“Peace means far more than the opposite of war.”
—Fred Rogers
In a moment of stillness, I sip coffee on my back porch, admiring the wildflowers I planted a few months earlier. They were never for me; these flowers are for the bees and other pollinator friends.
Among the bird songs and cars, I hear a loud voice coming from a nearby apartment. I live in a large apartment complex with several hundred neighbors, so noise is not uncommon. After the third yell, though, I decided it was a good time to walk the dog.
Luna is a small, muscular blue Staffie with the constitution of a marshmallow so long as she has her blankie, and nobody’s sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, or ignoring her. (Otherwise she has the constitution of a two-year-old on Red Bull, but I’m learning to roll with it.)
Once outside we quickly discovered the yelling was coming from the balcony of an adjacent building, where two neighbors were engaged in a heated discussion.
Now, there’s a difference between being nosy and being neighborly. I don’t want to know their drama; it’s not my business. It would have been nosy of me to meander close enough to hear what they were saying; to try to get the tea.
What I do want is for them to know there are people in the neighborhood who pay attention when we hear someone yelling—and that’s what I’d call neighborly.
Five minutes into our walk, I noticed the property manager cruising by slower than usual on her golf cart and a construction contractor, looking down at his phone, who perked up each time the yelling started again. Two women behind a moving van, a bookcase resting on the curb, turned their bodies towards the sound and listened. Maintenance staff lingered near an open garage, not doing anything but not really speaking, either.
Ten minutes into our walk, the woman was back inside and the man lit a cigarette on the back porch. The neighborhood grew quiet again; another human moment passed in a never-ending series of very long days.
I almost want to say “my neighborhood,” but again: it was never for me. The neighborhood, the village, the beloved community is for all of us. It blooms wherever it’s planted, so long as we have the courage to be neighborly; so long as we have the integrity to refuse to look away from our neighbors’ pain.
Prayer
May we be pollinators of peace.
Blessed Be.