An Updated version of "Front Porch"

I adapted my earlier post to turn in for my Field Ed reflection paper.

“Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.” –Revelation 3:20

I want to open the door and sit on the porch but I am afraid. What do I do once I'm out there? What if no one talks to me? What if someone does talk to me? Will I look obvious; like I'm trying really hard to fit into a world I can never understand?

In Sandtown, everyone sits on his or her front porch. Five, six, seven people will be gathered on these itty, bitty four steps in front of houses that are seamlessly attached to one another. Some sit in front of abandoned houses, the boards marking the poverty that has ripped through this community year after year. This is where the community meets, on the porch.

My outsider status is obvious, beige in a sea of brown. What would I do on the porch? Do I bring a book? Do I wait expectantly for someone to talk to me? Or do I just start talking to one of them? I am plagued by this battle in my mind. Can I step out into their world? They will know that I don’t belong. Do I stay trapped in the comfort of my gated backyard and Hulu filled evenings?

I grew up in small town USA. I understood community. You gravitate to the people that you are most like or you enjoy the most and you are weaved into one another’s lives. Everyone was like me there in my population 5,000 town. But the more I experience community the more I realize that my safe haven of rural Illinois was not community. Community is allowing others to invade your life that may not be like you at all but you learn to lean on anyway. Community is seeing one another at your worst and at your best. It is allowing yourself to be vulnerable, with all your imperfections and insecurities. You become their family and they yours. We do not like this type of community.

Will they accept me? I want to step out. I want to open the door and wait on the steps, somewhat awkwardly, letting people know that I want to learn, to listen to the stories I know they have to tell. But I am the one that is afraid. I am the one not ready for community.

I am not advised to walk around the block alone. There have been three shootings in our neighborhood already in the three weeks I have been here. The sirens never stop. They are a constant melody. I cannot imagine growing up in this neighborhood, hearing them non-stop. The sirens are a way of life here. In my hometown, you stopped what you were doing to watch the sirens go by. The sirens could mean another life is gone. I cannot fathom what that must be like, day after day. But I know that I will never understand it if I do not at least try to hear the story. If I don’t take those steps forward, to ask the questions, to listen, I will never know.