The Door is Open at Fermata--

There is something cleansing in the simple acts of "cleaning up." A group of 13 people came over for dinner, including baby Nathan Santiago Watson, and the house was full of life and conversation-so different from the quiet that Taffy (also known as Miss T., the cat) live in daily. All of the chairs were in use, and although I was participating in the conversations, I was also thinking "this is what the house is FOR! This is exactly what I had prayed for!" The conversation was about "relocating," which is code for white, middle class people moving into impoverished, non-white neighborhoods. We put a biblical spin on it, John 1:15, it reads well in the Message translation, and, we relocators DO have a positive effect on our neighbors and neighborhoods- we can find access to the power in city government, get things done by our council person, articulate the needs that have often been ignored-- but, never in the same way and to the same extent that THEY influence and change us. We start to see our priorities change, and begin to look for ways to have real, authentic conversations with our neighbors, but, we soon see what divides us--race, the most obvious (because relocation just isn't done by African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians) but, the division of education, possessions, politics, access to services, leisure time, family, family "values," and faith. We relocate with mostly good intentions, and the benefits of affordability and the pleasures of restoring an older property, are usually augmented with our heartfelt desires to be salt, light, and fragrance to the disenfranchised. STILL, we are the receivers of this neighborly grace, we become the student to the under-educated, and we benefit from the saltiness in the lives of our neighbors, who soon become our friends. We may be the "relocators," and it is our blessing to be invited into the lives of our neighbors.