Won't You Be My Neighbor?

During the month of February, our world lost two gentle, caring men - both known as Mr. Rogers. Howard Rogers was my typing teaching at Wakarusa High School and a stalwart member of the Wakarusa Church of the Brethren. He was in his 90s when he died last month, but he lived life to the fullest and until very recently was still involved in volunteer ministries like Habitat for Humanity. He cared about his neighbors and was working to make his neighborhood a better place to live.

Another Mr. Rogers, Fred Rogers was a Presbyterian minister who for the past several decades has been telling children that they are special and inviting them to be his neighbor - if only for a half-hour each weekday morning on public television. Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood was a special place to visit for children and grown-ups alike.

Each episode began with Mr. Rogers coming into his television living room singing, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" While singing, Mr. Rogers would replace his suit coat with a comfortable sweater. Often he would bring along a toy or other object as a way of introducing a theme which could range from a visit to the dentist to showing works of art, from divorce to flying an airplane.

Another segment of each "televison visit" involved a visit to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe where, through the use of puppets, we would meet such characters as King Friday XIII, Queen Sara, Prince Tuesday, Henrietta Pussycat, timid Tiger Daniel, and X the owl. These characters would share their joys and their worries with caring adults like Lady Aberlin or Handyman Negri, or Mr. McFeely.

Our visit to would end back in the living room where Mr Rogers would reflect on the things we had seen and places we had been, or what we had pretended about. Everything on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood was done out of concern for children's feelings - to encourage them to feel good about who they are, to help them understand themselves and their world, to enhance their healthy curiosity about that world, and to support in them an optimistic striving toward what they can become.

What better image of the church than that of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood? We are all children invited by God, through Jesus, to be neighbors with each other and welcomed into the fellowship of the church. In the church, as in Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, we come together to learn about ourselves and our world - both created and loved by God We come to learn about the world in which we live, where persons are hurting and in need of God's love and our encouragement. We are invited to become all that God intended us to be, which includes being a neighbor to those in need. [Luke 10:25-37]

May you be a good neighbor, sharing God's love where you live. Herman