Dear St. Lukers,
When I was a kid, we lived in a beautiful neighborhood. There weren’t a lot of kids my age there, but my mom was the kind of person who could have a conversation with a tree stump if you gave her the chance, so I knew just about every person in my neighborhood by name, and they knew me. If I saw them around town, they would be able to call me out on whatever I was doing that I shouldn’t be, and they would often show up to my soccer games or school plays.
Every few years, though, people would move. They would leave the neighborhood, and new people would move in, and every once in a while my mom wouldn’t yet have made the connection with the new neighbors.
But once a year in March, down by the lake, we’d see a big white tent go up and tables start appearing. It was time for our annual neighborhood block party. That was the time when we’d reconnect with neighbors we hadn’t seen in a while, and we would see all the new faces that had recently moved in down the street too.
So often we think we know what our neighborhood looks like...
