Won't You Be My Neighbor? ...Yeah, Even You!

In his book "Mere Christianity," C.S. Lewis talks about the wisdom of the Catholic Church in using geography to determine which church a person attends. It may not be comfortable to pray next to the person whose dog is eating your roses or whose muffler wakes you each morning, but it is good to.

I've been thinking a lot about geography lately, because I just returned from Boston, where six friends gathered, mostly to be silly. Three of us became friends over 40 years ago simply because we happened to live near each other. That geographic bond is a powerful one, and I feel especially lucky that so many of the people I grew up with still remain important in my life today.

Drive through it today and my childhood neighborhood may not even register a blip on your brain. The houses are of mixed style, ranging from ranch to split level, with a two-story colonial thrown in here and there. Sure, there's the Pink Lady's house, still mired in mauve, right down to its outdoor furniture. And, nearby, there's the strange, boxy house that is rumored to have a pool inside.

But, mostly, it was the people who set us apart--or, rather, who brought us together. Some days, I think there must have been something in the water that created so many excellent people in such a small area. Sure, by the time I was in high school, there often was something in the water, but that's another story.

This is a story of lifelong friendship. This is a story of the super-glue bond of geography, holding people together despite politics and religion, despite buck teeth and B.O.

In light of the fiasco that is Washington politics, where silly little boys and girls are more apt to pick up fistfuls of gravel rather than handfuls of hammers and nails, I'm wondering if everyone wouldn't benefit from a little C.S. Lewis wisdom.

What if we really couldn't choose our friends or our churches, our problems or our solutions? What if the only way through this world was together, neighbor and neighbor, held to one another by nothing more than gravity and the desire to live?