Reflecting on our conversation with Karen Reed
Last November we featured our conversation with Karen Reed (https://leavingegyptpodcast.substack.com/p/ep08-full-time-neighbours-with-karen).
Karen described her journey from being a full time pastor to rediscovering and re-rooting herself back into her neighbourhood. Karen is a good friend. This past weekend Jane and I were over to her house for supper. We semi-regularly have supper gatherings at each other's place sharing stories about our communities and thinking a bit about what this call to neighbourhood means for the shaping of our lives as Christians. One thing that's clear is the way Karen and her household have become so rooted in a neighbourhood where people were once strangers to each other. Now, neighbours pop in at any time to sit and catch up. Some will open the back garden gate just to say "hi". Something is shifting in the neighbourhood, it's connected with Karen's decision to be re-rooted in that place.
A poignant illustration of this is how Karen, and some neighbours, are discovering levels of isolation and need in this middle class neighbourhood. Several houses down from Karen's is the big, old house of a retired judge. She has lived alone for many years with no relatives around. Karen connected with her because she started paying attention to who was living on the street. She discovered that this senior had advanced dementia. She'd been able to cover it up from most people because she's very bright. She would write notes to herself and simply live in denial. But when you're a neighbour dropping in and out you can't cover this up for very long. So began, with Karen's care and advocacy, a sad process of getting support for an amazing human being who was now alone and in the throes of dementia.
Just in itself this is a beautiful, gracious story of what being a neighbour is all about. But there is more. It's about how our eyes are gradually opened to others when we're rooted in place long enough. It has become apparent to Karen that her neighbourhood has a good number of seniors confronting all the elements of aging as they live alone with few relationships. This has begun another kind of conversation about what it means to be God's people where you dwell. The Boomer generation touted their individualism, their rights to be whatever they chose - for many, the end of this individualism is the isolation Karen is discovering in her neighbourhood. In this is a call that can only come from being rooted in place.