Felt Needs

Did you know horses have friends? They do according to writer Sterry Butcher, who lives on a Texas farm with horses.

According to Butcher, horses form friendships, and these friends stand nose to rump to cooperatively swish flies from the other’s face with their tails. They’ll rake their teeth against the other’s withers or back, scratching places the other cannot reach on his own.

And not only do horses scratch each other’s back. They watch each other’s back. In the wild, they spend the entirety of their lives within the eyesight of another horse. Even domestic horses, who don’t venture beyond their pasture, will take turns staying awake while others sleep. It’s like shifts on guard duty.

What horses have is what we need. Every one of us needs a friend. Someone who will swish away the annoying biting flies that come toward us in life. Someone who will scratch our back, helping us with the things we can’t reach or do on our own. Someone who will stay awake and protect us from dangers.

Yale psychologist June Gruber has confirmed the many positive physical, social, and psychological benefits of human happiness. But while working at the University of California-Berkeley she also started to see a dark side to happiness—or at least the pursuit of happiness.

In her clinical language she put it this way: “Happiness serves a specific function, and happiness may not always be adaptive” (that is, happiness might not be the most appropriate or helpful response).

Pursuing happiness is not always a good thing. Paradoxically, studies reviewed by Gruber and colleagues in their recent paper show that people who place the highest value on pursuing happiness tend to be less happy and more prone to depression.

Gruber says,

Setting your sights on happiness as the end goal may inadvertently be setting yourself up for disappointment. If you want to live a rich and happy life, it might be better to stop pursuing happiness so aggressively. Instead, engage in meaningful activities especially those that promote deep connections with others, while trying to [accept] your current emotional state, wherever it is.

Twenty-year-old Henry Earls dresses up to go to the library. He picks out cozy knitted sweaters and accessorizes with well-worn copies of classic books. Earls looks like an adjunct English professor. He said, “I want to cultivate an aesthetic when I go to the library. And, honestly, I dress up to see if someone will come up to me and say hi.”

Gen Z seems to love public libraries. A report from the American Library Association found that Gen Z and Millennials are using public libraries at higher rates than older generations. More than half of the survey’s 2,075 respondents had visited a physical library within the past 12 months. Not all of them were bookworms. Almost half don’t identify as readers, but those non-readers still visited their local library in the past year.

Libraries have never been just about books. These are community hubs, places to connect and discover. For an extremely online generation that’s nearly synonymous with the so-called “loneliness epidemic,” libraries are increasingly social spaces, too.

“Coffee shops get so crowded, and you have to spend money to be there, but libraries are open for everyone,” said Anika Neumeyer, a 19-year-old student. “There’s a lot less pressure to be doing something in the public library. No one’s going to judge you.”

Fifteen-year-old Arlo Platt Zolov says, “A lot of people my age are surrounded by tech and everything’s moving so quickly. Part of me thinks we’re rediscovering libraries not as something new, but for what they’ve always been: a shared space of comfort.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Fellowship; Small groups – This is a golden opportunity for the small groups in the church to provide the fellowship and gathering opportunities that so many are missing. Small groups meeting in homes, perhaps with a meal, can be very attractive to disconnected young people.

In an article in Vice, Brian Merchant argues that the first structure that humans will probably build on the Moon after they have completed building a base there will be a church. Indeed, Christian missionaries and clergymen have built churches in the harshest of climates, whether they be the tropical jungles of Africa or the sun-drenched deserts of Australia.

When the Ross Sea Party of Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1917 landed in Antarctica, among the men was an Anglican priest named Arnold Spencer-Smith. Spencer-Smith set up a small chapel in a dark room in Scott's Hut at Cape Evans. He built an altar with a cross and candlesticks and an aumbry where he reserved the Blessed Sacrament.

Today, there are eight churches in Antarctica. One is an Eastern Orthodox church built of wood in the Russian style. Another is The Chapel of Our Lady of the Snows which is a Catholic church located in a cave in the ice. It is the most southern place of worship of any religion in the world.

Churches have been erected in Antarctica since the 1950s. Extended stays in the region can be an extremely stressful experience for the researchers who often stay separated from their families for months at a time, which is one of the reasons why churches exist in this remote continent.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Living anywhere in the world (or space) is a stressful experience for believers. We need the church to give support, care, connectivity to others, and to center ourselves in worship of Almighty God, creator of heaven and earth.

Men have fewer friends than women and are at a greater risk of isolation. The gap has widened in recent years. A 2021 report identified a male “friendship recession,” with 15% of men saying they have no close friends, up from 3% in 1990.

The researcher of this study concluded that in 1990, nearly half of young men reported that when facing a personal problem, they would reach out first to their friends. Today, only 22% of young men lean on their friends in tough times.

In his novel Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck’s character Crooks pinpoints why this matters so much to men. At one point in the novel Crooks tells another man, “A guy needs somebody … To be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody … I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an’ he gets sick.”

Joie Henney has an unusual emotional support animal. Whereas others might find comfort and solace in dogs or cats, Henney’s companion is WallyGator, a 70-pound swamp native alligator. Henney says, “When he turns his nose toward you, that means he expects a kiss.” And he should know, because WallyGator accompanies him pretty much everywhere. They take walks to the park or the grocery store together. They watch TV on the couch together. They even sleep in the same bed.

Henney knows that others might be freaked out by the arrangement. Instead, he makes it a point to share his relationship with others. He says, “He’s super sweet-natured.” That said, Henney isn’t naïve about the situation. “He’s a very special gator, but I wouldn’t recommend that anyone get one. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you will get bit.”

Henney’s relationship with WallyGator started back in 2015 when a friend asked him to take care of a few gators that were discovered in a pool in Orlando. Two of them quickly found other homes, but something about one of the 14-month baby gators caught his eye. He said he was surprised when WallyGator, then 20 inches long, didn’t try to bite him when he held him or fed him chicken legs. Henney said, “He wouldn’t eat live rats, and he really showed a love for cheesy popcorn. I thought it was different, but I was still very cautious around him.” It didn’t take long, he said, before WallyGator began to follow him around the house like a curious pup. He said his leathery roomie showed affection by staying close to him and being docile. Then, in 2017, several members of Henney’s family died, leaving him sad and grieving. That was when he and his unusual pet really bonded.

Raul Diaz is a biologist at California State University in Los Angeles. He says alligators are normally quite defensive because their biological wiring is predatory in nature. [Henney] is an exception when it comes to caring for an alligator. Wildlife experts agree: Alligators generally don’t make good pets, and they’re illegal to own in many states. The animals can also be deadly. Last month, an 80-year-old Florida woman was killed when she fell into a golf course pond and was attacked by two alligators.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Sleeping with an alligator is not recommended, but it does illustrate that God has all of creation at his disposal to help meet our needs.

Many middle-school boys have memories of barbershop haircuts. But for one boy, his most memorable cut happened elsewhere. Anthony Moore is a student at Stonybrook Intermediate and Middle School, and like many boys his age, he occasionally struggles with his confidence. This explains why last February he was confronted to remove his hat, a choice that placed him in defiance of the school’s dress code.

Moore caught the attention of Jason Smith, the principal at Stonybrook. Smith said, “I sat across from him and asked, 'What's wrong? Why are you being defiant, why are you refusing to take your hat off? It's a pretty simple request. And he explained that his parents took him to get a haircut and he didn't like the results."

What Moore didn’t know is that his principal, Mr. Smith, moonlights as a barber. "I told him, 'Look, I've been cutting hair since I was your age,' and I showed him pictures of my son's haircuts that I did and some of me cutting hair in college. And I said, 'If I run home and get my clippers and fix your line, will you go back to class? He hesitated but then he said yes."

After getting his parents’ consent, Smith retrieved the clippers and fixed Moore’s haircut. Smith said, “He didn't say straight out, but I feel like he didn't want to be laughed at. The barbershop and haircuts as Black males are very important in the community and looking your best and being sharp--it's just a cultural aspect."

Smith said he followed up with Moore and verified that he was abiding by the rules, learning in the classroom, sans hat. Smith said, “All behavior is communication and when a student is struggling, we need to ask ourselves what happened to this child instead of what's wrong with the child. What need is the child trying to get met and really, the future of urban education rests on that question."

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) When we encounter someone in distress and we have an opportunity to meet that need, we honor God as Creator, both of the person with the need as well as the creator of the talent that could meet that need. 2) When we encounter rebellion, especially in a young person, we must look deeper than the superficial.

An issue of the highly regarded science magazine New Scientist asked several basic philosophical questions and attempted to give answers from a strictly scientific point of view. One of the questions was “What is the meaning of life?”

In trying to answer about the meaning of life, the author begins with a bleak reality:

The harsh answer is “it has none.” Your life may feel like a big deal to you, but it’s actually a random blip of matter and energy in an uncaring and impersonal universe. When it ends, a few people will remember you for a while, but they will die too. Even if you make the history books, your contribution will soon be forgotten. Humans will go extinct; Earth and the sun will be destroyed. Eventually the universe itself will end. Against this appalling reality, how can a human life have any real meaning?

Possible Preaching Angle: Life without God is meaningless, as this answer makes abundantly clear. Science has provided us with helpful technology and useful inventions, but it is unable to answer the deepest needs of the human soul.

An episode on the podcast "The Butterfly Effect" tells the story about a couple named Dan and Rhiannon who run a company that provides what's called "bespoke porn." People who have some extra money and who want a particular scene or set of scenes played out provide a description to this company which then rents sets, hires actors, films the requested scenes, and turns over the finished product to the customer. Once in the waning hours of the night, Dan received an email from a man who made this request: he wanted a porn actress to sit, fully clothed, on the floor and then look into the camera and say: "You are loved. Things are bad now, but they won't always be. Suicide is not the answer."

Dan and Rhiannon wrote back, but did not hear again from the man. They decided to make the film anyway, and make it as beautifully as they could, in hopes that he would still want it—still be able to benefit from it. And they did. The actress they hired to speak those words can't talk about the situation without tears.

Commenting on this story Alan Jacobs writes,

Why might a man, suffering as this nameless man was suffering, turn for help to people who make pornography? Perhaps because porn is fantasy, in the sense of a dream world in which your desires are fulfilled. But at least sometimes what we want is not sex as such but rather to live out a dream of human connection, a dream of warmth stronger and more comforting even then the warmth of bodies.

In his bestselling book, Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, founder of Equal Justice Initiative, tells the story of Jimmy Dill, a convicted murderer who had been scheduled for execution in the state of Alabama. Stevenson's staff took on the case in the last 30 days of Dill's life because Dill not only suffered from an intellectual disability, but his conviction had been based on suspect evidence that Stevenson's team believed to be erroneous. Had Dill been able to afford a lawyer the first time, he wouldn't be on death row. As it happened, though, nothing could be done. In the last hour, Dill called Stevenson to say thank you for trying.

In his chapter entitled "Broken," Stevenson reflects on our common story of brokenness:

When I hung up the phone that night I had a wet face and a broken heart. … I thought myself a fool for having tried to fix situations that were so fatally broken … I worked in a broken system of justice. My clients were broken by mental illness, poverty, and racism. They were torn apart by disease, drugs and alcohol, pride, fear, and anger … In their broken state, they were judged and condemned by people whose commitment to fairness had been broken by cynicism, hopelessness, and prejudice …

After working for more than twenty-five years, I understood that I … do what I do because I'm broken, too. My years of struggling against … injustice had finally revealed something to me about myself. Being close to suffering, death, executions, and cruel punishments didn't just illuminate the brokenness of others … it also exposed my own brokenness … We all share the condition of brokenness … I desperately wanted mercy for Jimmy Dill and would have done anything to create justice for him, but I couldn't pretend that his struggle was disconnected from my own. The ways in which I have been hurt—and have hurt others—are different from the ways Jimmy Dill suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connected us.