neighbors

The Superpower of Presence

/ Beth Merrill Neel / Leave a comment

I’d like to share a lovely (in the end) story from yesterday.

I was in my office at the church, and one of our staff members called. She was a block away, and a young man was having a medical emergency, and was that the sort of thing that a pastor might want to know or help out with. I said yes, and my co-pastor/husband and I went out.

Indeed, a young man had collapsed next to his car after stopping at the local bakery. Our colleague and another bystander had called 911, and had determined that the man spoke Spanish. I remember a decent amount of my high school Spanish, enough to reassure him that help was on the way. In the meantime, a woman who lived in the condo in front of where the young man collapsed came out to see if she could help, as did someone from the bakery.

Eventually a police officer arrived, and I think his heart was lightened that it was not a fentanyl overdose, which he has experienced a lot of lately. He made sure the paramedics were on their way, and soon enough, the EMT/firefighters arrived. I don’t know how to ask, “Are you dizzy?” in Spanish, but I was able to tell the EMTs that he had a horrible headache. I think I told the man I was a pastor and would pray for him, but I might have said that I was a shepherdess with gold. The police officer was able to use the emergency contact on the young man’s phone and reached his spouse. The ambulance came, started an IV, and took him to the hospital.

I went to the hospital, mostly because I wanted the man’s spouse to have someone to talk to about what happened. The fellow at the ED check-in desk could not have been any nicer. He took my card and heard the story which he said he would pass on to the man. I then found a chaplain, who was equally kind. I do wonder what they thought of me and my boundaries – but I figured I wasn’t violating any HIPAA things and I left the ball in their court to contact me.

This morning when I got to the office, the man’s spouse had left me a voicemail, thanking me and all those who helped. And then just as I sat down to write this post, the young man called. He was relieved I spoke Spanish. (I told him he needed to speak slowly.) He was better, and home, and he really just want to say thank you. But we agreed to get together for coffee next week.

So thank you to the strangers who noticed a young man in pain and stopped to help. Thank you to the neighbor and the bakery worker. Thank you to the first responders and EMTs and the hospital staff.

Remember, friends: kindness is never wasted. Being present to others really is a superpower.

And now I’m going to go brush up on my Spanish!

Et tu, NIMBY?

/ Beth Merrill Neel / Leave a comment


I think about homelessness every day. Living in a major metropolitan area on the West Coast, it comes with the territory, and I know that some of my neighbors, some of my fellow Portlanders, will sleep tonight under a tarp on a sidewalk, in the doorway of a business, under a bridge, on an acquaintance’s couch, in an emergency shelter.

I’m pretty furious about the whole thing, that somehow as a society we think it’s acceptable for people to live this way, that it’s okay for children and people who should be living off their Social Security to instead be utterly dependent on the kindness and generosity of strangers. It’s more complicated than that, I know, but at the heart of things, I think there’s a lack of compassion and an overabundance of greed and apathy.

So yesterday I had coffee with my friend who is a social worker who gives a lot of his time, in his work and as a volunteer, to work with people living on the streets. For the last six months, our congregation has hosted one family at a time living in their car in our parking lot. Catholic Charities provides a porta-potty. A nearby house offers their shower. We’ve helped with food and meals and bus fare and laundry.

My friend listened well to me as I struggled with trying to figure out what is the right thing to do, for our guests in the parking lot and for the general crisis of homelessness in our city. In the end, what I heard him say is something like, “You can’t help everyone. Not everyone wants help. But you can help some people. Set your boundaries, know your capabilities and your limits, and try.”
The program funding these porta-potties in parking lots is coming to an end – budget cuts. When I inquired why, the head of the agency providing the funding told me about the money part, and asked why more congregations hadn’t participated in the program. I told him I thought it was because of NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) and the power of neighborhood associations to put the kibosh on this sort of thing.  And of course it’s more complicated and nuanced than that.

Then last night a homeless couple started unloading their eight shopping cards on the parking strip at my neighbors’ house.

Sigh.

We had already planned a happy hour get together at these neighbors’, so of course What To Do about this couple became the main topic of conversation. Folks had noticed them earlier in the day. They were the people who had camped out by the library for two weeks. They said they just needed to get their car fixed. Ah, I thought – we can help with that.

So my husband and I went to talk with the woman. We introduced ourselves. I said I’d heard they needed help getting their car fixed. No, she said, getting her cart fixed. Oh, I said. Can we loan you some tools? No, she said. I noticed she was gathering trash, and I offered to put it in our trash can. Thanks, she said. And that was it.

Over the course of the next few hours many noticed this couple. One neighbor wanted to call 911 and throw them out. Another wanted to find shelter services. Others wanted to let them be.

This morning they moved down a house, to the parking strip of a house whose owners live elsewhere. One neighbor called non-emergency and was told that unless they were engaging in illegal activity, there was nothing the police could do. Yet another neighbor asked if we couldn’t engage with them. All agreed we wanted to help. All agreed we didn’t want them in our neighborhood.
And then my hypocrisy hit me.  Yes, I want to help them, but not in my own backyard.

I don’t know how this will resolve and I don’t know what to do. I know that all of us are beloved children of God, human beings who deserve respect and dignity. After that, we differ. Some of us have a lot – a home, a car, storage space, places to get clean, family, neighbors, jobs, community. Some of us none of those things.

“You can’t help everyone. Not everyone wants help. But you can help some people. Set your boundaries, know your capabilities and your limits, and try.”

Is that enough?

Free concert, Thursday night

/ Beth Merrill Neel / 2 Comments

Evidently we’ve been reaching out to our neighbors without meaning to do so. It’s the latest church trend – unintentional evangelism.

Every Thursday, our choir rehearses in our fellowship hall, a large and acoustically great space on the second floor of the education wing.  With fifty or sixty singers gathered, the room gets a little stuffy, so we open the windows that face 16th Street and the apartment building across the road.

Last fall, through sheer coincidence, we learned that some of our neighbors gather together in one of the apartments to have a beer or a glass of something and to listen to the choir rehearse.

How great is that?

Now I love our choir, as a group and as individuals, and while there are a few stellar voices in it, there are also plain ol’ regular good voices in it too, but when they come together – magic. That’s the thing about choirs, isn’t it; the sum is greater than the parts.  (I love it when math doesn’t work.)

The choir and our music director have been kind enough to let me sing with them for the major work they’re doing in May, pieces of Christopher Tin’s Calling All Dawns. I’m learning to sing in Swahili and Polish and Maori.  My brain is very excited about all of this.

I wonder what our neighbors think when they hear us singing strange words like “baba yetu” or “kia hora”.  Do they know we are singing a prayer?  Do they know we are singing about peace?

I suspect that our neighbors will not show up on Sunday to hear the final product of any rehearsal.  I’m okay with that because maybe showing up on Sunday isn’t the point.  They do put up with a lot from us – occasional construction, taking up a lot of on street parking on Sunday morning, people showing up for help at strange hours.

Maybe our free Thursday night concerts are one way to thank them for being our neighbors, no strings attached.  Peace, friends.

OpenWindowSm

PS: The Portland Gay Men’s Chorus rehearses in the same space on Monday nights – it’s a two-fer!

Estate Sale

/ Beth Merrill Neel / Leave a comment

estate saleThis morning, at 5:07 am, as I was trying to fall back asleep after my daughter with the runny nose had crawled into bed, I heard two car doors close.  A few minutes later (still awake) I heard another car door close.  Then I drifted off.  At 6:30, I went downstairs, chatted with my husband about the new puppy, and noticed a line of people outside our neighbor’s house.  At 7:00, when I left to go for a walk, the line was longer and there was no street parking available anywhere nearby.  At 7:30, when I returned, the line of people went around the corner, and more people were coming, some carrying folding chairs.

As it turns out, my neighbor was having an estate sale; better put, my neighbor’s attorney was having an estate sale on her behalf.  My neighbor is still alive, but since last summer has been living in a care facility.  When we moved here a year and a half ago, we didnt’ meet her but we met her caregivers, three of them, who provided 24-hour care.  She grew up in that house and lived there ninety-something years; she never married, she had no family, only her caregivers.  At least once a month we would see an ambulance out front, and she would be taken to the hospital for a few days, only to return.  I don’t know what precipitated the final move to the care facility.  I only know that the house has sat empty for the last nine months.

the nosy neighbor

the nosy neighbor from Bewitched

Last week there was a landscaping crew out there, trimming trees, mowing the lawn.  I should have known something was up. Last night, in a Gladys Kravitz sort of way, I peeked out the front window straining my eyes to read the signs that were taped to the garage.  Couldn’t read ’em.  Went to bed.  Woke up early, got annoyed quickly.

But after a day of cars coming and going, the line of people stretching and dwindling like pulled taffy, I ventured across the street, much more interested in the house itself than the stuff for sale inside.  Some friendly people from the estate-sale-planning place were out front.  I went in through the garage into the basement.  A beautiful inlaid wood table here, some old skies there.  A makeshift bedroom.  A laundry room.  At narrow, steep staircase up, which I took.   Three bedrooms, one off limits, kitchen, eating nook, living room, presumably a bathroom somewhere.  And people.  Lots of people.  Lots of people going through lots of stuff.

I did look at the stuff, but doing it felt wrong and creepy.  I have no problem with estate sales, garage sales, thrift stores, Goodwill, any of it.  I think it’s great that people reuse old things.  But I felt like a voyeur, going through my neighbor’s house, wondering whose wedding dress that was, since my neighbor never married.  Had she been engaged, called things off, got left at the altar?  And the pink dishes – was pink her favorite color?  Were they old Fiestaware, worth something?   Was she a skier, and if so, why did she have more than one set? It smelled as though a pet had lived there, but I don’t recall ever seeing one.

One woman was going through a box of old photos, and that’s what just about did me in.  She went through those photos, keeping some, leaving others.  Why?  I can’t imagine she knew the woman, or the people in the photos.  Was she an artist, collecting objects for a collage?  Did she have a fascination with old black and whites?  Was there something sinister in her desire for photos of people she didn’t know?

I think a lot about the stuff I’ve accumulated in my life.  We have three sets of china – china we registered for when we got married, china that belonged to my grandmother, china that belonged to my husband’s grandmother.  Will my daughter want all that china?  Will I get rid of it before she is saddled with that decision when I’m old and demented and in a care facility?  And what about all the photos – and I mean all the photos?  Should I organize them, label them, scrapbook them, scan them, or every ten years go through them and get rid of the ones that don’t matter any more?

Do I want some stranger rifling through my things?  Do I want my daughter to have to rifle through my things?

I think about the things that we accumulate because they have meaning to us.  They are memories and mementos, reminders of who we once were, a Girl Scout, a debater, a musical theater geek; a camp counselor, a teacher, a student body president; a granddaughter, a divorcee, a roommate.

I don’t expect my daughter to find meaningful the things that I have found meaningful.  She will choose her own memories and mementos.  I imagine a few will be of my husband and me, but she will collect things unique to her, to her life, to her experience.  She should feel free to let go of those things of mine that have no meaning for her – but not till I’m gone.

In the end, while I do believe in holding fast to what is good, sometimes it is better to let go of what was good, once.