Quarantined in a one-bedroom apartment in New York, I would sometimes imagine my fire escape was a creaky porch in the woods somewhere as I sat outside in the early evenings, listening to my neighbours' cheer and bang pots for the essential workers carrying the city on their backs.

Life felt stuck: no way to plan, nowhere to go, nothing to build toward.

The calendar had been emptied of weddings and dinners and reunions; the comforting rhythms of weeks and seasons disappeared.

I found myself alternately plotting wild adventures and pining for a quiet, communal life.

A professor of mine used to call this kind of musing "Jesuit daydreaming," his description of the rich Ignatian tradition of spiritual discernment.

I should pay attention to daydreams, he said, because they can be more revealing than I might first assume.

In this case, I think he is right: My pandemic mind loop was tracing the problem I have come to see as one of the great dilemmas of modern life.

In my work as a religion journalist, I often offer a mental image to explain the importance of the beat to secular colleagues and readers.

While not everyone describes themselves as having faith or even feeling spiritual, everyone has those searching moments in the middle of the night, covers pulled up high as they are lying in bed wondering how to have a good life.

More often than not, people's descriptions of what a good life looks like depends on a single factor: the strength of the community around them.

As a reporter, it is my job to follow along as individuals and communities try to figure out who they want to be and how they want to live.

It is hard to be a man or woman for others in a culture that is dominated by us versus them.

Over the past eight months, however, the path toward a good life has become obscured for many Americans.

As I sat inside my apartment daydreaming about the future, dozens of people

• on my street were getting sick,
• were losing family members or navigating the anxiety of being immunocompromised during a public-health crisis,
• were among many Americans, especially in New York, have spent their last eight months mostly alone, and mostly at home, sometimes unable even to wave hello to loved ones from a distance.
• contributed to the unemployment rate in New York City, which this summer reached 20 percent; many beloved businesses will likely never come back after the shutdown.
• are impacted by the basic ingredients of a good life—decent health, the warmth of family and friends, economic stability—are now out of reach for far more people in our country than at the start of 2020.

But the pandemic has also revealed the extent to which a good life felt elusive for countless Americans far before any of us had heard of Covid-19.

This is not just a matter of money or resources.

In my reporting, I constantly find evidence that Americans feel isolated and unmoored from their communities, unsure of their place in the world.

I am thinking of a Black Southern Baptist-trained pastor who could not stomach taking his kids to church within his denomination anymore because of his fellow church members' reluctance to talk about racism.

A longtime staffer at a major American archdiocese who feels daily rage at the Catholic Church's inability to address the clergy sexual-abuse crisis.

A young woman fired from her job at a conservative Christian advocacy organization because she spoke out against President Trump. A Catholic professor who bitterly wishes the Democratic Party had room for his pro-life views.

These are all examples from the world of religion and politics, but they speak to a deep and expansive truth: In many parts of American life, people feel the institutions that were supposed to guide their lives have failed, and that there is no space for people like them.

The result is a widespread sense of mutual mistrust.

Last year, the Pew Research Center found that fewer than one in five Americans say they can trust the government.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans have a hard time telling the truth from lies when elected officials speak, and even more believe the government unnecessarily withholds important information from the public.

I have encountered plenty of mistrust in the course of reporting stories.

People believe they know my politics, suspect me of bias and assume I will be hostile to religion because of where I work.

Religious leaders may be the most distrusted group of all.

As one influential Catholic businessman in Boston told me a couple of years ago, following the sexual-abuse scandal, "I go to Mass about three or four days a week.

I'm not into Vatican politics. I'm not into Vatican museums. I'm not into people who wear red slippers and fancy robes.

I bought into this as a kid, because of the life of Christ. So I'm in. But I'm not drinking any Kool-Aid."

Nearly two-thirds of Americans have a hard time telling truth from lies when elected officials speak. Continue reading

1. Never admit it. That's the fastest way to make them infinitely more attractive to toddlers and teenagers. If you want to change a vague friendship into something resembling Romeo and Juliet in terms of passion and intensity, just say you don't like someone. Also, never enthuse about anyone you think is a great influence as that can put the kiss of death on the friendship.

2. Take the long-term view. Children grow up, teenagers stop rebelling and parents learn to relax a little. Friends you are currently not keen on can be dropped overnight, turn into absolute charmers, or become the friend who is always there for your child, no matter what. Stay quiet and keep an eye on things, as well as being honest enough to admit you got someone wrong.

3. It's not about you. Sometimes you don't like a parent or a different way of bringing up children and that can translate into an unreasonable dislike of a child. Try to be honest with yourself - does a very confident child make yours seem timid, or a different approach to discipline undermine what you always previously thought was reasonable?

4. Befriend them. This works at every age. Don't be sycophantic or overeager - just practical and friendly. When they are younger, do things with them such as making cakes, or include them in slightly odd activities, such as clearing out a shed and taking rubbish to the dump. Talk to them, listen to them, be interested. Give them slightly more responsibility than they are used to, so that coming to your home makes them feel more grown up. Similarly with teenagers. Treat them as adults and they find it hard not to respond. Also, your teenagers might find that the coolest person in school isn't quite such a rebel with their feet under your kitchen table having a cosy cup of tea. Continue reading

• Joan McFadden loves Sundays because she can do what she likes after a childhood in the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland.

While most have at least one or two people they are close to, one per cent of Kiwis aged 15 or over say they have no supportive family or friends, according to research from Statistics NZ.

The New Zealand General Social Survey (NZGSS), conducted over a year, asked almost 9000 respondents whether they had any friends or family who helped and supported them.

Continue reading

It is titled "Why I Didn't Invite Family Or Friends To My Wedding".

And that's great.

But here's why I did invite family and friends (and lots of them, we come from big families) to my our wedding.

After four years of dating, despite being 21, we decided to get married.

Aided by an unexpected proposal on a remote Cook Island beach.

We began talking about what kind of wedding we wanted.

Well actually, I was just impatient to marry my love and get on with our married lives.

We had been living in separate countries, attempting to live chastely for each other, and impatient covered much of that.

From witnessing other strong marriages in our lives and through our knowledge of the commitment and life long nature of marriage, we knew that what we were undertaking was serious.

It wasn't to be taken lightly.

And so, we knew that we both wanted and had to invite everyone around us.

People who had known us and shared with us our whole lives couldn't be missed out.

Because although marriage is a bond between two people, it also is the creation of a family - both as one unit, but also as the coming together of two separate families. In Laws.

That marriage also relies on the support of the community around it.

The strength of good family and friends who will give advice, share in joys and tears, tell you to pick yourself up and go back to the marriage in hard times, support in the raising of children and its inevitable ups and downs.

And so much more. We need them. They need us.

Our loved ones have as much right to celebrate in our joy (and their own joy in sharing in our lives), as we do to celebrate it in the first place (how's that for a sentence?). Continue reading

Sources

• Chelsea Houghton in Restless Press

Chelsea Houghton is editor of Restless Press, as well as a columnist for Catholic Stand, Ignitum Today and NZ Catholic.