Good neighbors

Summer has come to us in its lushness, in the early light streaming in the front windows, in the wall of green leaves stretching across the side windows. Summer has come in the form of back-porch suppers, triple-decker swings, and hours of meandering. It has come in the form of sugar snap peas and fleshy zucchini, sweet blueberries and black raspberries. My children return to the house with their fingers and chins stained purple, the berry container empty save for a crumb at the bottom. I ask them where the berries are, the berries my earnest son promised to bring me, and they all look up at me with big eyes. Summer has come to us in its fleeting, heady pleasures.

My children pick berries that aren’t ours; they belong to our good neighbors. My parents and grandfather live next door, and their large garden is a collective labor of love. For years the raspberries were the realm of my father’s father, who would bend the prickly stalks to the ground each fall, encouraging them to root again and send up new growth each spring. But at 95, his stamina and eyesight are weaker, so my father does more of the planting and tending, and my children have no trouble spotting all the ripe berries.

This past Sunday marked a momentous occasion in my parents’ lives. After 28 years of ministering in our church congregation, and 25 years as serving as the head pastor, my father is now officially retired. The books are packed up or given away; the files are tidied or emptied; the hugs have been shared, the gratitude expressed. But all farewells have messy edges, it seems—and this is no exception. How do you walk away after nearly three decades of loving a group of people through thick and thin, in sickness and in health, for better and for worse? My parents knew it was time to let other hands lead the congregation and other voices speak into the void. But all of us are bound not only in time and space but also in memory and meaning, and these tangled webs of relationship cannot change but by grief and regrowth.

Of all the congregants who gathered to celebrate my parents on Sunday, I feel like the most fortunate. I will surely miss sharing the front pews at church with my mother and father; I will miss their wise words and strong singing voices. But my parents’ retirement is a hopeful change for those of us who live next door. For my children, it is the hope that their Papa can finally build the treehouse he’s talked of building. For me, it is the hope of help with preschool runs and school bus rendezvous. Retirement is the hope of family dinners without conflicting meetings or family vacations without urgent phone calls. It is the hope of rest and of energy to put into a few things rather than many.

I recognize that I am not my parents’ only neighbor. In following Jesus, they have been good neighbors to more people than I can count. And they will continue to be the kind of neighbors who listen and care and tend and mend. They will keep pushing down prickly stalks and allowing new growth to spring up, new fruit to ripen. They will keep being faithful servants of the God who called them into ministry nearly thirty years ago.

My mother said recently that she and my father didn’t start their journey envisioning all these years of service at the church. They simply got up each morning and did the tasks set before them and prayed for the strength to love well. And what is life made of, in the end, but daily acts of obedience, the daily missions we set our hearts upon?

To my good neighbors, my good parents: well done, faithful ones.