I wasn't very happy. I lived in a suburb that had been hastily constructed in the 1960s in France. It seemed to have all the disadvantages of hasty planning, poor location, and isolation, with none of the advantages of being relatively new. Everything was so far away. This area did not offer the cultural, social, or artistic development I was longing for. There were many of us living there who felt we had no way out. In fact, it seemed that the lack of uplifting and productive activity for young people in the community was leading to crime and other indications of considerable discontent.
I had to commute three hours every day to the university. Even when I went to church I had to travel an hour going and coming. But I loved church! I felt joy and peace and purpose when I was there. Then I had to go home—all the way back home. I was miserable, feeling that everything I was interested in—the city, the university, church, and so forth—were so far from where I lived. A real malediction, I thought.
Then one day something began to change. I had read an article in the Journal that discussed the healing role of the church in community life. My first reaction had been, "But there's no church where I live, and the church of which I am a member is not in my community, and my community is bad." Nevertheless, the spirit and message of that article didn't leave me in such a state of despair. Something hard in me began to soften that day. In fact, it wasn't long before I began to realize that church isn't something that's confined to a particular location or time of the week. Church, I began to see, is a spiritual idea. And I started to realize that the peace and joy and inspiration that I felt during church services and in other membership activities certainly were an outgrowth of man's relationship to God.
