To me our neighborhood is not just the middle-class moms with their expensive pushchairs or my writer friend across the park, but instead a place of many layers, where people are going through all kinds of struggle, many of whom I now know personally. The [local parish’s food pantry] makes me ask myself: How do you want to be connected in the world, and how do you want to be in communion with people?
Anglicanism is meaningful to me in that way. I’m not in any way an effective, good, or faithful Anglican. I am at the larder far less frequently than I should be. But I’m interested in the idea that this particular space in Willesden provides something which, at least in contemporary capitalism, seems very hard to find elsewhere. (I cannot speak for Anglican churches elsewhere.) It’s meaningful to me, in the radically local sense Philip Larkin got at in “Church Going,” as a specific place where for hundreds — or maybe thousands — of years, people have gathered for this purpose: to be quiet, to be in communion, to be with one another. These human souls can be abject, they can be lost, they can be rich or poor, hold a great variety of political views or none at all. The door is open.
As an Anglican who, unlike Zadie Smith, has “metaphysical concerns,” heck, even a set of beliefs, I say: This is a good start.