Belonging to a Community

My childhood was unmistakably Brooklyn. I lived on a dead-end street. There were tons of kids of every age and we all knew each other. We went to different schools, but most of us went to the same church. We didn’t have any programs but we had 58^th street.

We all took care of each other, literally. There was always some adult home, so no one needed daycare.  Living on a dead-end made playing in the street OK.  Ironically, when I was 10 years old I rode a bike out into the street and got run over by a slow moving car.  I wasn’t hurt, and since my parents were at work I spent the rest of the day in Benny’s house playing video games and eating Ellio’s Pizza.

Mr. and Mrs. Griffin sat on their front stoop. He smoked a cigar, she knit. He was 95 years old and still cleaned his own gutters. I mowed their grass.  Attached to the Griffin’s house were the Geraghtys. Florence’s grandkids would visit for the summer. Even when they weren’t around, she was everybody’s grandmother.  When I had questions about life, especially girls, I always went to Flo.

When I was 16, George was 21 and lived down the block. He heard me playing guitar one day and we started talking music. He was a voice of encouragement for me. He took me to one of my first concert experiences- Buddy Guy at the Hammerstein Ballroom. We talked about that show for years.

I was 58^th street’s kid. We all were.  58^th street was our home. It was our community. This is where I get my early understanding of church.

Maybe we weren’t the most reverent church, with 30 kids running and shouting up and down the dark street, hiding in trees playing man-hunt, but we rejoiced with each other, learned from each other, fought with each other, forgave each other and supported one another in difficult times.

Mike Marano was my best friend- twelve years old when he died. For weeks after his death, we kids sat on my stoop talking about life and death and uncertainty. There was no pastor or priest to offer consolation or lead us in a study about the resurrection, just a few concerned neighbors who hugged us and brought iced tea out to us in between innings of wiffle ball. Some times my parents would sit with us, or the Amodeos, or Flo. God works in all of us wherever we find ourselves.

Many of us can remember when church communities were geographically local. Today, we’re spread out far and wide which comes with its blessings and challenges. In one regard it means that the gospel proclaimed at Ascension can reach the outskirts of Baltimore County. In another regard it means the sense of community can be limited.  When it comes to faith formation, community is essential. It is foundational. It is transformational.  It is this sense of belonging- the body, connected- that draws us nearer to Christ. If we want to live our lives as faithful disciples in a broken world, a world that divides us based on wealth, status, ethnicity, and religion, then we have to be intentional about it. From every part of town we need to come together and practice being a community of faith, so that we can imitate this life for our neighbors, whether they are on Providence Road, Regester Avenue, Jarrettsville Pike, Baltimore Street or 58^th Street.

This is why we do church: to know that we belong to a community, to God’s family, and to participate in that community. It is our baptismal call to make others know that they belong, too. 

Facebook, the New Front Porch

I remember as a kid sitting on my front porch (we called it a stoop in Brooklyn, NY) with all of my friends from the block. In the summers, after a few dozen rounds of "manhunt," there would be about 15 of us hanging out in this 10 foot wide square that made up the front yard-including the fore mentioned stoop. While we sat there, we all too often forgot that my parents' bedroom over looked the stoop... and the 15 kids on it. It never occurred to us that they or anyone could actually hear the ridiculous- often inappropriate- things we were saying- the kind of stuff that appears in "coming of age" non-fiction (Shout out to Perks of Being a Wallflower). They never said anything so we all pretended they didn't hear us. Every so often the occasional neighbor would lean out the window to tell us to "shut up already I gotta work in the morning!" or "keep it down, the kids are trying to sleep!" We didn't really care. For years this is what we did. This is how we spent our time; maybe it wasn't all too constructive, but it was how we learned to be a community... even though we never realized we were learning. We would listen to each other, we would pay attention to the kid who was a little too quiet one night and looked a little down. We played games that asked way too personal questions. We were mean sometimes. Mostly we were...community.

The days of the stoop are long gone. I realized this while reading a slew of teenagers' (and even adults') Facebook pages. Instead of sitting all together, individuals sit alone in their house, typing on each others' wall for all the world to see, even if we don't think any one's "listening." It's the same gig. Same antics, same meanness, same blatant disregard for the public-ness of comments. If it's all the same, why does it bother me so much? Well, I'll tell you...

A recent survey shows that 73% of 18-34 year-olds would rather connect on Facebook than get together.

Instead of sitting all together, everyone sits alone in their house... posting on each other's wall.

We are rapidly losing our ability to communicate in person. We live by "tweets," status updates and no more than 140 character text messages. We can't recognize that something is wrong with someone unless an emoticon pops up. I'm sorry but this :) does not comfort me in times of need. A hug does. This says, "I don't have the time to call you and check to see if you're ok."  A joke is ten times funnier when you hear some one's goofy laugh... and the occasional snort. We need to recapture the stoop- the face-to-face interactions where we're not confused about how to respond because we know when someone is joking and not just being a jerk...because we see their beautiful, devilish grin.

The Church is called to be attentive, to be in deep, caring relationship with one another. We need to be careful not to trade love and affection for a keystroke and misused punctuation (although I can't say much about correct punctuation in this entry).


So please, find a friend, get some Starbucks and find a stoop away from wifi. Turn off the phone and talk about hopes and dreams. Compare childhoods. The list of firsts. The bucket list. And for the benefit of us all... use your big boy words... because we can all "hear" you from the proverbial open window.
 
An article for your perusal: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008033