The above picture has nothing to do with this week’s blog. It was a trick to grab your attention. The fact that I felt I had to use it is the point.Because what I would like to share this week is so un-sensational, I am willing to believe that many will stop reading right at this point.
But I’m serious.
This week’s blog is about a really boring, steady, “tried and true” style approach to stemming the epidemic of shock value in our society. You know, the stuff that clouds our ability to think straight or drains our energy to care about the things we know we should care about.
During the last months, this has really been on my mind. There is no shortage of news events to get legitimately worked up about.
As a citizen, I am as fed up as you are.
As a minister, I see my role as trying to motivate people to make their corner of the world better – not so much by what they do, but by what kind of people they mature into. Think globally, act locally. The world is truly a village. That sort of thing.
Motherhood and apple pie in one sense…. vitally true in another.
This past Monday, I saw a glimpse of a path that will improve the public discourse, reduce racism in our society, produce more intelligent politicians, and, in a word, heal the divide. The problem is that it won’t do it over night.
Would you like me to spill the beans?
Okay…. drum roll please.
We hosted a Community Watch meeting at our church. And as the minister here, I offered to do whatever I could to help people get along, look out for each other, and make the city a more wholesome place to live.
Are you blown away? I hope not. That’s the point. For everyday people it’s manageable. For our society, it is healing. For our public discourse, it is trans-formative.
Every neighborhood needs one of these even if there isn’t a so-called crime problem. This is not to turn our society into a militia style police state. It’s to restore a sense of community that will inoculate us against ugliness.
It’s a really boring, mundane, solution that will not just breed hope. It will anchor it. And our faith communities are called to be present in a very soft way. And …. the list of positives just keeps getting longer the more you think about.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
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