What do you think?
Loneliness or Fruitful Longing
Loneliness or Fruitful Longing is for pastors, counselors, and people seeking hope for their own loneliness. It explores loneliness, its causes and its cures. It describes human vulnerability to loneliness from personal, social, and economic perspectives. It describes the impact of loneliness on physical and mental health, suicide, abortion. It looks social, economic, and personal strategies to combat loneliness. It visits the Orthodox Christian dialogue about loneliness in Serbia, Russia, and Greece. Finally the book proposes spiritual approaches to resolve loneliness. Loneliness or Fruitful Longing expands on a talk originally delivered at the 20th annual Ancient Christianity and Afro-American Conference, a ministry of the Brotherhood of St. Moses the Black. It is the first volume of the Transformative Wisdom Series, bringing the timeless wisdom of the Eastern Orthodox Church into dialogue with the cumulative wisdom of contemporary psychotherapies.
- GenresFaith
60 pages, Paperback
First published September 13, 2014
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 30, 2020
A concise, practical, thought-provoking book!
December 7, 2020
There is so much to think about in this small book. Worth a read or two or three.
Read
May 23, 2024As far as I could gather, loneliness, in its emotional and social types, is an old phenomenon that has only in Modern times been picked out by a single word. It has overlap with acedia, what Nun Weston says is despondency, although I think it is listlessness and that despondency is distinct. Loneliness has an overlap with both I think. In psychological terms it seems to be composed of neurotic sub-traits as well as some suspicion or disagreeability sub-traits if it is longterm, and I've found insecure attachment styles also seems to be composed of both trait clusters. Those I believe are also possibly symptoms of complex ptsd which is very much about relationships breaking without repair, early in life, either by abuse OR (importantly here) neglect.
She describes a fragmented identity from the Modern choices to belong to these different groups over time in a multicultural society (she mentions a jurisdictional change after a long term stay in one jurisdiction or ethnic subt-tradition of orthodoxy - she also mentions inter-racial marriage) or less traditional one (she mentions multiple fathers of one woman's children). But she mentions moving and career changes, which I believe can do this by themselves. Parts of our selves end up disconnected or left behind. Identity loss or identity formation challenges are also a symptom of cptsd. She forgot to mention but I'm sure is also aware of ostracism, groups kicking certain members out, and this seemed to be hinted at in the section about the fear of shame women have prior to abortion, although she words it as if the woman is thinking solely about the shame that would come upon her family. I think it's implied that since she is lonely and has no confidante, there is also or by itself the fear that people will ostracize her. Furthermore something similar happens to men who have atypical traits and so are ostracized by friends or serially rejected by women. I wonder what Nun Weston might have to say about the 'incel' phenomenon - even apart from its strange online and ideological manifestation. Women also can be lonely for not meeting the attraction requirements of the opposite sex. So there is a whole topic yet to be explored of the 'not enough' phenomenon and failure to fully develop oneself, either to become 'enough' or to detach from the thing for which one is not enough.
I found her descriptions about the effects of loneliness to be academically well grounded and insightful.
pg 17 those who are lonely enter a grin and bear it mode instead of executive level problem solving
pg 18 they are more wary of others and cynical, yet less able to detect real interpersonal danger because their ability to detect social cues has been dulled (by lack of use among other things)
While I agree that partly loneliness is also a hunger for God I think it would have helped to acknowledge that most of the people she's talking about are not going to be able to easily find this hunger distinctly and act from it in a simple way, rather it is caught up in radiating circles of broken glass as it were. In other words, one has a big big (Saint sized) challenge to pick up the cross of real objective isolation and fragmentation and to seek God when no one else is around to help. On the other hand, if we found a group that was not socially or emotionally lonely, nor who grew up with the predisposing factors, we could detect the distinct spiritual loneliness in them, and I believe it would be a very different phenomenon for them, since they have less weight to bear in their own lives.
She describes a fragmented identity from the Modern choices to belong to these different groups over time in a multicultural society (she mentions a jurisdictional change after a long term stay in one jurisdiction or ethnic subt-tradition of orthodoxy - she also mentions inter-racial marriage) or less traditional one (she mentions multiple fathers of one woman's children). But she mentions moving and career changes, which I believe can do this by themselves. Parts of our selves end up disconnected or left behind. Identity loss or identity formation challenges are also a symptom of cptsd. She forgot to mention but I'm sure is also aware of ostracism, groups kicking certain members out, and this seemed to be hinted at in the section about the fear of shame women have prior to abortion, although she words it as if the woman is thinking solely about the shame that would come upon her family. I think it's implied that since she is lonely and has no confidante, there is also or by itself the fear that people will ostracize her. Furthermore something similar happens to men who have atypical traits and so are ostracized by friends or serially rejected by women. I wonder what Nun Weston might have to say about the 'incel' phenomenon - even apart from its strange online and ideological manifestation. Women also can be lonely for not meeting the attraction requirements of the opposite sex. So there is a whole topic yet to be explored of the 'not enough' phenomenon and failure to fully develop oneself, either to become 'enough' or to detach from the thing for which one is not enough.
I found her descriptions about the effects of loneliness to be academically well grounded and insightful.
pg 17 those who are lonely enter a grin and bear it mode instead of executive level problem solving
pg 18 they are more wary of others and cynical, yet less able to detect real interpersonal danger because their ability to detect social cues has been dulled (by lack of use among other things)
While I agree that partly loneliness is also a hunger for God I think it would have helped to acknowledge that most of the people she's talking about are not going to be able to easily find this hunger distinctly and act from it in a simple way, rather it is caught up in radiating circles of broken glass as it were. In other words, one has a big big (Saint sized) challenge to pick up the cross of real objective isolation and fragmentation and to seek God when no one else is around to help. On the other hand, if we found a group that was not socially or emotionally lonely, nor who grew up with the predisposing factors, we could detect the distinct spiritual loneliness in them, and I believe it would be a very different phenomenon for them, since they have less weight to bear in their own lives.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews