My wife and I took a walk today with our three kids. We have been in our neighborhood for about three and a half years. We know a handful of our neighbors and none of them well enough to call close friends. I think there are several reasons for this but I want to highlight a couple of them ...

1) My wife is one of three known stay at home moms in the neighborhood. One leaves regularly. One speaks only Spanish and never leaves her home. In fact, stay-at-home moms are such a rare commodity in our town of several hundred thousand that even the largest moms group in the city boasts a mere 40 moms. My mother raised six kids at home and our house was like Main St. market after school. There were 40 moms within 40 homes of my house. You couldn't go to a single house in the neighborhood and get away with anything. The parents network had careful spies planted everywhere. We were well behaved because we knew eventually, our parents would find out. After all, despite differences, they all knew each other and lived as a COMMUNITY.

This started to change in our neighborhood in the late 80's. By that time it was becoming increasingly common for BOTH parents to be gone after school. Kids. Parents not home. A stash of porno at ONE kids house in the back of the neighborhood. Easy access to VCR and TV and ample knowledge of how much time they had before the parents were home ... Do the math.

All of this secrecy brings me to my second thought ...

2) What is up with all of the giant fences? When I was a kid we could see OVER the fences. We knew our neighbors simply because when we were in our back yards we could say "Hi" to each other. What we have now in our neighborhoods are carefully crafted boxes with the INTENT of keeping folks out of our lives. That fence says ... "Hey buddy.. back off and mind your own business" ... So we do. Then we spend hours complaining about how we do not know any of our neighbors. My wife and I sit outside for hours on end on our front porch. Time passes. The sun goes down and nary a single person exits their box even to take a peek at the sun.

To me, the fences are an outward sign of an inner reality ...

We are disconnected and we want to be. This aspect of disconnectedness has seeped into every aspect of life. People are so "in" their boxes that they make every effort to creep away as quickly as possible after mass. Our homes isolate us. Our automobiles isolate us. Our coldness to others isolates us ... We collectively choose to be isolated....

But should we?

We are not called to a solitary existence as Christians. We are called to holiness as a community. Somebody has to reach out the first hand and I think it needs to be me...