The Urban Resident

Tag: neighbor

  • Despair

    Despair

    “He wasn’t a big time drug dealer or anything, you know? He didn’t have anything worth taking. I knew him.”  My neighbor stopped for a moment, clearly shaken and deeply unnerved.  “Why did this happen to him?  We grew up together…” His voice faded and we sat in silence. It was twilight in summer and one of those ordinary and warm and therefore…

  • Fire and Smoke

    Fire and Smoke

    There is an icebreaker question used in small groups: “If your house was on fire, what three things would you rescue?“ The sunlight began creeping down our broken blinds, making  its way into the late Sunday afternoon.  I laid on the sofa exhausted, eyelids dragging.  There was a pile of dirty laundry upstairs in my room, waiting…

  • Bang

    Bang

    You can take me out the hood, but can’t take the hood out me Cause I’m ghetto. 50 cent, LB, & TY *BANG* I froze and my heart went racing. Time stops during an adrenaline rush, but a moment later I started to figure out what was happening. First, I realized that I had instinctively…

  • Selection Bias: Statistical Integrity in Christian Community

    Originally a guest post for the Emerging Scholars Network (a ministry of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship):   One day a num­ber of con­cerned moth­ers met with the min­is­ter to express their frus­tra­tion and anger over the unseemly con­duct of a par­tic­u­lar boy in Sun­day School. They did not want their chil­dren exposed to this child and…

  • My Most Dangerous Neighbor

    My most dangerous neighbor actually died half a year ago.  I am told she was an elderly lady who used to live in the house next door.  The family didn’t want to give up the property at the time, but they didn’t want to board it up like the other abandoned or condemned row houses…