Weave us together

There’s a song we sang in girl scouting – a prayer, really, sung while standing in a circle, with arms weaving forward and back:

– Weave, weave, weave us together, weave us together in unity and love,
– Weave, weave, weave us together, together in love.

That prayer is needed more than ever, yet we have few places where we can ask, or even imagine, that kind of weaving taking place.

The Kaiser Family Foundation just documented the use of technology in our teens’ lives, and other reports demonstrate the growing isolation of both adults and teens. (One frequently cited study was done by Duke University in 2006 ).

From my own vantage point, as a youth pastor, parent, friend to many families in distress, our current culture does much to pull both youth and parents into ever more self-determined paths. Points of intersection, for families, friends, church communities, neighbors, are less frequent, less potent, less of a priority, as other demands become increasingly insistent. I'm sometimes reminded of the sobering poem by William Butler Yeats:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Kids can't hear parents, parents can't hear kids. Families seem to lack a center, a place of focus, and spin into dissolution.


Numerous statistical studies demonstrate the growing isolation of Americans of all ages, while other studies show the painful consequences for both emotional and physical health. Teens experiencing unrelieved loneliness suffer from greater anxiety, greater depression, greater addiction, greater likelihood of self-harm.
My own three children, now in their twenties, felt some of the fracturing of social systems, partly compounded by a change of context in their adolescent years: we moved from a location where families were closely interwoven and shared much, to a neighborhood where no one spends time outside, and friendships are hard to foster. I felt the change myself, as I moved from a network where my husband Whitney and I had many other adults to fall back on for rides, child-care, help in emergencies, counsel in difficulty, to a community where that kind of network has been impossible to find. I am thankful for my wonderful neighbor, Sue, and to a good friend to our kids and me (a different Sue!), and, after years in our church, a small handful of adults I could turn to for help, but network has been years in the making, and still, in many ways, tenuous.

I’ve been watching with increasing concern the difficulty of our teens, and their families, in building nurturing, sustainable friendships. For many, connections are slight, help is hard to find. And the situation seems to be getting worse, as young teens find it easier to sit with ear buds in and ipods on, than to face the risk of reaching out to the people sitting near them.

Words are fragile connectors; what I’d like to do is gather all the families I know, sit under a tree, have barbeque and lemonade, and talk, laugh, and pray for each other. But there’s snow on the ground, everyone I know is far too busy, and I’m wondering if God is calling me to share what I know, what I see, in an attempt to weave a slender community.

The first step? The simple song / prayer above, and a resolve cited in the Psychology Today article linked above: “Resolve to live each day as if your relationships are your highest priority.”

Or, as John, beloved follower and friend of Jesus said, repeatedly in his three short letters: "Love one another."