Better Together

A Meditation on the Power of Two

By David Brown

GUEST COLUMNIST

Olya Ajeni/Pexels

According to a New York Times article from August 2025, America is facing a new kind of epidemic: loneliness. At a time when we seem more broken and anxious than ever, we are also more isolated than ever. Depression is up. Blood pressure is up. And like so many things in our lives, this becomes a downward spiral: loneliness leads to isolation, which leads to more loneliness.

Not that long ago, isolation simply wasn’t an option. Back in our hunter-gatherer days, survival depended on staying with the group. If you were banished, you died. You needed the tribe to hunt, gather, share fire, and watch your back while you slept. Being cast out was the worst punishment imaginable.

Now, with the internet, we can live as fully-functioning hermits. We can work from home, order food from home, stream entertainment at home, date from home, and even “attend” church from home. The same technology that connects us in magical ways makes it completely possible to avoid real emotional contact with any human being at all.

Which raises a question I often ask myself about in-person gatherings, like church:

Why would anyone still walk through the doors?

I’m a pastor, and I wonder about this every day. The members of my congregation can absolutely find better speakers than me online. (If you need recommendations, I’ll send you a list.) They can find better musicians. Better comedians. Better coffee. Better pastries. And do it all in their pajamas. So why get dressed, brave traffic, navigate the news cycle, pass homeless people and street preachers and political activists, and show up ... at church?

Because, beneath the noise and chaos, the world is a mess—and we are lonely inside that mess.

The World Has Always Been a Mess

It’s easy to think everything is uniquely terrible now. Political discord feels off the charts. Violence seems constant. Social media makes every outrage feel like it’s happening right in our living room.

But if you’ve glanced at human history, you know this: the world has always been a mess. What we have now is not “new brokenness” so much as new visibility. We watch the mess in real time, on repeat, with commentary and push alerts.

A New Yorker piece summarized a YouGov poll of 1,000 people and found that:

• 66 percent are worried we’ll be wiped out by nuclear weapons.

• Roughly the same number think a world war will do us in.

• 53 percent point to the next pandemic.

• 52 percent bet on climate change.

• 46 percent think artificial intelligence will be our downfall.

• 42 percent say an act of God.

• 37 percent worry about an asteroid.

• 25 percent are banking on alien invasion.

So yes, the world is messy. People are anxious. The future feels fragile. And inside all of that, a lot of us are feeling very, very alone. That’s the backdrop for everything else I want to say in this chapter.

What We Actually Stand For

If you’re part of a Unitarian Universalist community (where I’m a pastor), you may have heard that the national UU organization recently reframed our traditional “principles” as “values.” They even came up with a mnemonic: JETPIG — all held together by one central word: love:

• Justice

• Equity

• Transformation

• Pluralism

• Interdependence

• Generosity

Who’s going to argue with any of those?

And yet, if you stop a random person on the street and ask what comes to mind when they hear “Unitarian Universalist,” they probably won’t say, “Oh, those are the people radically committed to justice, equity, and generosity.”

Why is that?

Maybe because we’ve spent so much energy saying what we don’t believe—no hell, no creeds, no dogma—that we haven’t been as clear about what we do believe. About what we’re for. About why we’re here at all. I wonder if we’re not the only ones doing so. Do we think our town, or any town, would become more loving, more generous, more just and equitable if communities like this church quietly disappeared? Of course not. Even though we can all nod along with these values in theory, they are not instinctual. Left to my own devices, I do not wake up each day naturally more loving and generous. I drift toward selfishness and isolation.

That’s not a moral failing; it’s gravity. It’s how human nervous systems work under stress.

So, if these values don’t come naturally, we need structures and habits that pull us toward them. Which is where community—and the power of two—comes in.

Why Community Still Matters (Even If You’re Exhausted)

That New York Times article on loneliness made a surprising claim: churches are uniquely positioned to help people who are isolated. But then it added a twist—we need ways to offer the community of a church without the religious baggage that turns so many people away.

“Hello?” I thought when I read that. You just described exactly what many Unitarian Universalist fellowships are trying to be. And here’s where it gets very practical.

It might not seem like it matters whether you talk to someone at church on a Sunday morning. Maybe you think, “I’m just here for the service,” or “I don’t want to bother anyone.” But I can tell you from personal experience: simple human contact can change a life’s trajectory in small but real ways.

When my wife Rebecca and I first walked into the local UU church in 2019, it happened to be the Thanksgiving Sunday service. We were new, a little unsure. A woman named Karen came over, sat down beside us, and talked to us. That’s it. No fireworks. No profound theological treatise. Just presence.

Now, several years later, I still remember it.

Little things make a big difference.

We underestimate how starved people are for that kind of acknowledgment—to be seen, welcomed, drawn out of hiding. For someone to signal, “You matter here. You’re not invisible.” That is the power of two.

You Don’t Have to Fix the World. You Only Have To Notice It

Given everything I’ve said about loneliness, fear, and the world being a mess, you might expect this to turn into a recruitment drive: “Sign up for five committees! Lead a task force! Save democracy!”

But let’s be honest. A lot of people who show up at church on a Sunday—or read a book like this—are already overwhelmed. You might be working two jobs, raising kids, caring for aging parents, juggling health issues, or simply holding your anxiety together with duct tape. You do not go there looking for one more guilt trip. You show up hoping for peace.

If that’s you, hear this clearly: I am not asking you to save the world.

I am asking you to consider that a meaningful life does not come from being busier, more productive, or more impressive. Rather, it comes from connection. From letting yourself be interrupted by another human being. From remembering that you are not the only one who is broken and unfinished.

A line from Christian Wiman’s 2013 book My Bright Abyss has stayed with me: “To walk into a church at all in the 21st century—even if you sit in the back and mentally critique every word—is to admit an insufficiency, an incompletion, at the center of your being. That restless hunger, that ‘tooth that nibbles at your soul,’ as Emily Dickinson put it, never fully goes away.”

I resonate with that. I see myself as broken. I grew up in a very conservative religious home where we were constantly reminded not only of our sinful actions, but of our “sin nature.” Thank you, Augustine. That language has done a number on many of us. So what are broken people supposed to do with their brokenness? How can people who feel incomplete possibly help anyone else?

‘Love Yourself’ Is Not Enough

Our culture loves the phrase “You have to love yourself first.” It even sneaks into religion: Jesus’ command to “Love your neighbor as yourself” is often interpreted to mean, “You must fully love yourself before you can truly love anyone else.”

But what does “Love yourself” even mean?

Which part of me is supposed to love which other part? The confident part loving the insecure part? The rational part loving the emotional part? It can quickly become one more impossible demand, one more reason to feel like a failure.

Often, “Forgive yourself” lands the same way. It becomes a trap, a double bind.

Maybe there’s another way.

I came across a line recently: “I love you, not to consume you. I love you to show you that you are enough.” That, to me, sounds like a healthier path. To know, deep down, that you are not perfect, not finished, not everything you will someday be—but that you are enough for right now.

Not because you’ve achieved some inner self-love ideal, but because someone else is willing to stand beside you and treat you as enough.

What if our primary task—as individuals, as communities, as churches—is simply this: to show people they are enough? To enjoy their existence, rather than secretly wishing they would be more like us?

True love, like art, is to enjoy the existence of another.

How We Actually Change Each Other

When we see someone unfamiliar walk into our space, our first internal reaction is often, “Why aren’t they [fill in the blank]?” More talkative. More reserved. More polished. Less intense. More like me.

If what we want is for them to change, that’s not love. That’s imagination. It’s us loving a fantasy version of that person. What if, instead, we quietly thought, “Here is someone I get to enjoy. Someone I might be delighted by.”

Would you like to have a circle of people who constantly reminded you that you are enough, who found you delightful, who did not treat you as a project but as a gift? I think most of the people in our town would find that idea compelling. And churches like ours are perfectly positioned to do exactly that.

This is not just a religious idea. Every theistic tradition, in one way or another, ties how we treat others to our relationship with God. Every non-theistic tradition centers on compassion, or makes it the whole point. If you believe in God, being kind to others is the most reliable way to move closer to the divine. If you don’t believe in God, being kind to others is still the best philosophy we’ve ever come up with.

In that light, what we call “worship” is simply this: serving and loving others. “Worship service” is a redundant phrase. To worship is to acknowledge worth.

• Serving the homeless is worship.

• Working for social justice is worship.

• Bringing a genuine smile to someone’s face is worship. • Restoring a broken relationship is worship.

• Having a deep, honest conversation over coffee is worship. The apostle James wrote, “True and undefiled religion is this: to visit widows and orphans in their distress” (James 1:27). I agree. So when I talk about “more worship” in our lives, I’m not talking about longer church services. I’m talking about more tangible, small acts of care.

Be a Healer (in Small, Ordinary Ways)

I want to end with a prayer from Stephen Charleston, a Native American elder, that has been ringing in my ears:

Let the healers come forward.

We need them now in so many ways.

Let them come forward to lead our steps to health and harmony.

Healers of the body, healers of the mind,

healers of the heart, healers of the soul.

Physical healers and spiritual healers,

healers of conflict and division,

healers of anger and fear.

Let them all come forward, for I know they are here.

I know they are all around us.

They know their gifts.

They know what they can do.

Let them come forward,

and bless each one as they do,

that we may be whole.

***

David Brown is a writer, musician, and community leader with experience in ministry, education, and technology. His work reflects a lifelong commitment to learning, service, and connection. David lives in Fredericksburg, VA with his wife Rebecca. This essay is an excerpt from his newly-released book The Second Arrow: Why We Hurt Ourselves Twice (and How to Stop.