For Wilshire Baptist Church
As I watered the beds Saturday after we planted flowers and spread mulch, a car full of teens pulled up in front of our house and tumbled out to join a big family gathering next door. They smiled and waved and said “hi,” and I did the same. Meanwhile, two women chatted on the front porch across the street, and an older couple swept the sidewalk to the east. I waved at them too, and they waved back.
As best I can figure, I’ve lived at 15 distinct addresses during my lifetime, which means I’ve lived in 15 neighborhoods. Some for just a year, the longest for 18. They’ve ranged from single-family homes to college dorms to apartments, duplexes and condos. How I’ve lived in those neighborhoods has spanned the full range of experiences. I’ve been a spectator and an organizer, a joiner and a hermit, a reliable friend and a quiet crank. My choice of interaction has always been mine to make, and that has changed over the years with maturity and life experience and learning to live with an introverted temperament.
Our current address is in the most diverse neighborhood I have lived in. Those teens I mentioned and the family they were visiting are black, the women across the street are Mexican, and the couple with the broom are immigrants from Cuba. And up and down the street and on adjoining streets it is much the same, with young families and senior citizens, truck drivers and university administrators, gays and straights, Baptists and Catholics. This diversity did not grow around us over the decades; it was already here when we arrived eight years ago.
I’m not saying this to boast about how woke I am, nor am I claiming to be more tolerant than other people. I know I have plenty of baggage from growing up on a totally white street in a mostly white suburb. I’ve heard and told jokes that I shouldn’t have; I’ve held thoughts and opinions that I shouldn’t have. I still grumble quietly about cultural differences that irritate me, most notably yard parties with loud music. But back in those white neighborhoods of my youth there were families that I thought were too loud and who didn’t keep up their properties and sort of let their lives spill out all over the place in an untidy way.
But now I’m trying to fit into this community as it is rather than having it fit my vision of what a community should be. It’s a small step, but I’m just trying to live and let live. And maybe that is a good starting point for some of us: just live and let live.