Is It Time to Open Our Doors?
Clickety-clack. Click.
Scribble, delete, scratch, toss.
Over the past two months, I penned and typed many, many blog posts. Yet other than book reviews, none of those articles are live on the website. My content is stinking it up. Creative ideas for inspirational living are in short supply for many bloggers right now. Audiences and readers are turning away from browsing online, afraid of the onslaught of you must dos and how dare yous.
But stagnation breeds more stalemates. And I believe we can revive our community for long term change.
Everyone’s story seems much more important than mine, especially right now. From the months of quarantine to the protesting decades of pain to personal accounts of loss. I felt like I did not fit into any public spaces. Maybe some of you are feeling the same way right now? Have you been shrinking back since Spring?
When I tried to write about a more worthy story or an issue I was passionate about, by crowd association only, the words fell flat. Those articles could never serve my readers. The blog posts did not have the sense of discovery that we share. So I stewed, with a hard drive folder full of limp documents, trudging through my manuscript edits.
Then someone incredibly special knocked on my door with an opportunity that is turning this whole thing around.
Cedar Rapids, Iowa has a community development, nonprofit organization called Matthew 25. This group serves neighborhoods with tightly shut doors and minimal neighbor interaction. Their employees and volunteers knock and wait on porches until those rusted up, creaking, unused front door hinges swing wide. Their mission is to empower people to transform neighborhoods.
I love the work they do because I see the results all over central downtown! Cleaned up yards, elderly neighbors with new walking buddies, fresh coats of house paint, neighbors without kids playing with the next door children, and blooming front yard garden beds. Our outside neighborhood looks lived in, which from what I am gathering as a new resident, was not the case ten years ago.
The Cedar Rapids community is old, just like some of the best US neighborhoods are. Our house will be 121 years old this year. It has sheltered a lot of people. And in the midst of stay-at-home orders, aka renovation season, I have discovered many stories of previous residents from the walls, basement spaces, and garage lofts of our house.
But what do notes on drywall or storage boxes in rafters from the 30s tell me about the community? Not much. Yet being out in my front yard meeting my neighbors, The Ps, who have lived in their house for forty years the stories come alive. The folks a couple houses down connect those dots for me. Now their lives entwined with our house and yard, we have shared history.
I am back discovering great stories. Stories that go on behind doors and windows right across the alley from mine. It is wonderful sharing in the lives of others. This week and for many more weeks of summer, I get to sample the richness of “living” in one place for forty years while working in our gardens together. I think I learned a new definition of home.
I encourage you, while protesting for healthier communities and working toward a safe opening up of the economy, also meet your neighbors. People are still staying at home more than they are going out. Staycations will be the 2020 Summer trend. Relate to your neighbors under the shared experience of being homebodies. Ask yourself, is your community better for it? Can it be?
Leave me a comment about your neighborhood. I also added a couple books about great neighbors, just for good reading.
