Community is the Destination

Some beautiful weather has renewed my spirits. You too?

Sunday afternoon I joined some wonderful neighbor ladies on the front porch, and for several hours we sat talking “of many things.” There was no agenda, no place any of us needed to be, just neighbors, conversation, laughter, and one of those beautiful afternoons that makes you reluctant to go inside.

It felt, for a little while, as if everything were right with the world.

There was something wonderfully old-fashioned about it, harkening back to the days when porch sitting was part of neighborhood life. People knew one another. They stopped to talk. They knew who lived down the street and what was happening around the corner. Community was not an abstract idea. It was sitting in a chair beside you.

Back then, I doubt we could have imagined how large politics would someday loom in our daily lives. Yet sitting there Sunday, I found myself thinking that politics is not really the destination anyway. Community is.

The voting booth matters because what happens there eventually finds its way back to our streets, our neighborhoods, our houses, our businesses, and the way we live together.

That is why I keep returning to the thought on today’s badge. Change does not come simply because we wish things were different. It comes when people care enough about the place they call home to participate in shaping what comes next.

What we are trying to recover isn’t complicated.

A city where we can sit on the porch, know our neighbors, care what happens down the street, and still believe that everybody knowing your name can be a very good thing.