Write what you know.

That's the key to blogging, right? Write about what you know. Or what you're good at. Or what you're passionate about. I don't know. Maybe that's just the line, but it's worth a shot, you know.

So, I think as an experiment, I'm going to write about what I know as it relates to social justice, neighboring and being in the community. And it all comes down to one little city park. I need to give you a little background before I go on. But, trust me, you need it.

Here's the park:


A sweet enough little park, right? Well, two years ago in 2008, a pastor at Northeast Community Church and his wife were driving by this city park and were alarmed at how run down it seemed. (Don't let this picture deceive you. Smoke and mirrors and a well-timed and well-angled shot can make anything look better than it seems.) At the time there was graffiti and garbage all over the place. Kids were on the playground playing around it all.

On October 10th, with permission from the city departments, NECC hosted a portion of its annual 10.10 Day there. Partnering with a landscaping company, the park was, I guess you would say "spruced up." We also hosted a neighborhood kids' fun day there for a few hours in the afternoon. Basically, we rented a bounce house, got balloons, food, stickers and face painters and let them all work their magic. 80+ kids showed up and bounced and laughed and bounced some more and well, this is all to say that after that afternoon, nothing was the same for me.

I remember driving home with the husband that night and asking him why that neighborhood, filled with working families barely scraping by, if they were scraping by at all, could stand in such contrast to the insane amount of wealth that existed just miles away. And more than that, how no one seemed to notice. It was almost like an invisible little neighborhood. But from 10.10.08, it wasn't invisible to me anymore.

I wish I could say that from 10.11.08, I did something about the invisible neighborhood. I wish I could say that I made it a priority to go back and see the kids who just the day before had asked, "When are you coming back? Please come back." But I didn't. I did what I sometimes do best and let busyness overtake me and tried to push the now visible invisibles out of my head.

I couldn't though. Several months later, I was watching an interview on the founder of Comic: Relief and it just clicked. I didn't know what I was going to do beyond just going down and neighboring with people, meeting them, starting relationships, growing relationship, just being with people, but somehow it didn't matter. That seemed to be enough.

I talked to a friend and asked her to go down to the park with me and, thankfully enough, she didn't think I was crazy and she did. We went for several weeks just walking around, meeting people, talking, picking up the garbage in the park faithfully, but just being there. And it felt good.

We decided that since it was summertime and a lot of the kids in the neighborhood couldn't afford a camp experience, we would offer weekly directed art activities to any kid who wanted it. We did mural painting, pottery, mask creation, journal designing, anything we dreamt up. And, the kids came. They came every single Tuesday when we said we would be there. And then they came back the next week. And then the parents came. And before you knew it, we were there with new friends. New neighbors. Honest-to-goodness friends when just a few months before the neighborhood had been invisible to me just like it was to everyone else, it seemed.

Then, when school started, we adjusted things a little bit. We decided since the elementary-school aged kids wouldn't be able to come in the middle of the day, we would go when they were there. Namely, before they got on the bus.

This bus:


And we would bring food and drinks and whatever else we could and we would have breakfast with them (a lot of them not having the opportunity to have breakfast at home) before they got on the bus. But mainly, we would be spending time with our friends. And for one hour on Tuesday, they would know that someone was looking forward to seeing them. That it mattered to us when they weren't there. And you know what? That it mattered to them when we weren't there. Because that's what being friends is all about, right?

And since we didn't have an inside space (who needs one!), we would do it right there at that little park. The same little park that on 10.10.08 made me realize that a friend is just someone you haven't taken time to talk to yet.

So, my idea for this, in addition to blogging about what's happening with other organizations, what's in store for our very own 10.10 Project and our 10.10 Community Day, I'm going to blog about what I know. And what I know every Tuesday morning is that I don't want to be anywhere else but having breakfast at one little--no longer invisible -- city park.

So, a year in the life of a city park. As seen through our eyes every Tuesday morning (but I won't blog it until Tuesday afternoon or maybe even Wednesday). They're stories that are worth telling. I hope you'll listen.