouragement, and instead make it something of shame, and their every mention of it an attack on others, a vendetta. Tell belittling jokes about it, and when they protest beat them down for “spewing forth” against innocent people, using insults and character assassination to respond to their logical inquiries and challenges. Bury logic and any attempts at understanding and reconciliation.

I could go on, but really, what would be the point