A walk in my Tacoma neighborhood taught me lessons about community | Opinion

Who knew a sense of gladness would emerge from a local walk?

In the midst of unparalleled national, mayhem, catastrophe and media capitulation, along with financial and family challenges — and in the tailings of a peculiarly intrusive and debilitating virus — and at a time when a work crew is doing all manner of long-delayed restorative work on my house from 7 a.m. to about 6 p.m., I took an hour or so for a leisurely walk around my neighborhood.

I’ve lived in this neighborhood for a little over 30 years and have a friendly chatting relationship with about one-third of the householders there.

Some have been in the neighborhood for a year or two, some for a generation. Some are avid gardeners; others have lawn or landscaping services.

The vast majority of homes in my neighborhood were built in the 1920s and 1930s, with only a few built after that. A very few (perhaps five in an hour’s walk) were built in the 1970s or 1980s on the site of a former home.

As I walked, I saw the care many took in their yards and homes. One home had all ground cover and large rocks, with no grass. Others had large lawns with ornamental trim.

Some homes (like mine) were in the throes of summer projects, with tools, ladders and tarps scattered around.

Others showed signs of a season or two of neglect. But more than that was rare.

If care is what love looks like, a well-kept neighborhood is a quiet sign of love in action.

What does neighborhood politics look like?

There were a few “In this house we believe…” signs, but not as many or as prominently displayed as a few years ago.

There are a few faded “Black Lives Matters” signs.

One neighbor briefly had a massive “Trump” banner across the front of his house.

For the most part, my neighborhood, perhaps like most individual Americans, had learned that it was more neighborly — and certainly safer — to keep one’s political opinions to oneself.

Few, if any, of my neighbors, with signs or in conversations, seemed willing or interested in ideology or politics.

The political parties — and their agendas — seemed like alien abstractions as I walked in silence among the cultivated lawns and well-tended homes.

Believe it or not, we in the actual world have more important things to think — and care — about than ginned-up culture wars and fears-and panic-of-the-week media obsessions.

My neighbors seemed far more interested in weeds, clogged gutters and chipping paint than any rabid cable-news talking points.

The weight of history

The average American home changes hands about every five years – but not in this neighborhood.

I spoke to one homeowner who was perhaps 70 or so, who has lived in her house about 20 years. She told me that her house, built in 1912, had, in over 100 years, only three owners.

These houses, sidewalks and streets have seen wars, recessions, good times and hard times. There is something about the “bones” of neighborhoods like that with something like knowledge or determination that we humans, or at least those places that we make and call home, have seen it all and will, if we let them, see even more.

Houses and neighborhoods are far more than shelters and collections of homes, of course. They are the human footprints on the places where lives, in some cases generations of lives, made their marks and were marked by, where home and neighborhood were not abstractions, but real, solid frameworks and foundations for the unknowable future and the past that is as fully gone as it ever was present.

The noise, clatter, division and chaos of the larger nation seem like a bad dream. Every home and household is different, but few, if any, are a threat to any others. Those of varying beliefs, backgrounds, ages and incomes live alongside each other.

A sense of community, at any level, is not forced or imposed – the web of neighborliness emerges over time and long practice.

Neighborliness

Like the best of faith traditions, neighborliness is lived, not analyzed or measured, perhaps even noticed.

But it is noticed when it is lost or threatened. As many of us know, once lost, it is almost always lost forever.

And, like faith, friendship or patriotism, when it comes to a cohesive and caring neighborhood, those who speak the loudest are often the biggest threat.

As desirable as they might be, a “good” neighborhood cannot be purchased. Like friendship, and maybe even like faith, when it comes to lasting neighbors, we encounter and discover, appreciate and neglect, rediscover and appreciate anew.

Who is my neighbor?

The scripture’s answer to that question is one of the most memorable parables of history.

But I am convinced that, between the lines, Jesus would say something like: “That is the wrong question. The real question that should be asked is, ‘Who is not my neighbor?’ The answer to that question tells you how large your view of God and neighborhood, really is”.

And that is the only answer that matters.