Oh, How I Love Glenwood!

Recently my eyes and heart have be opened anew to my neighborhood with both its needs and its beauty. There are some things that I've noticed recently that have made me smile:

--watching a family play a game on a big mattress on their front porch. The mattress is still there, BTW.

--through my kitchen window, pausing to watch a young man across the street, in a big bulky coat, start to lift a pole with a cinder block on each end. He did a few curls, some squats, put down the contraption and punched the air like he was kick-boxing. Then as quick as he started he walked down the street, blending in with all the other young men walking the street.

--driving home today I saw a man sitting in his "breakfast nook", sipping a drink and reading the paper. Only, his breakfast nook is completely outside, in his front yard.

--seeing our neighbor, Ben pulling his cart around collecting things to recycle. He just makes me smile, especially when he opens his mouth and speaks in his high pitch squeaky voice and nothing makes sense or he reminds me to tell Marshall to push the cans to the road for trash pickup.

--seeing people hang out on their porches, neighbors stopping by to chat. We've lost some of that precious connecting in the middle class world!

--feeling the bass rattle and shake our windows as the cars pull up to our stop signs.

--our friend Ron makes our cars look so shiny using only one bucket of water!

--pausing at our fence to talk or pray with Susan, Ivy, Kim, Bo and some others. Knowing when they've walked away that they've sensed the moving of the Spirit.

There are plenty of things that happen here that both frighten and frustrate me, but why focus on those? I love my neighborhood, it's my home.