Dwelling in the Neighbourhood

We’ve recently moved. I’ve gone back to my roots, moving just a few miles from where I was born. The area is familiar and we feel very much at home in our new neighbourhood. It’s a friendly, welcoming, egalitarian community where there are no extremes of wealth and poverty. The demographics are interesting in that the population is evenly spread across all age groups which are signs of a healthy community and in many ways, with new housing and people moving into the area, good schools and just 5 miles from the city centre, an up-and-coming place. 

I wait with eager anticipation the advent of a coffee shop which must surely come to add to the attraction and popularity of this former mining community. The landscape has changed, its former (old?) colliery now the setting of a country park and its former coal waggonways, now fabulous paths and cycle ways in a hinterland of a city surrounded to the north by lovely countryside and a short distance from the beautiful Northumberland coast. 

There are still signs of the neighbourhoods past, reflected not just in the physical landscape but in the housing and the remnants of businesses that would once have been integral to the development of this mining and engineering area. Remnants too of a once vibrant church community, whose buildings of all denominations, reflecting their obvious decline. Surviving not thriving, no longer the many but the few attending and those who do so, predominantly elderly. Income streams to aid preservation and survival, no longer flowing from the congregation’s collection but from letting out premises to all in sundry.

Depressing, well that depends where and what you’re looking at. If church attendance is the measure by which the kingdom of God is seen then it is indeed depressing. To use the imagery from the experience of the people of Israel in exile, the temple has gone, familiar religious practices no longer of any great relevance and the place of power and any semblance of prestige vanished. Desperate measures, attempting to be relevant, attractive and designed to somehow get people back to church, only exacerbate the feeling of despondency. They fail miserably to connect and revive. It’s a sad state of affairs, a sorry picture, if everything is viewed through the lens of Christendom or trying to make the old church work again.. 

But there’s another picture, a picture that is emerging beyond the walls of the church building with its diminishing and increasingly redundant programmes and rituals. There is another picture that speaks of a future and a hope shaped by words familiar to the prophet Jeremiah as he spoke to the people of Israel in Babylon.

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. - Jer 29:11

In these early days of settling in our new neighbourhood, we are very aware that this is a new land in which we now live. We’ve never lived on the outskirts of anywhere before. We’ve lived in urban centres, in towns and for many years in a rural village. Whilst the area is known to us, the neighbourhood is unfamiliar. We are in many ways, guests and foreigners in this new, if not altogether strange land. Like the people of Israel, we are asking, “How do we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” and discovering what feels to be a place where the Spirit of God is at work. Being warmly welcomed, helped, advised by neighbours, shopkeepers, pub owners, library and surgery staff carries with it more than just a positive experience. The care with which most people take in their homes and gardens, large and small, clearly brings pleasure but also spills over into a sense of care, respect and appreciation of those communal areas of parks and gardens and countryside. The neighbourhood is strewn with public footpaths, all of which seem light, pathways of leisure and pleasure, avenues of connection and corridors of easy conversation. 

As an introvert I don’t go out walking looking for conversations but within the first month of being here I must’ve had almost 50 conversations with people in the neighbourhood. Those who have passed by our house when we’ve been in the garden or getting in and out of the car have spoken and welcomed us. The ease of eye contact and the courtesy “Good morning” or “evening” on a walk that so easily in this culture, leads to the passing of the time of day and on so many, surprisingly occasions, some deeper conversations.

We bring with us into this new neighbourhood our dwelling with God. The monastic rhythm that has shaped my life for many years continues to be practised in the daily habit of Morning Office, Midday ‘pause for prayer’ and Evening Compline. Dwelling in scripture and practising a daily Examen keeps me rooted and alert to the work of the Spirit, embracing the sacrament of the present moment, awareness of God in the midst of ordinary, everyday life. 

With these habits, we have come to dwell in our neighbourhood, living here, ‘being’ proceeding any doing, discerning the work of the Spirit in the lives of those whom we meet and share. Neighbours and trades people, dog walkers and passes by. In the words of the Northumbria Community Morning Office, “Be in the heart of each to whom I speak, in the mouth of each who speaks unto me”. Not striving to achieve anything but to discern and discover what God is doing in this neighbourhood and to join in with the agency of the Spirit as we put our roots down, settle and pray for the welfare and blessing of all the people whom we know live among. 

As to our plans, we are laying aside our agendas and seeking out of the dwelling to discern why, beyond the human reasoning behind our move, God has brought us to this place. We are being called to settle, discern and discover what the Spirit is doing in this place. We’re seeking to be, as the name of our new neighbourhood implies, “Wideopen” to God. Great name for a place, a great statement of faith, to be wide open to God’s future and hope.