One of my core beliefs comes from a Haitian Proverb: "The Neighborhood is the Family."
Before I go any further, let me clarify that I don’t necessarily define “neighborhood” as a geographical concept. When I’m using that word, I’m referring to a community—a group of people, often intergenerational, brought together by a common thread, navigating the joys and struggles of daily life alongside one another. Sometimes it is geographic, but it can also be a faith community, an educational community, a senior living community, and for many people a neighborhood can even happen within an online community. For the purpose of this blog, I’m going to share about our traditionally-defined neighborhood, but I encourage you to reflect on its expansive definition in your life too. The point is, our neighborhoods exist to take care of one another like a family, to make sure nobody is left to do it all alone.
The proverb is particularly meaningful in my family’s life because we do live in a tight-knit geographic neighborhood. My spouse and I are raising three kids in a densely populated suburb of Cleveland, and the people on our street do take care of each other.
The children on our street are role models for each other as they grow up. This summer we all celebrated with bittersweet pride as twin neighbors left for college. Our kids meet new babies before we do and they teach the toddlers to run.
A Neighbor Passes Away
This summer when one of our neighbors passed away, our children and their neighborhood friends found out first. They knew Carol better than I did, and saw her and her spouse regularly when they were playing outside. Instead of letting me know Carol had passed, they told each other, and found their own ways of offering sympathy and support. I didn’t find out until over a week later, which felt very strange at the time. But when I asked the kids to make a sympathy card for her grieving spouse, they assured me they had already done that days ago. They had picked flowers for him and checked on him just earlier that day. They knew about another neighbor bringing him dinner every night, and told me “he seems to be handling it well.” Turns out it was okay that I didn’t know right away, because the neighborhood is the family, skilled in taking care of each other, and they don’t need their mom to micromanage them.
The world is truly heavy right now, for a myriad of reasons. The story we often see on the news or hear about through fearful conversation is a broad-brush story about isolation and individualism. The news shows a world that lacks empathy and neighborliness. In particular, we hear a lot of narratives about generational divisiveness, and disconnect between neighbors. These narratives leave us afraid, lonely, and longing for a better world, even distracting us from looking right out our windows to notice the communities of support that are alive and well right here and now.
Definition of the Kingdom of God
Scholar and theologian Walter Brueggeman describes the Kingdom of God as, “public life reorganized toward neighborliness.” I love this definition, because it reminds us that every single person, no matter their age, economic status, skillset, and abilities, is empowered by God to work together towards a world of interconnected support. The calling within my control is to cultivate neighborliness.
I’m confident that the Kingdom of God is at hand in our neighborhood, in our church communities, and in other, more broadly-defined “neighborhoods” we belong to. Our call in this age and every age is to keep practicing and learning the art of community care with strength and endurance to resist the narrative of isolation and division.
A More Beautiful Story
A different, more beautiful story is true and it is happening right now. In communities all around the world, kids are taking their neighbors trash cans to the curb. We’re baking each other muffins, searching for lost cats together, and we worry if we don't see someone for a while. We depend on each other, knowing interconnected relationships are where strong roots grow. We learn to navigate conflict and grief, we celebrate and laugh, and we witness a world that is bigger than our individual selves and more beautiful than we imagined.
For Reflection (either individually or with a group)
Read the blog. Read it a second time, maybe reading it aloud or asking someone else to read it aloud so you can hear it with different intonation and emphases. Invite the Divine to open your heart to allow the light of new understanding to pierce the shadows of embedded assumptions, stereotypes, and ways of thinking so that you may live more abundantly. Then spend some time with the following questions together with anything or anyone who helps you reflect more deeply.
Download a pdf including the Reflection Questions to share and discuss with friends, family, or members of your faith community small group.