How many people here are both isolated and alone and also have the Christian faith?

I’m not going to claim to be isolated as such. My parents and sister live within ten minutes of me. I have a very small number of ‘IRL’ friends, who I catch up with every couple of months over a meal or a coffee or at a show. I belong to two two online communities - here and a small Doctor Who discord - with meaningful if geographically remote friendships resultant from each, much to my deep and lasting gratitude. 

I was raised Catholic. I found as a child, a teenager, a young adult, and still now, many of the central tenets of the faith from the New Testament profoundly moving and hugely important to a fulfilling and ‘good’ life. I remember vividly a very powerful moment when I was in primary school when a young substitute teacher only with us for a few days, burst into tears while relating the events of the Last Supper, so overwhelmed was she by the ongoing revelation of that event’s profundity and by the duty she felt she had to adequately convey that to hearts and minds just on the threshold of being able to absorb it while in a state of grace we humans really possess at only one brief moment in time  - a perfect balance between sufficiently retained receptive innocence, the beginnings of sophisticated abstract thinking, and total near absence of learned reflexive or studied cynicism. 
 
Now 45, if I label myself as anything it would be an agnostic (basically an acknowledgment that all I truly know is that I know nothing, so I will never make any claims to having THE answer). I attend church seldom, usually for family/friend milestones (funerals, weddings, baptisms) and I go at Christmas for largely sentimental reasons and to share midnight mass with my parents for what could always be a final time - who ever really knows?  
 
I am godfather to a nephew and a niece. I hope I have been a good moral example to them, even though I relatively seldom talk to them explicitly of religion per se. 
 
I suppose my take on it all is that I will never throw the baby out with the bath water. A lot of good has been done by the inevitability imperfect institution (name one that isn’t) that is the Christian church collectively across its many forms. And of course much harm too, with a lot of self examination ongoing as a result. Though in an age in which the church’s tendency to think in centuries, not make snap populist (even if progressive) decisions has it more under pressure to continually reassess the meaning of integrity like no other time in history… the path ahead looks unclear in some respects.

I was just reflecting earlier that my small group of IRL friends are nearly all firm believers, Catholic, and active mass-goers, givers of their time to charity etc. Three of them I wouldn’t even know if the fourth (my oldest friend, from secondary school to now) had not joined the prayer group they all participated in for quite a while. None of them interrogated me on my lapsed ways, I think it is enough for them (and SHOULD be) that I am a good hearted person who cares about people and no less imperfectly embodies the spirit of the beatitudes than they do. I am not materialistic, I am not competitive, I need only the simpler things in life to be largely at peace, and while I certainly like the escapism of television, podcasts, books (though of course those all still embody much important discourse on morality, ethics, etc. anyway - irrespective of how ‘highbrow’ or otherwise they might be) I make time too for sombre and contemplate silence, and the processing of grief, and attempts at radical acceptance of pain. Would Jesus mind that conventional prayer is less often part of that than once it was? I doubt it, I hope not anyway. I think I’m still on a path he’d approve of. It’s just a less overtly church-y one, though by no means entirely detached from its teachings. 
 
My parents remain firm believers. Their Catholic faith got them, personally, through some very hard times. Some burdens have been so heavy for them that they have prayed and ‘handed it over’ as they would say. I’m so glad they have that. 
 
But I know some people who feel very disowned by the church too - some online LGBTQ members of the discord feel that there’s no place for them in the faith they were raised in while a recent pope described them as ‘disordered’ and the current one softens that only to ‘who am I to judge?’ though of course I appreciate that he can’t snap his fingers and change centuries of thinking overnight. The church will never rush the big questions. 
 
I visited my parents last night and ended up in a two hour theological discussion with my father. Including how I don’t like some of the revised wording of the responses in Mass (the cheek of me when I’m so seldom there I know, but some of the poetry went out of the wording when they tinkered I think) All of it respectful (I’m long since past any cheap shots, I just have a genuinely open mind that likes to turn things over in it when the subject comes up - which, in my dad’s case, is frequently). My parents have been asking me for some time to watch a ten part dvd series called Catholicism that they recommed highly (it’s presented by Father Robert Barron, and is beautifully shot all over the word, so even for the scenery alone it’s worth spending time with) and I watched the first two hour long episodes tonight - the only real reason, to be honest, that the beatitudes are so clearly in my head, it’s barely an hour since I got a refresher course! 
 
Here’s a nice quote to try and live by: 

“Good is good in the final hour, in the deepest pit, without hope, without witness, without reward”

Sounds biblical doesn’t  it? It’s actually from Doctor Who. And not a million miles away from what Christianity would ask of us. I think I’m surrounded by good people and good role models - fictional and real - and I’ll keep doing my best to be a decent person. I remember the actor Paul Eddington (from The Good Life and Yes, Minister) terminally ill with skin cancer, doing a final interview - this was two decades ago- and when asked what he wanted as an epitaph he simply said (he broke down while saying it) ‘He did no harm’. I could sense his relief in those words, that he felt it was broadly true - he’d always meant well and beven kind where he could. Was he a Christian? I’ve no idea. I’m not sure that matters. 

I’m not going to claim to be isolated as such. My parents and sister live within ten minutes of me. I have a very small number of ‘IRL’ friends, who I catch up with every couple of months over a meal or a coffee or at a show. I belong to two two online communities - here and a small Doctor Who discord - with meaningful if geographically remote friendships resultant from each, much to my deep and lasting gratitude. 

I was raised Catholic. I found as a child, a teenager, a young adult, and still now, many of the central tenets of the faith from the New Testament profoundly moving and hugely important to a fulfilling and ‘good’ life. I remember vividly a very powerful moment when I was in primary school when a young substitute teacher only with us for a few days, burst into tears while relating the events of the Last Supper, so overwhelmed was she by the ongoing revelation of that event’s profundity and by the duty she felt she had to adequately convey that to hearts and minds just on the threshold of being able to absorb it while in a state of grace we humans really possess at only one brief moment in time  - a perfect balance between sufficiently retained receptive innocence, the beginnings of sophisticated abstract thinking, and total near absence of learned reflexive or studied cynicism. 
 
Now 45, if I label myself as anything it would be an agnostic (basically an acknowledgment that all I truly know is that I know nothing, so I will never make any claims to having THE answer). I attend church seldom, usually for family/friend milestones (funerals, weddings, baptisms) and I go at Christmas for largely sentimental reasons and to share midnight mass with my parents for what could always be a final time - who ever really knows?  
 
I am godfather to a nephew and a niece. I hope I have been a good moral example to them, even though I relatively seldom talk to them explicitly of religion per se. 
 
I suppose my take on it all is that I will never throw the baby out with the bath water. A lot of good has been done by the inevitability imperfect institution (name one that isn’t) that is the Christian church collectively across its many forms. And of course much harm too, with a lot of self examination ongoing as a result. Though in an age in which the church’s tendency to think in centuries, not make snap populist (even if progressive) decisions has it more under pressure to continually reassess the meaning of integrity like no other time in history… the path ahead looks unclear in some respects.

I was just reflecting earlier that my small group of IRL friends are nearly all firm believers, Catholic, and active mass-goers, givers of their time to charity etc. Three of them I wouldn’t even know if the fourth (my oldest friend, from secondary school to now) had not joined the prayer group they all participated in for quite a while. None of them interrogated me on my lapsed ways, I think it is enough for them (and SHOULD be) that I am a good hearted person who cares about people and no less imperfectly embodies the spirit of the beatitudes than they do. I am not materialistic, I am not competitive, I need only the simpler things in life to be largely at peace, and while I certainly like the escapism of television, podcasts, books (though of course those all still embody much important discourse on morality, ethics, etc. anyway - irrespective of how ‘highbrow’ or otherwise they might be) I make time too for sombre and contemplate silence, and the processing of grief, and attempts at radical acceptance of pain. Would Jesus mind that conventional prayer is less often part of that than once it was? I doubt it, I hope not anyway. I think I’m still on a path he’d approve of. It’s just a less overtly church-y one, though by no means entirely detached from its teachings. 
 
My parents remain firm believers. Their Catholic faith got them, personally, through some very hard times. Some burdens have been so heavy for them that they have prayed and ‘handed it over’ as they would say. I’m so glad they have that. 
 
But I know some people who feel very disowned by the church too - some online LGBTQ members of the discord feel that there’s no place for them in the faith they were raised in while a recent pope described them as ‘disordered’ and the current one softens that only to ‘who am I to judge?’ though of course I appreciate that he can’t snap his fingers and change centuries of thinking overnight. The church will never rush the big questions. 
 
I visited my parents last night and ended up in a two hour theological discussion with my father. Including how I don’t like some of the revised wording of the responses in Mass (the cheek of me when I’m so seldom there I know, but some of the poetry went out of the wording when they tinkered I think) All of it respectful (I’m long since past any cheap shots, I just have a genuinely open mind that likes to turn things over in it when the subject comes up - which, in my dad’s case, is frequently). My parents have been asking me for some time to watch a ten part dvd series called Catholicism that they recommed highly (it’s presented by Father Robert Barron, and is beautifully shot all over the word, so even for the scenery alone it’s worth spending time with) and I watched the first two hour long episodes tonight - the only real reason, to be honest, that the beatitudes are so clearly in my head, it’s barely an hour since I got a refresher course! 
 
Here’s a nice quote to try and live by: 

“Good is good in the final hour, in the deepest pit, without hope, without witness, without reward”

Sounds biblical doesn’t  it? It’s actually from Doctor Who. And not a million miles away from what Christianity would ask of us. I think I’m surrounded by good people and good role models - fictional and real - and I’ll keep doing my best to be a decent person. I remember the actor Paul Eddington (from The Good Life and Yes, Minister) terminally ill with skin cancer, doing a final interview - this was two decades ago- and when asked what he wanted as an epitaph he simply said (he broke down while saying it) ‘He did no harm’. I could sense his relief in those words, that he felt it was broadly true - he’d always meant well and beven kind where he could. Was he a Christian? I’ve no idea. I’m not sure that matters.