Summer Speedos | Field Note: Porch Pause
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Description
What if the most neighbourly thing you could do was simply to be available?
This reflection takes us to a front porch, where two people watch the street and do nothing in particular. Their quiet presence raises honest questions about availability, interruption, and the ordinary soil where real care grows. Sometimes, gentle acts of showing up can mean more than any plan or program ever could.
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Transcript
Welcome to Summer Speedos from Neighborly, our short in between season
Speaker:series while Shannon takes a break from her regular interviews. I'm
Speaker:Johan, the producer of the show. Some episodes are field notes recorded
Speaker:outside in ordinary places where care actually happens. Others
Speaker:are story field notes, more cinematic reflections that start with a story
Speaker:from history or real life. Either way, we're paying attention to the small,
Speaker:ordinary ways care, faith, courage and community show up around us.
Speaker:So grab a cold drink or head out on that bike ride, walk or hike.
Speaker:Enjoy this year's edition of Summer Speedos from Neighborly.
Speaker:Hey everyone, Johan here. Another Summer Speedos episode. While
Speaker:we are in between seasons and interviews with guests,
Speaker:let's just be outside and enjoy the weather and make some observations and
Speaker:learn to love our neighbors a little bit better. And you know, I want to
Speaker:get out of my basement again. It's. It's just dark and dingy down there. No
Speaker:windows. So here I am out on a walk, the birds are chirping,
Speaker:traffic's going, people riding their bikes on this non rainy day in
Speaker:Winnipeg. Anyway, on my walk today there were two
Speaker:people sitting on a front porch and they were doing
Speaker:absolutely nothing. And I mean that as a compliment.
Speaker:It actually looked quite nice and I was a little envious. They had no
Speaker:phones that I can see. There's no yard project in front of
Speaker:them. No frantic. We're just outside because the inside of
Speaker:our house is somehow worse. Just two people sitting
Speaker:there watching the street move, a car rolling
Speaker:by, a squirrel chasing another squirrel up a tree with
Speaker:a lot of energy. And whatever else happens on
Speaker:the street, kids, bikes, all that stuff, just life.
Speaker:Just two people taking an all in, sitting on
Speaker:a porch, doing nothing. At first I thought
Speaker:that must be nice. And then I thought actually
Speaker:maybe that is quite rare because most of us
Speaker:don't sit where we can be interrupted anymore. We're
Speaker:inside, we're in the backyard, we're
Speaker:in the car, we're moving from one thing to the next. Even
Speaker:when we're technically outside, we often have headphones in a
Speaker:podcast on hopefully this one, a phone in hand
Speaker:or a facial expression that says please don't perceive me,
Speaker:which to be fair, is also my resting grocery store
Speaker:face. But a front porch. A front
Speaker:porch is different. It says I'm here but I'm
Speaker:not closed. And that's what caught me. A porch
Speaker:is not an event, it's not a strategy. It's not
Speaker:a five step outreach plan with a logo that took six
Speaker:meetings to approve. It's just availability with
Speaker:a chair and maybe that's more
Speaker:powerful than we think. A lot of neighborly care
Speaker:starts before anyone asks for help. It starts when people
Speaker:become familiar with each other. You may see the same person enough
Speaker:times that a nod becomes a wave and a wave becomes a
Speaker:hello, and eventually someone says, I noticed you were away
Speaker:last week. Everything okay? That kind of care
Speaker:can't be rushed. It grows in the soil of
Speaker:ordinary presence. I think about how often Jesus
Speaker:met people in ordinary places, in roads,
Speaker:tables, wells, homes, and shorelines,
Speaker:and he wasn't launching a program. Sometimes he was simply
Speaker:present enough to notice the person in front of him, and that
Speaker:challenges me, because I like care that can be scheduled.
Speaker:I like things with titles and timelines and
Speaker:preferably a Google Doc. A Google Doc gives me the illusion of control, which
Speaker:is one of my favorite illusions. But some forms of care
Speaker:can't be organized into a spreadsheet. They happen because someone
Speaker:stayed outside, unhurried and available.
Speaker:So maybe the question this week isn't how do I become more
Speaker:impressive at caring? Maybe it's where have
Speaker:I become unavailable without realizing it? Maybe
Speaker:it's after church, when we do the post service escape walk while
Speaker:pretending to look for our keys. Maybe it's on our
Speaker:streets, where we know the house is better than we actually know the people.
Speaker:Or maybe it's on a walk, like what I'm doing now, where I'm more connected
Speaker:to my headphones than the neighborhood around me, and frankly, I'm
Speaker:looking a little weird talking to a microphone. The invitation
Speaker:is small. Create one little pocket of
Speaker:availability. Just one. Sit outside
Speaker:for 10 minutes. Wave first,
Speaker:ask a neighbor's name. Stay in one ordinary
Speaker:place long enough that someone could actually interrupt you.
Speaker:You don't need a porch to practice presence,
Speaker:but if you have one, it might already be doing more ministry
Speaker:than you think. That's the field note. Keep
Speaker:notic.
Speaker:It.
