Westy's Weekly Blog

A grandson-in-law recently posted an interesting article on social media.   It highlighted some results from a 2025 survey of ‘volunteering’ across 22 different countries.   The report commenced with the startling claim that a key predictor of adult volunteering was the increased frequency of attending religious worship services at age 12. Of course in our western society volunteering has a long and respectable history.   Australia may well be an outstanding example of the wide scope of volunteering.   Thousands of Op-Shops around the nation are staffed by volunteers.   Many retirees drive a day or two every week for ‘Meals On Wheels’.   In the first two years of my married life in country Victoria I was, together with a brother in law, a member of the local volunteer fire brigade.   For almost fifty years of my life I joined a bunch of other enthusiastic volunteers once every three months – just lying back on a hospital bed or a recliner chair while...

  Almost instinctively I knew something serious was in the wind for the older couple that had knocked at the door of the manse.   I knew them well.   They were in church every Sunday.   They always arrived early to make sure they got their favourite seats in the back row.   That was so they could duck out immediately the worship service finished and then it was off to the carpark and home.   I don’t recall them ever staying for a cuppa after church, the way the larger part of our membership did.   I had visited them at home several times and on one such occasion she lamented that they didn’t feel all that much at home in the church.   I gently suggested they didn’t give people much of a chance to befriend them as they were always first out the door at the conclusion of the service.   I suspected they both struggled with feelings of inferiority.   They were simple country people who had moved into town when they retired. I invited them ...