Just think how much they know about us. No, I don’t mean those ominous data banks that keep track of our email and browsing habits and apply their algorithms accordingly. I mean the people who deliver our mail and pick up our garbage.
This came home late one evening as I walked our dog. The next day was garbage pickup day and most people had placed their garbage and recyclable bins at their curbs. Not that I make a point of this, but one bin in particular caught my eye, for perched on top of the recycle bin was a cardboard box with this label, “Playboy Magazines.”
Hmmmmmm. Was the box empty or full? If empty, presumably there was no chance of the contents falling into the wrong hands before the garbage truck arrived (unless they already had). If full, should not someone do something about it, all in the interest of protecting the innocent, of course? As a good neighbor, what was my responsibility?
Quite possibly, the homeowner had a collection of such boxes and when thing got boring he (she?) put one out front, a camera strategically planted, just for fun? Or just to get to know her neighbors, as in get to know them really well.
I remember finding our neighbor’s “Playboy” in our mailbox one time. It arrived in a brown envelope but the name of the enclosed journal was printed in the return address area. An awkward moment, returning the package to its rightful owner, but the real awkward moment came some days later when I wondered what the letter carrier thought delivering such material to the parsonage where the young minister and his wife and newborn child dwelt.
It’s a mixed bag, that level of closeness. I had a parishioner once who told me how as a kid living in a small town he and some buddies decided to skip school in favor of the swimming hole. On their way through town, the druggist happened to see them, and by the time the young boy got home, word had gotten to his mother who was waiting with an appropriate response.
A mixed bag, indeed, but so is the other side of the equation, the anonymity of urban life protecting us from the scrutiny of the wider world. This is rapidly disappearing in the digital age, but at the community level, we still seem remarkably unknown, nearly invisible, to neighbors and even people we see with some regularity. Lonely and isolated with just our own thoughts and personal demons for company: how many does that describe these days?
Maybe for good reason, then, does the Poet capture our attention (Psalm 139), for his vision of the presence of One who is ever near feeds a deep hunger. In like manner does the community of which Jesus is Lord promise to bridge the gaps that separate us one from the other. We join hands, a single body, whose mantra is the ever-welcoming Be-Loved.