Cathedral of St. John the Divine Spring 2013 : Page 3

Dean’s Meditation: Isolation THE VERY REVEREND DR. JAMES A. KOWALSKI “We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.” Rudyard Kipling, The Light That Failed take away the stockpiles of powerful weapons and ammunition already in our communities or prevent the irrational behaviors of mentally disturbed perpetrators, we can do better when even our youngest citizens are now at risk. My ordained ministry began in Newtown, Connecticut, in 1978. I spent four happy years there—as Trinity’s Church’s first curate or assistant. I learned firsthand that communities with a postcard beauty also have real people in them, with the full spectrum of success and failure, despair and joy that the rest of us experience. The Reverend Frank G. Dunn, now a senior priest in Washington, D.C. and for thirteen years Rector of Trinity Parish, has written since the tragedy: The shadow side of Newtown has long been the fact that people expect life to be ideal in such a place, and are always somehow puzzled that horrors happen and tragedies strike, shattering the peace and quiet of the town. Of course, the ideal is an illusion; for the forces that devastate Littleton and Denver and Portland and New York City and Washington, DC are lurking insidiously in the crannies and caverns of the hearts of Newtowners just as they do everywhere. I worked with an array of parish and community leaders— young and older—to create Youth Services in Newtown from 1979–1982. The focus was not on remedial responses, such as counseling adolescents who seem to be having problems. Of course, we did that. But we used what was called the positive youth development model, which looked at communities and the systems of support—after-school buses and programs, youth job banks, host homes for kids in crisis, peer counseling teams, and community centers—that can break isolation and afford young people opportunities to “prove competence” in healthy ways. I knew families ravaged by violence and substance abuse—although I think there were fewer guns then. Let me be clear: we need better gun policies and background checks, and there can be no Constitutional argument for something less when the more basic Constitutional protections of life and the pursuit of happiness depend on not being cut down by gun violence. A friend of mine, Mark Goulston, is a psychiatrist, business consultant, and executive coach who also trained hostage-negotiators for the FBI. Mark co-founded Heartfelt Leadership , a community whose mission is Daring to Care. He’s a bestsell-ing author ( REAL INFLUENCE: Persuade Without Pushing and Gain Without Giving In and Just Listen: Discover the Secret to getting Through to Absolutely Anyone ) and also writes the syndicated column “Solve Anything with Dr. Mark” for Tribune Media Services. Writing for Psychology Today , Dr. Goulston posted an article titled “How to Prevent Future Newtowns” in which he states that we may never know what caused Adam Lanza to kill his mother, 26 other people and then himself. Goulston’s insights are built upon the 35-year track record of Life Adjustment Teams. Pete Linnett founded this resource that helps “acutely stabilized psychiatric and alcohol and drug ad-dicted patients move back to functionality.” Whether the family and patient don’t know they are sick, or the family but not the patient knows, or both know, there are things we can look for— that we can “notice” and be educated to notice. We can learn to listen in special ways for threats and argumentativeness, for example, which go beyond ordinary emotional swings. There are signs which, when observed over a period of time, suggest an elevated potential for violence. LATs provide case manag-ers with advanced training, especially helpful when the family knows a loved one is ill, but the patient refuses to accept that he is sick. The LAT program uses the LEAP method outlined in Dr. Xavier Amador’s book, I Am Not Sick, I Don’t Need Help! How to Help Someone with Mental Illness Accept Treatment (10th Anniversary Edition): “Our society is so fragmented, our family lives so sundered by physical and emotional distance, our friendships so sporadic, our intimacies so ‘in-between’ things and often so utilitarian, that there are few places where we can feel truly safe.” Henri J. M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World L – Listen so the person feels heard E – Empathize so the person feels understood A – Agree so the person feels something they said has been embraced P – Partner so that the person feels you are not fighting with or pushing them. Mark Goulston knows that if aftercare for people stabilized in psychiatric facilities is to be effective, we must acknowledge the high relapse rate. Patients and families left on their own become “destabilized” and need to be re-hospitalized or readmitted to an inpatient alcohol or substance abuse program, a “revolving door [that] is very costly in monetary and emotional terms to everyone it touches.” So Life Adjustment Teams can be lifesavers—for patients and families, and potentially for others in the community. Goulston writes that trained case managers go out to patients wherever they are staying after discharge and [take] them to doctors’ appointments, training them in skills of daily living and financial budgeting and even participate in recreational activities with them. Their results although not the “complete cure” we would all like has greatly reduced the rate of relapse by as much as 80% in a wide range of patients. It is still not clear who knew about the problems Adam Lanza and his mother Nancy were facing. Some friends of hers said she spoke often of her older son, but that they did not know anything about Adam. Back to what, according to Lydialyle Gibson, John Cacioppo has learned about loneliness: Being lonely isn’t the same as being alone. Cacioppo is careful to clarify this distinction in every public lecture and conference talk he gives (and there are many, usually pretty crowded). Lonely people, he’s found, are as likely as anyone to be surrounded by coworkers, neighbors, friends, and family. They’re no less attractive or intelligent or popular. What sets the lonely apart is a perceived isolation, the sense that their relationships do not meet their social needs. Cacioppo found that doctors believe that the medical care they give patients is more effective when patients have supportive families and are not socially isolated. Studies show that living alone increases the risk of suicide for young and old. Lonely people perceive higher stress than non-lonely people even when under the same stress. And lonely people often seem to have the same kind of relationships that for most people serve as a buffer against stress. Their ability to feel connected may be invisible to others. The good news is that loneliness serves as a corrective. Feeling lonely prods people to reach out. Cacioppo says, “…isolation works as a civilizing influence. It gives you the capacity to shape better social members of your species.” The pain we feel when isolated helps us become better citizens—adapting our behaviors so that we can be welcomed back into our family or community. The success of our common life together depends on such interdependence. Dr. Cacioppo has pioneered social neuroscience, asserting that our nervous, endocrine, and immune systems do not operate outside the reach of cultural influences. Put simply—biology is shaped profoundly by the social world. The question is, as Cacioppo writes, “If what I’m saying is true, if loneliness in part gives us the capacity to sculpt a better species, then how can we put together better groups, better towns, better communities, better societies?” That is why Mother Teresa used to say, “The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.” Together we can be enriched as individuals and as communities. “We want to understand what importance our social connections have to people's biology. Early in human history, our species’ survival required the protection of families and tribes. Isolation meant death. The painful feeling known as loneliness is a prompt to reconnect to others.” Dr. John T. Cacioppo, Professor in Social Neuroscience, The University of Chicago When The University of Chicago’s John Cacioppo released his 2008 book Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection , co-authored with William Patrick, he had been researching the effects of loneliness for over two decades. His studies had revealed that loneliness actually compromises health. Cacioppo states on his University website: As a social species, humans create emergent organizations beyond the individual—structures that range from dyads, families, and groups to cities, civilizations, and international alliances. These emergent structures evolved hand in hand with neural, hormonal, cellular, and genetic mechanisms to support them because the consequent social behaviors helped humans survive, reproduce, and care for offspring sufficiently long that they too survived to reproduce. It turns out that the need for social connection is so fundamen-tal to humans that we literally decompensate at the cellular level without it—blood pressure climbs, gene expression falters, cognition dulls, immune systems deteriorate, and aging acceler-ates as stress hormones bombard the body. Loneliness, rather than being a defect of personality or a sign of weakness, func-tions much like hunger or thirst, alerting us to our need for hu-man companionship with the same survival impulse that drives us to seek water or food. Cacioppo has said, “People who get stuck in loneliness have not done anything wrong. None of us is immune to feelings of isolation, any more than we are immune to feelings of hunger or physical pain.” In “The Nature of Loneliness,” published in the Nov –Dec 2010 issue of the University of Chicago Magazine , Lydialyle Gibson wrote that the professor never imagined that his research focus would become so singular. After all, Cacioppo is also the found-ing director of the University’s Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience and actually a founder of social neuroscience itself. But he got drawn into a new worldview, concluding about loneliness, “This just continues to change how I think about us as a species.” The New York Daily News reported that less than a week before her son launched his attack on the Sandy Hook Elementary School, Adam Lanza’s mother Nancy had told a friend that she knew “she was losing him” and that “he was getting worse.” Family commented that Nancy Lanza was becoming a survivalist, acquiring guns for protection she felt she would need if the economy worsened. What kind of genuine conversation are we having about violence, guns and mental illness in America since the murder of 20 children and seven adults in Newtown, Connecticut? Although no new policy can organist David Briggs and the Manhattan School of Music Symphonic Chorus and Soloists. This project was commissioned by the Cathedral through the generosity of a grant in honor of the late Dr. John Prior. On April 5, Marilyn Keiser, of the American Guild of Organists, brings her artfulness to the Great Organ. May opens with the Great Choir Series’ contribution to the Holy Land program, entitled The Holy Land: Jerusalem (May 1). The Cathedral Choir performs with Rose of the Compass , featuring Ara Dinkjian , oud ; Tamer Pinarbasi , kanun ; Glen Velez , percus-sion ; and Nina Stern , recorders and chalumeau . This concert is a celebration of music from Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions. On May 10, the acclaimed composer, crossover artist and recording artist John Zorn will perform and improvise on the Great Organ in a one-of-a-kind musical event. But the concert series are not all of the season’s musical offerings. The 22nd annual Interfaith Concert of Remembrance , usually held in October, is being held this year on April 27. This 2013 concert commemorates the 70th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, with songs and poems from that era performed by the Brooklyn Philharmonic. May 13 brings a performance of Giovanni Gabrieli’s Sacrae Symphoniae by the Metropolitan Opera Brass, welcomed to the Cathedral after the original con-cert date was postponed in the wake of Superstorm Sandy. The annual Memorial Day Concert, with the New York Philharmonic , will usher in summer with a festive evening of music for the whole family. There are also several special events happening this spring. On March 20, the Very Reverend Dr. James A. Kowalski talks with New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman as part of the Midtown Luncheon Series. For a week, beginning on April 15, the Cathedral collaborates with Working Theater to bring a hard-hitting play on immigration, La Ruta , by Ed Cardona, Jr., to a semi truck parked on the North Drive (see article). The exhibi-tion Jane Alexander: Surveys (from the Cape of Good Hope) opens on April 18. The exhibition runs through July (see article). Left: Photo by Joshua South, Right: Photo provided by the Archives of the Cathedral On May 11, the Cathedral will host a tribute to Dave Brubeck, the great jazz pianist and composer. And on May 23, Frederick Kaufman , journalist and author most recently of Bet the Farm: How Food Stopped Being Food , will take on the issue of food sustainability with Wenonah Hauter , Executive Director of Cathedral partner Food & Water Watch and author of the newly released Foodopoly: the Battle over the Future of Food and Farming in America. Wenonah is, indeed, a warrior, one that all of us who care about health, sustainability and justice are lucky to have on our side. stjohndivine.org Spring 2013

Dean’s Meditation: Isolation

THE VERY REVEREND DR. JAMES A. KOWALSKI “We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.” Rudyard Kipling, The Light That Failed “Our society is so fragmented, our family lives so sundered by physical and emotional distance, our friendships so sporadic, our intimacies so ‘inbetween’ things and often so utilitarian, that there are few places where we can feel truly safe.” Henri J. M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World “We want to understand what importance our social connections have to people's biology. Early in human history, our species’ survival required the protection of families and tribes. Isolation meant death. The painful feeling known as loneliness is a prompt to reconnect to others.” Dr. John T. Cacioppo, Professor in Social Neuroscience, The University of Chicago When The University of Chicago’s John Cacioppo released his 2008 book Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, co-authored with William Patrick, he had been researching the effects of loneliness for over two decades. His studies had revealed that loneliness actually compromises health. Cacioppo states on his University website: As a social species, humans create emergent organizations beyond the individual—structures that range from dyads, families, and groups to cities, civilizations, and international alliances. These emergent structures evolved hand in hand with neural, hormonal, cellular, and genetic mechanisms to support them because the consequent social behaviors helped humans survive, reproduce, and care for offspring sufficiently long that they too survived to reproduce. It turns out that the need for social connection is so fundamental to humans that we literally decompensate at the cellular level without it—blood pressure climbs, gene expression falters, cognition dulls, immune systems deteriorate, and aging accelerates as stress hormones bombard the body. Loneliness, rather than being a defect of personality or a sign of weakness, functions much like hunger or thirst, alerting us to our need for human companionship with the same survival impulse that drives us to seek water or food. Cacioppo has said, “People who get stuck in loneliness have not done anything wrong. None of us is immune to feelings of isolation, any more than we are immune to feelings of hunger or physical pain.” In “The Nature of Loneliness,” published in the Nov –Dec 2010 issue of the University of Chicago Magazine, Lydialyle Gibson wrote that the professor never imagined that his research focus would become so singular. After all, Cacioppo is also the founding director of the University’s Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience and actually a founder of social neuroscience itself. But he got drawn into a new worldview, concluding about loneliness, “This just continues to change how I think about us as a species.” The New York Daily News reported that less than a week before her son launched his attack on the Sandy Hook Elementary School, Adam Lanza’s mother Nancy had told a friend that she knew “she was losing him” and that “he was getting worse.” Family commented that Nancy Lanza was becoming a survivalist, acquiring guns for protection she felt she would need if the economy worsened. What kind of genuine conversation are we having about violence, guns and mental illness in America since the murder of 20 children and seven adults in Newtown, Connecticut? Although no new policy can take away the stockpiles of powerful weapons and ammunition already in our communities or prevent the irrational behaviors of mentally disturbed perpetrators, we can do better when even our youngest citizens are now at risk. My ordained ministry began in Newtown, Connecticut, in 1978. I spent four happy years there—as Trinity’s Church’s first curate or assistant. I learned firsthand that communities with a postcard beauty also have real people in them, with the full spectrum of success and failure, despair and joy that the rest of us experience. The Reverend Frank G. Dunn, now a senior priest in Washington, D.C. and for thirteen years Rector of Trinity Parish, has written since the tragedy: The shadow side of Newtown has long been the fact that people expect life to be ideal in such a place, and are always somehow puzzled that horrors happen and tragedies strike, shattering the peace and quiet of the town. Of course, the ideal is an illusion; for the forces that devastate Littleton and Denver and Portland and New York City and Washington, DC are lurking insidiously in the crannies and caverns of the hearts of Newtowners just as they do everywhere. I worked with an array of parish and community leaders— young and older—to create Youth Services in Newtown from 1979–1982. The focus was not on remedial responses, such as counseling adolescents who seem to be having problems. Of course, we did that. But we used what was called the positive youth development model, which looked at communities and the systems of support—after-school buses and programs, youth job banks, host homes for kids in crisis, peer counseling teams, and community centers—that can break isolation and afford young people opportunities to “prove competence” in healthy ways. I knew families ravaged by violence and substance abuse—although I think there were fewer guns then. Let me be clear: we need better gun policies and background checks, and there can be no Constitutional argument for something less when the more basic Constitutional protections of life and the pursuit of happiness depend on not being cut down by gun violence. A friend of mine, Mark Goulston, is a psychiatrist, business consultant, and executive coach who also trained hostagenegotiators for the FBI. Mark co-founded Heartfelt Leadership, a community whose mission is Daring to Care. He’s a bestselling author (REAL INFLUENCE: Persuade Without Pushing and Gain Without Giving In and Just Listen: Discover the Secret to getting Through to Absolutely Anyone) and also writes the syndicated column “Solve Anything with Dr. Mark” for Tribune Media Services. Writing for Psychology Today, Dr. Goulston posted an article titled “How to Prevent Future Newtowns” in which he states that we may never know what caused Adam Lanza to kill his mother, 26 other people and then himself. Goulston’s insights are built upon the 35-year track record of Life Adjustment Teams. Pete Linnett founded this resource that helps “acutely stabilized psychiatric and alcohol and drug addicted patients move back to functionality.” Whether the family and patient don’t know they are sick, or the family but not the patient knows, or both know, there are things we can look for— that we can “notice” and be educated to notice. We can learn to listen in special ways for threats and argumentativeness, for example, which go beyond ordinary emotional swings. There are signs which, when observed over a period of time, suggest an elevated potential for violence. LATs provide case managers with advanced training, especially helpful when the family knows a loved one is ill, but the patient refuses to accept that he is sick. The LAT program uses the LEAP method outlined in Dr. Xavier Amador’s book, I Am Not Sick, I Don’t Need Help! How to Help Someone with Mental Illness Accept Treatment (10th Anniversary Edition): L – Listen so the person feels heard E – Empathize so the person feels understood A – Agree so the person feels something they said has been embraced P – Partner so that the person feels you are not fighting with or pushing them. Mark Goulston knows that if aftercare for people stabilized in psychiatric facilities is to be effective, we must acknowledge the high relapse rate. Patients and families left on their own become “destabilized” and need to be re-hospitalized or readmitted to an inpatient alcohol or substance abuse program, a “revolving door [that] is very costly in monetary and emotional terms to everyone it touches.” So Life Adjustment Teams can be lifesavers—for patients and families, and potentially for others in the community. Goulston writes that trained case managers go out to patients wherever they are staying after discharge and [take] them to doctors’ appointments, training them in skills of daily living and financial budgeting and even participate in recreational activities with them. Their results although not the “complete cure” we would all like has greatly reduced the rate of relapse by as much as 80% in a wide range of patients. It is still not clear who knew about the problems Adam Lanza and his mother Nancy were facing. Some friends of hers said she spoke often of her older son, but that they did not know anything about Adam. Back to what, according to Lydialyle Gibson, John Cacioppo has learned about loneliness: Being lonely isn’t the same as being alone. Cacioppo is careful to clarify this distinction in every public lecture and conference talk he gives (and there are many, usually pretty crowded). Lonely people, he’s found, are as likely as anyone to be surrounded by coworkers, neighbors, friends, and family. They’re no less attractive or intelligent or popular. What sets the lonely apart is a perceived isolation, the sense that their relationships do not meet their social needs. Cacioppo found that doctors believe that the medical care they give patients is more effective when patients have supportive families and are not socially isolated. Studies show that living alone increases the risk of suicide for young and old. Lonely people perceive higher stress than non-lonely people even when under the same stress. And lonely people often seem to have the same kind of relationships that for most people serve as a buffer against stress. Their ability to feel connected may be invisible to others. The good news is that loneliness serves as a corrective. Feeling lonely prods people to reach out. Cacioppo says, “…isolation works as a civilizing influence. It gives you the capacity to shape better social members of your species.” The pain we feel when isolated helps us become better citizens—adapting our behaviors so that we can be welcomed back into our family or community. The success of our common life together depends on such interdependence. Dr. Cacioppo has pioneered social neuroscience, asserting that our nervous, endocrine, and immune systems do not operate outside the reach of cultural influences. Put simply—biology is shaped profoundly by the social world. The question is, as Cacioppo writes, “If what I’m saying is true, if loneliness in part gives us the capacity to sculpt a better species, then how can we put together better groups, better towns, better communities, better societies?” That is why Mother Teresa used to say, “The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.” Together we can be enriched as individuals and as communities.

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