meditatio at the water's edge

I wanted to get a thought down here that came up yesterday at the GR Ooze group thing. I was thinking about the idea of privacy. I jumped into a conversation with the line, "We need to convince people that privacy is really a bad thing." Now, of course, this being a very unformed thought, I had to stew on it through the rest of the conversation and, in fact, parts of the rest of the day.

I think what I really had in mind is that certain kinds of privacy is a bad thing. Certain kinds of privacy is a good thing. Like, it's a good thing that my personal financial information is relatively private. Those who need to know will know, but everyone doesn't need to know my bank account numbers, etc. Nor does everyone need to know every little dirty secret in my past. It would be injurious to other people if I went around blabbing about it and making it public. Again, those who need to know will know.

What is bad is to live unaccountable to anyone--to live without responsibility to my neighbors. A few guys chafed when I said that we should at least know our (geographic) neighbors (this is in the 'burbs of Jenison). They were suggesting that neighbor is no longer defined by geographic proximity. Granted, cell phones, IM's, email, and super-mobility have changed the ways in which we connect with people, but I believe that we have a responsibility to the real (not virtual)SPACE in which we live.

The suburbs are made for privacy. I pull into the garage, close the door behind me, and people only knock on my front door twice a year. I don't have to answer it. The garage door is closed, it's daytime, so the lights aren't on. The person will just go on to the next house. I really hate that. Our backyard has a chain-link fence--better than those 8-feet tall PRIVACY fences, but still it says "Mine & not yours. Please stay away." My dream for our backyards is that the five families whose backyards butt up to ours would get together and make one giant common space (no fences), and say, "Ours. You are welcome."

Privacy, as it is taken to the levels to which we take it, only creates loneliness and isolation. How can I know if my next door neighbor needs help or attention or love if our lives are not at least in some way public to each other? How can I be a blessing to them if I don't really know what that would entail?

What I really appreciate from Joe Myers is that he has helped me see that there are different degrees of connectedness and different degrees of privacy. I don't have to be intimate or even personal with my next door neighbor to know enough to help them out in some way. I am not responsible to know everything about them or to reveal everything about myself, but I am responsible to show love to them in whatever way I can. To do that, I need to at least begin by learning their names.

As soon as the snow melts (in June!), Torie and I are going to work on a project with John and Amy across the street. We're going to share a mailbox post, so we need to install it together. I just learned John's name last week. Hey, it's a place to start.