WON'T YOU BE, WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?

Sure this post could be about the timely Fred Roger's movie but it's actually about the concept of wanting strangers to be our neighbors. This may also seem a bit ironic from a person who lives in the End of the Rainbow Valley whose closest next door neighbor is almost a mile away. Yet, at the same time it was small town and big town neighbors who came together in our most recent time of need after flooding affected so many communities...  

The group .be whose mission is to create a space to have discussions program's theme last night was about being a good neighbor and how to improve our neighborhoods. About 75 folks from many area different areas of our city came together in Hackberry's, a local eatery, to have a bowl of soup and sandwich and discuss being better neighbors. To know not just in times of need, folks will rally to help others but are there every day.

Tom Thibodeau, retired Viterbo faculty, shared his own stories of how neighbors helped raise him and his siblings when illness took his Mother away for 13 weeks when he was 12 years old. How reverence is equal to justice, hospitality vs hostility, how when we get to know each other enemies become friends. 

So we at each table reminisced about the old days when everybody knew everybody on one's blocks, when kids all ran from one yard to another to play until dinnertime, neighbors sat for each other's children/ drove an elderly neighbor to appointments,when an unexpected dinner/dessert showed up on the door step for no reason, when the back deck and fences didn't replace the front porch and sidewalks connected blocks.

What has happened to knowing one's neighbors? Lives 'too' busy to have time to talk over a cup of coffee/ something stronger. Trust is limited due to fears, real/ imagined. How does one break down those fences?

Block parties, modeling being a good neighbor, conscious and patient efforts to 'get to know' one's neighbors, adults and kids alike, looking out for others. Being a good neighbor is our responsibility to society and definitely makes the big, bad world not so big nor bad as we discover we have many more things in common than different. We don't have to wait for an emergency to find out others have our back... Won't you please, can't you please, won't you be my neighbor?


MR ROGERS "Won't You Be My Neighbor?"