Not catching a bus though: at the age of 22 she took the extraordinary decision to spend her savings buying a double decker bus and transforming it into a youth and community centre.

A church youth worker, Emily drove the bus around the York and later the Scarborough coastal areas. She hosted sessions for young people on board the bus, with the opportunity to pray afterwards, as well as drop-ins for families and youth work training to churches.

When she left to move to Newcastle in 2018, its work had touched the lives of 5,000 young people and the Bus Stop charity had been established. She remains a trustee of the charity and it is still going strong on the North Yorkshire coast.

Now she is embarking on a new journey – of training to become a distinctive deacon in the Church of England.

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At 22, Emily spent her savings on a bus.

After transforming it into a youth and community centre, people started to see it as their church.

Now Emily's driving towards her next destination – ordination.

Be inspired by Emily's story, on our website. 👇🏾https://t.co/kYOm1WgudL

— The Church of England (@churchofengland) June 23, 2021

Christine Gemperle is about to do what almond farmers fear the most: rip out her trees early.

Water is so scarce on her orchard in California’s Central Valley that she’s been forced to let a third of her acreage go dry. In the irrigated areas, the lush, supple trees are dewy in the early morning, providing some relief from the extreme heat. Walking over to the dry side, you can actually feel the temperature start to go up as you’re surrounded by the brittle, lifeless branches that look like they could crumble into dust.

“Farming’s very risky,” said Gemperle, who will undertake the arduous process of pulling out all her trees on the orchard this fall, replacing them with younger ones that don’t need as much moisture. It’s a tough decision. Almond trees are typically a 25-year investment, and if it weren’t for the drought, these trees could’ve made it through at least another growing season, if not two. Now, they’ll be ground up into mulch.

“I don’t think a lot of people understand just how risky this business is, and it’s a risk that’s associated with something you can’t control at all: The weather,” she said.

Read it all (subscription).

The famed farming valleys of California are being swept into what feels like permanent dryness, raising the specter of food inflation https://t.co/49PLZnoMU9

— Bloomberg (@business) June 23, 2021

The killings rolled over the country like a fast-moving storm. From Savannah to Austin, from Chicago to Cleveland. In six hours one night this month, four mass-shooting attacks. And in their wake, a sober recognition from city leaders that they don’t have many options left for curbing a surge in homicides that is traumatizing communities nationwide.

“We have done almost all we can do,” said Van Johnson, the mayor of Savannah, Ga.

The tools for fighting back are “limited” without state and federal help, said Austin Mayor Steve Adler (D).

“It’s going to get worse,” Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson (D) said.

Read it all.

Great read from @markberman and @griffwitte on the challenge of understanding and responding to last year's murder surge. https://t.co/7bdRYYWZU0

— Jeff Asher (@Crimealytics) June 22, 2021

Count Leo Tolstoi wrote an interesting spiritual autobiography which he .entitled ” Christ’s Christianity.” In it he declared that most of his life had been based on belief in the
doctrine of general perfectibility. “This belief,” he says, “may be summed up in the word ‘ progress.’ Everything develops, and I myself develop as well ; and why this is so will one day be apparent.” This facile philosophy failed to provide Tolstoi with an explanation of decay and death: “There Was a time when I was myself developing, when my muscles and memory were strengthening, my power of thinking and understanding on the increase. I, feeling this, very naturally thought that the law of my own growth was the law of the universe and explained the meaning of my own life. But there came another time when I had ceased to grow, and I felt that I was not developing but drying up; my muscles grew weaker, my teeth began to fall out, and I saw that this law of growth, not only explained nothing, but that such a law did not and could not exist; that I had taken for a general law what only affected myself at a given age.” A period of despair descended upon Tolstoi when he realised that his optimistic philosophy was a psychological rationalisation of his personal experience. This disillusionment carried him forth from academic speculation into the common ways of men. From the peasantry he sought to learn the meaning of life. For the Count, and his circle, life was hollow and pointless ; for the poor, the labouring, and the humble, life had meaning. Why was this? It was, he observed, because the common, unlearned. people had that childlike faith which sustained them in happiness and peace. They did not reason ; they believed ; and through their belief they found comfort and joy.

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“Nothing can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.”

Tolstoy on kindness and the measure of love https://t.co/p8OqFeB0Po

— Maria Popova (@brainpicker) June 17, 2021

I now think of 2016 as a gentle warm-up routine for blogging in 2020. I had a couple of sketchy plot strands for Tales from Lindford, and the original full moon names idea. Other than that, all I had was the characters and COVID-19. But isn’t that all that any of us had last year—one another, and COVID-19? I tried to capture it all, and reflect on it; all the tiny isolated lives, like little separate screens on a Zoom call, lonely people waving at one another and longing, longing to be together again. An old hymn runs throughout the book, one I used to sing in the Baptist chapel where I grew up: ‘God be with you till we meet again.’ The novel ends on 31st December 2020 with those words.

The novel ended, but the pandemic wasn’t over…. No. Absolutely not. I stuck my fingers in my ears, and sang la-la-la, but I could hear the dreadful siren call of the blogging rollercoaster. Readers have noticed that the last two times I set out to blog a novel, I picked the worst years in living memory.Now that I’ve begun blogging Volume 5 of the Lindchester Chronicles—The Company of Heaven—what fresh hell is going to overtake us? A giant asteroid six months away, and heading towards the earth? I could end up blogging the end times of the human race. Good Lord, deliver us!

We are very small, and our lives are precarious. The pandemic has taught us that. Whatever happens in 2021, I can only continue doing what I’ve been attempting all along—to explore the glory and the tragedy of the human condition in the context of The End, and to keep my hopes fixed on the Good Lord, and the limitless possibility of deliverance.

Read it all (subscription).

Gone are the days when workers asked themselves, “How could someone like me be having a nervous breakdown?” Today, one in 5 people will experience a mental health issue in their lifetime and now more likely due to the pandemic.

Mental health concerns, often called invisible disabilities, aren’t flying under the radar at work anymore. They are being identified by team managers and the C-suite, who are quickly realizing that there is no going back to normal.

If your CEO wasn’t paying attention before, this should keep them up at night: According to a Verizon Media white paper. A stunning 93% of managers are finding that the mental health of their employees is having a negative effect on their bottom line. Top issues included grief, burnout, discrimination, and stress and all of this comes coupled with the added strain that families and caregivers are feeling. When employees miss work, are less productive and even communicate less clearly than than usual, their teams’ performance also slips.

Read it all.

93% of managers watch as mental health negatively impacts the bottom line https://t.co/adMi2IIdY7 pic.twitter.com/CgScZjyEpA

— Forbes (@Forbes) June 22, 2021

O Saviour Christ, whose compassion embraces all men, and who in the days of thy flesh didst welcome sinners: Graciously receive us who now come to thee, and who have nothing to plead but our own exceeding need, and thy exceeding love; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever.

A gorgeous sunrise with a view of the Fanad Head Lighthouse in County Donegal, Ireland.

📷 Matthias Haker Photography pic.twitter.com/OyqnrG0rxv

— p i c t u r e s ッ (@LoveLiberty_1) June 23, 2021

Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists murmured against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution. And the twelve summoned the body of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brethren, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” And what they said pleased the whole multitude, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Proch′orus, and Nica′nor, and Timon, and Par′menas, and Nicola′us, a proselyte of Antioch. These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands upon them.

And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith.

And Stephen, full of grace and power, did great wonders and signs among the people. Then some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the Freedmen (as it was called), and of the Cyre′nians, and of the Alexandrians, and of those from Cili′cia and Asia, arose and disputed with Stephen. But they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he spoke. Then they secretly instigated men, who said, “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.” And they stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the council, and set up false witnesses who said, “This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law; for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place, and will change the customs which Moses delivered to us.” And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel.

—-Acts 6:1-15

New London CT this morning! #sunrise

📷:Jason Askew pic.twitter.com/9jnU414qaa

— eweather (@Eweather13) June 23, 2021