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From our October 21 edition





When I first started as a Church of Scotland minister, I was 26-years-old. I looked about 18!

The congregation told my parents not to worry, they would look after me.

I remember someone coming to the door of the manse looking for the minister and when I answered, they asked if my dad was in.

I told the person my dad lived 200 miles away and then realised that he thought I was the minister’s daughter!

That was 30 years ago. Now older, greyer but not much wiser, I think of all the water that has run under the bridge since those early days and realise it’s not just me who has changed.

All those decades ago communities were very different.

Back then people enjoyed getting together for ceilidhs and concerts. They’d go off on day trips on the bus. They’d drop their children off at church and pick them up when it was over. They would be involved in their children’s youth organisations.

Young people wanted and enjoyed, a place to gather to chat with their friends.

These days we seem, very quickly, to be losing the art of community.

Or perhaps more accurately, these days community is changing shape in a way that makes it barely recognisable.

At least to an oldie like me.

Since nothing ever stays the same I shouldn’t really be surprised – but I guess it is the speed with which those changes are taking place that’s so unnerving.

People still gather for ceilidhs and concerts but it tends to be the enthusiasts who do, rather than everyone pitching up.

Young people still want to chat to their friends but they do it from the privacy of their own bedrooms and chat online.

Church is seen, like ceilidh dancing, as being for those who like that sort of thing, instead of for everyone,.

So fewer go along and when churches have socials, people think they are only for the church folk when in fact they’re meant to welcome everyone. Just for fun. No strings attached.

To me we seem to be in danger of dismantling community and limiting our mixing with others simply to those who are just like us. Shrinking our world instead of expanding it.

And to me that is not what community should be.

To me, community is about taking the rough with the smooth.

It’s about interacting with those you find it easy to like and those you find more challenging.

It’s about recognising that people are all different but that each has something worthwhile to contribute.

To close ourselves off to mix only with those who think like us, is to miss out on the rich variety of life. It’s turning the brightness level down on how life should be.

But then maybe these are the ramblings of someone fast approaching their sell-by date. Perhaps I’m like one of those people who 30 years ago, didn’t like the thought of the arrival of a woman to be a minister. Maybe I need simply to accept things and get on with it.

Maybe.

But I can’t help feeling that if we continue down this road, our children will be the ones to suffer because they won’t have been exposed to people who are “different”, who think differently and their minds will not be expanded or challenged in a way that’s good for them and life-enriching.

I would be interested to know what you think. Maybe I am just getting old…?


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