Community

Thursday

Patrick Kidd

The Church of England’s volunteering crisis

John Betjeman knew that a church cannot run on prayers alone. ‘Let’s praise the man who goes to light the church stove on an icy night,’ he wrote in his poem ‘Septuagesima’, going on to celebrate the ‘hard-worked’ wardens, cleaners, treasurers, the organist and, most of all, ‘the few who are seen in their accustomed pew’ come rain or shine. ‘And though they be but two or three,’ he concluded. ‘They keep the church for you and me.’ In smaller churches, filling voluntary vacancies is a headache, not helped by ever-increasing bureaucracy Some vicars today may feel fortunate to garner two or three volunteers. A recent Church Times survey found a worrying decline in numbers taking on the lay roles of warden, secretary and treasurer.

Wednesday

Amber Duke

What’s missing in America

From our US edition

I’m back! As I mentioned in my last newsletter, my husband and I recently set off on our ten-day honeymoon to Morocco. We went to Casablanca, Meknes, Fez, Marrakesh, the Agafay Desert and Essaouira. I didn’t travel much growing up and so this trip was really special for me. We toured one of the largest mosques in the world and a fifteenth-century synagogue that is still active today, visited the Roman ruins of Volubilis, trekked through the Medinas, haggled in the souk, watched artisans create their handmade crafts with techniques handed down for centuries, rode camels and enjoyed traditional Berber food and music. Before we left for our trip, we fielded a lot of safety concerns.

Tuesday

Jamie Collinson

The Ryan Gattis guide to Lynwood

From our US edition

In 2015, after a 10-year hiatus that followed his debut, the novelist Ryan Gattis published a masterpiece. All Involved is a compulsive, symphonic novel set during the Los Angeles riots of 1992, telling the stories of gang members, a firefighter, a nurse and a graffiti artist, among others, as they try to navigate six notorious, brutal days in LA. This month, Gattis returns to this milieu with The System. Much of the novel is set in troubled, entrepreneurial Lynwood, South Central Los Angeles, where Gattis has spent many hundreds of hours on painstaking research.

ryan gattis lynwood

Friday

Karol Markowicz

Don’t let Karen kill your community

From our US edition

I knew I was dealing with a Karen when the police showed up. We had only recently moved in and we had a serious leak in one of our bathrooms. We called a plumber for emergency repairs. A woman on our block confronted my husband about it and, despite his explanation that the work was essential, she called the cops. Along with all the other problems coronavirus had wrought on our society, we are witnessing the rise of the ‘Karen’. Pre-corona, the term ‘Karen’ was used to describe the neighborhood busybody, the woman in front of you at Target who gets into an argument at the check-out and demands to see the manager. But coronavirus has given Karen a new role in life and more power than she’s ever had before.

karen