People, People Who Need People

Sunday, February 8, 2026

Yes, the title quotes a song, one recorded by a lot of people, but that reached its highest prominence excruciatingly by Barbra Streisand.  I apologize for mentioning her, but the phrase is perfect for today’s subject matter.  I need to take a moment and clear her from my mind before I can write anything useful….OK.  The Free Press‘ usual Sunday feature “Things Worth Remembering” is by Josh Kaplan this week and is a discussion of how useful the daily friction of being among people actually is.  It struck a cord with me because I spent the last couple of weeks very pent up in the house with weather holding me there.

And then this Biblical verse came to mind:

One who separates himself seeks his own desire;
He quarrels against all sound wisdom.

And I fell in love with God’s inspiration of scripture all over again as that verse seems to sum up recent history in a nutshell.  Kaplan divides our lives into pre- and post- covid.

Back in the good old pre-pandemic days, we didn’t have a choice but to “get up and go do something.”

and I was reminded of this meme.  Think about road rage and how easily it erupts as we are isolated in our vehicle capsules.

It is no wonder we are becoming more polarized as a culture.  We are jettisoning yet another proverb.

I worked from my home since 1986, I kind of lead the wave.  But I called on clients, constantly.  I may not have made the daily commute, but I was always out among them, mixing it up.  I don’t work much anymore, and I moved, so I do not live with the whirlwind of a social calendar that I had during my working life – it takes a while to build up that kind of community – forty years in one place will do that.

In my new retired life, church has become the one place each week where I am assured of social interaction.  Unless, of course, as in recent weeks, the weather makes attendance impossible.

It’s funny how no matter what the issue in life is, church is the answer.  Yes, the purpose of church is to make us better people; that’s a spiritual thing.  But it makes us and society better simply by being a meeting place.  Maybe the days of a social expectation of going to church, even if you didn’t really believe, were not as dumb as we tend to think they were.

What I do know is it is Sunday and time to go to church.