Oh, Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood - The People that You Meet Each Day

Neighbors - who are they and what are they like?  I loved hearing the Muppets sing about their neighborhood when my children were small.  I think I liked watching The Muppets as much as they did.  And Mr. Rogers sang about neighbors too - remember?  "Would you be mine, Could you be mine, Please won't you be my neighbor".   You just can't hear these songs and not want to sing along, but let me give you fair warning.  Don't start singing them unless you want to get them stuck in your head - you'll find yourself singing them at the oddest times.

The MacMillan Dictionary's #1 definition of neighbor is "someone who lives near or next to you".   Being from a rural area most of my life, we thought that people who lived within a five mile radius were our neighbors.  We've always had good neighbors in every neighborhood we've ever lived in - people that you love spending time with and when time permits sitting on the porch rocking and talking.  Now that our neighbors are less than a block away, we've found that we really like close neighbors.  My neighbor, Ken, feeds our animals while we are away and brings us delicious tomatoes from his beautiful garden.  This week, I'm returning the favor by feeding his cats.  My neighbor Linda stops by and picks me up for Yoga classes and other community events and she recently pulled into my driveway and cried with me while she broke the news that my cat Cello had been run over by a car.  We're so fortunate to have good neighbors - you always hear horror stories of the mean old grumpy guy in the neighborhood.

Oscar the Grouch

This week the word neighbor took on a whole new meaning.  We have two wonderful couples living on each side of us at the coast.  They're both retired and we all enjoy spending time together on each others porches - the men telling their fishing stories and we women sampling each others perfumes and talking about grandchildren.  We went down last week to prepare our place for the storm and came back home before the storm came through.   They stayed, but spent the night of the storm in a hotel in a town further inland and went back the next day to check on things.  Having a key to our place, they were able to assess the damage, and called us telling us that the five or six inches of rain had caused a leak and there was water on the carpet.  She said she would turn on a fan and dry it out so the water wouldn't cause any damage.  What a nice neighbor, don't you think?

But that's not the end of the story.  When I talked to her today, she told me that her husband had been up on our roof and made some temporary fixes in case it rained again before we got back. She had continued to run a small heater and fan and got things dried up inside.  Wow!  Aren't we lucky to have such good neighbors.

Now, most people would define a good neighbor as someone who is quiet and minds his own business. But those aren't the people we go to when we need help, are they?  We go to people like Ken and like Linda and her husband Richard.  And sometimes we don't even have to ask for help - people like Jimmy and Earline just step up to the plate and do what needs to be done.  When I thanked her today, she simply said, "I know you would do it for me".  And she's right - I would.

Sometimes we forget that the people sitting beside us in church or living next door have needs.  I tend to think everyone around me has perfect lives.  As I think about God’s goodness in giving me wonderful friends and neighbors,  I'll try to think of ways I can reach out and become a better friend and neighbor myself.

And who are the people in your neighborhood? Are they simply "the people that you meet each day"?  Or are they more like my neighbors who go way beyond the definition of the word neighbor?