Bad Neighbors

There are new neighbors across the alley.  The kind that swear, make lewd comments towards women, don't care if their garbage overflows into the alley and into other's property, and who have a number of 10 minute visitors who always have someone waiting in the car with the car running.  We can hear the parents screaming at the kids and see the kids roaming the streets at all hours feasting on junk food and candy.  Our landlords have entered into an old fashioned feud with them after they were found jumping on the Landlord's trailer and subsequently banned from the abandoned lot they had made into a playground, which required police involvement to get them off the property.  In retribution for this banishing the children slashed about 10 paintings that the landlords had displayed in the alley.  Currently, the landlords have forbidden their children from playing with the "bad kids" and are trying to find a way to get them out of the neighborhood.  

Marta and I have befriended two of the children and have had them help us with our garden that is on the land that they were kicked out from.  They are definitely some rowdy kids but can be respectful and helpful.  At a recent neighborhood party we attended we were talking with the landlord and they were talking about how horrible the neighbors were and how they had found out that the owner of the property did not have a renting license and they were in danger of being evicted soon.  I made an empathetic statement regarding how horrible that would be for the family to be kicked out so soon and the landlord returned with the reply, "well it would be good for us!"  I did not say it at the time (I wish I would have) but in my head I was thinking that it probably isn't good for us in the grand scheme of things.  

Everyone seems to want bad neighbors out of THEIR neighborhood and few people actually want to take the time to love them and try to help them be better neighbors.  I wonder if it actually helps us to push out everyone in the neighborhood who is an inconvenience or who have issues and leave ourselves with people who look just like us and don't require anything from us.  It may "help" us in the short run, but robs us of opportunities to grow and become children of God, bringers of peace and wholeness.

I agree that the landlord of these neighbors could be considered a slum lord- a landlord who is never present and never cares for their properties, but slumlords have a purpose in this society.  They provide housing for people who otherwise wouldn't be able to find it due to past evictions, felonies, or inability to speak english.  Otherwise these people would end up on the streets.  The (understandable) problem is that nobody wants to be near a slumlord's property because of the trouble that it brings.  But if no one takes the stand to invest in these people, there will never be any change and their cycles of poverty and issues will continue.  

Neighbor

A man was returning home from a visit to the International House of Prayer via a country road when his Timing Belt suddenly broke, startling him and sending him into the ditch. He emerged with a dazed look and a bleeding forehead from hitting the dash. The man knew that he was in the middle of nowhere and that it could be hours before he saw another car.

Just then he saw what looked like a tour bus driving towards him in the distance. He couldn't believe his eyes - it was the bus of one of his favorite televangelists! He cried out in joy and began to wave frantically at the bus with his shirt but the bus picked up speed as it passed him on its way to the next major city. The man stared in disbelief and sunken hope.

As he swaggered back to his car he again caught the glimpse of a vehicle in the distance coming towards him. It was the unmistakable outline of a 15 person church youth van complete with luggage trailer and an emblazened cross on the side door. The man's heart leaped once again as he waved his shirt and cried out in distress. He slowly lowered his arms as the van sped by him full of teenagers pointing and laughing at his predicament.

No sooner had this van passed when the man noticed another car coming his way. He started to raise his shirt once again but then stopped when he noticed a large rainbow sticker on the front of the car. He momentarily cursed himself for his prominent bumperstickers touting his political and religious views. To his surprise the car pulled to a stop behind him. Out stepped a well dressed young man who, with an effeminate tone, asked him if he needed some help. The man was dumbfounded. The stranger drove the man to the next town and, while he was in the emergency room, arranged for a tow truck to get his car and paid for his hospital bills...

"Go and do likewise"
Lk. 10:25-37

Of Rabbits and Men

With a thick cover of snow covering our back yard, we've recently discovered a couple sets of animal tracks indicating that we may have a couple more neighbors than we thought. We had so far made our acquaintance with a tattered tom cat, the raccoon who occasionally raids our garbage, a family of pigeons who seem to have taken a liking to our bedroom window, a pair of crows in the maple tree, along with their entourage of silly sparrows, and the three boisterous squirrels who chase each other around our alley. We've become familiar with all of their sights and signs, so we knew right away that the long tracks in the snow must have belonged to somebody new. A few nights ago, as I was opening the door, my eyes suddenly met with the frightened stare of a little white rabbit crouched by the jasmine bush. We looked at each other for a good minute, both surprised by each others presence, before leaving each other alone and going our separate ways.

The sight of all these animals in the city still startles me, even after living here for over a year. Where I come from, cities are ancient human enclaves effectively separated from nature over the course of many centuries. The sight of a squirrel in a city park is a rare and celebrated occurrence, and rabbits can only be spotted far off in the country, away from human dwellings. The only time I had ever seen a raccoon was at the zoo - a funny creature who liked things so clean that he meticulously washed all of his food. When I first looked in the dictionary to see if I knew the Polish name for the scary creature that dug in our garbage, I could at first not believe that it was the same thing - in fact, I still wonder if the animal I saw at the Polish zoo as a little girl might be a different type of raccoon than those in Minnesota?

Even if it should be so, I can't hold the same disbelief with regard to squirrels - they are definitely the same species, yet I am about the only person I know who stops at their sight with amazement and wonder. There are, in fact, so many of them here, and they cause so much damage to people's houses, that they are seen as an outright nuisance - much like rabbits, who nibble on people's flowerbeds and gardens. One man's joy is another's pest... We even have a friend a couple of blocks away - if you are a child in Poland you may want to stop reading right here - who regularly shoots squirrels with his BB gun!

The culture of shooting is a subject for a post of its own, but the various connotations of raccoons and squirrels actually made me think of people the other day. They remind me of a man I got to know back in Poland, who came on numerous missions trips with a deep sense compassion for the young people of my country. Shortly after I moved here, we had a conversation about the part of the city where Billy and I chose to live, and I was taken aback by his open hostility towards my new neighbors - "these lazy troublemakers who live off others' taxes and make our streets unsafe." I was instantly struck by his radically different attitude towards two groups of people who live in very similar realities. It would be an understatement to say that Polish cities are no safer than the south side of Minneapolis - the difference is that they are an ocean away, and so the pain does not cut as close; it is not as personal as having your car broken into or a friend's child wounded by a gunshot in the back yard. It's less of a challenge to love broken people and to see their beauty at a distance - like an occasional squirrel in the city park.

I wonder, however, if the depth and transformation that love is really about can ever truly happen at a distance - unless it begins in the back yard, in close community with others different than us who will occasionally eat our lettuce or bite through our roof.