Dear Friends,
I was more than a little disappointed to pull into the parking lot last week to the smell of pine resin and the sound of chain saws and backhoes. And, as some of you noticed this past Sunday when you arrived for worship, there was a significantly more sunshine streaming in behind our main building onto the back porch and children’s playground. The homeowners next door to Northwest have decided to remove a section of woods between our property and theirs and will be installing a fence and Cypress trees.
At home, my next-door neighbor also recently put in a fence – tall and cedar – between our property and theirs. Their young son Miguel, who I used to see playing joyfully on his swings and in his small fort, is now completely out of view.
I imagine that both of these neighbors had their reasons putting up fences: privacy, security, and all those things. And, yet, as the fences have benefits for my neighbors, they carry losses for me . . . a loss of nature, of connection, and of community. It seems that in neighborhoods, as in relationships, boundaries can sometimes feel like barriers . . . and not everyone experiences them the same way.
Poet Robert Frost, when meeting with his neighbor again in the springtime to repair the wall that bordered their properties, wondered about his neighbor’s claim that “good fences make good neighbors”. He wrote:
Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.
Of course, Gail and I installed a new fence when we got our dog Lucy and didn’t think twice about what it might wall in or out for others. But, now, I am thinking about that very thing.
I will miss the towering pines and shade in Northwest’s backyard that reduced the road noise and made me feel a little protected from the harsh world out there. And, as I walk along my driveway at home, I will miss seeing little Miguel running full speed in his own backyard and growing up in front of me.
Yep, there is something in me that is having second thoughts about fences.
Warmly,
Terry