The older ones lose power and influence. All are less related to one another and the society than they were. It's enough to try to keep your own church together. Gated subdivisions establish new walls against anyone who cannot afford to get in. People continue to move farther out.
Stores become suburban megawarehouses.
The pace of things is beyond anyone's reckoning. None of us can keep up with what we need to be doing or knowing. As persons following a form of the Benedictine Rule, we stop three times a day to join in prayer and praise, and to pray for the city. We do not pray as persons trying to ignore or escape the world, but as persons suspended in the world trying to drink slowly from the cup of healing, the lifegiving spring of the spirit. Our prayer drives us into greater, not lesser, awareness.