It was a wild ride to the mecca of brilliant Scandinavian design, where everything is sleek and reasonably priced. You know the one. As my daughter and I left the car in the parking garage of the huge store, we paused to acknowledge the debt of gratitude owed to the navigational skills and the reassuring voice of the GPS lady. Sure, it’s her job, but warning us miles ahead that we needed to get to the far side of the eight-lane interstate, or we would be making a weird left-hand exit, is tremendously helpful when negotiating downtown Atlanta at 75 mph. Though we laughed at ourselves, it seemed like good manners to thank her for going the extra mile to get us there.

Once inside, we resisted the lure of the store’s café as it offered up the tantalizing aroma of its world-renowned meatballs and chose instead to head directly toward throw pillows, picture frames, kitchen tools, luxury bedding and cool doodads we didn’t even know exist. We expected that there would be lots of people, but were taken aback by the lines of shoppers hurling themselves on to the escalator with single-minded purpose, like lemmings to the sea.
As if it was the last day in the world to buy Swedish furniture, baby strollers were reduced to battering rams, their small inhabitants clenching stuffed animals tightly in tiny hands.

Women in fluorescent spandex speed-marched their way through showrooms of perfectly placed accessories, trailed by dazed husbands and cranky children who clearly didn’t view this as the adventure they were promised when dragged out of bed on a Saturday morning.

In fact, there seemed to be an inordinate number of rude and cranky people about. We’re used to a generally mannerly and congenial shopping environment back home (Black Friday notwithstanding). This was nuts. Stranded across the aisle in the curtain department, my daughter waved over a steady stream of buggies speeding through the aisles. She eased her cart into the traffic, only to be abruptly cut off by a woman with a basket full of lampshades. “Whoa! I guess we’re not in South Carolina anymore!” she gasped, righting herself after sliding into the rug section on two wheels.

It was an interesting observation, but I’d have been a sorry Georgia Peach not to stand up for the state of my birth, so I momentarily bowed up in righteous indignation. It was short-lived, though, as I was immediately T-boned by an eight-year-old speeding toward the toy department. With eyebrows hovering just above the buggy’s handle, she drove with the unapologetic determination of a NASCAR driver.

We like to think that we live in the most polite place in the world, and we’re proud that our state actually has awards to prove it (although it is a little impolite to brag outside the South Carolina line). I had manners drilled into me as a child and have apparently done a fair job of passing them on. But it seems that for me the line between good and bad manners can be a bit blurry, causing me to jump from Emily Post to The Terminator when dealing with those who show no regard for small courtesies, which really, when I think about it, is rather impolite.

When someone lets me into a line of traffic, I try always to wave my thanks into the rearview mirror. I’m ridiculously concerned with making sure they’ve seen my salute, sometimes even rolling down the window to do it again. It’s a small thing, but a big deal to me when a person goes out of their way. So when I let someone into traffic, and they don’t make the effort, I immediately want to rescind the gesture, and I fantasize about installing a giant paintball launcher on the front of my car.

Little things, like holding a door or letting someone go first in the grocery line, aren’t world-changing events, but I think they say something about us. Take for example, the zigging and zagging dance and mutual sheepish apology exchanged when we almost collide with someone on a crowded aisle or sidewalk. Polite people do it almost without thinking. It costs nothing but maybe two steps out of the day. What goes through your head when someone barrels into you, scowls and moves on without a word? It takes all my willpower not to stick out my foot to send them sprawling. I don’t do it, but I think about it.

Admit it—you do, too. So does it mean we have bad manners for thinking of the bad behavior in the first place? Or really good manners for thinking about it but not acting on it? Therein lurks the blurry line.

As much as we’d like to, no place can claim an exclusive on the manners market, and regardless of where we’ve been brought up or live in the world, the overwhelming majority of us go out of our way to say please, thank you and excuse me. You wouldn’t think that simple manners might help bring about world peace until you realize how easy it is to want to reward rude behavior with more rude behavior. Fortunately, knowing that my mother would have snatched a knot in my tail helps me control the impulse when all of the mannerless converge in one place.

We were put to the test many times throughout the shopping adventure, and rewarded ourselves at its end by standing in line for the famous Swedish meatballs only to have the woman in front of us lean over and yell the entire contents of the menu past our faces to her family members who were holding a table far behind us in the crowded restaurant. As she waved her arms to hold their attention and take their orders, she put on a virtual play to convince the toddlers in her group of the merits of apple slices over French fries. Shaking my head at her rudeness, I turned to my daughter and whispered, “Somebody ought to bean her with a meatball.”

The man behind us caught my eye, and I was mortified to be caught putting my thoughts out there. Then he looked toward the woman, shook his head, and laughed out loud. Good manners or bad manners? I suppose it depends on your point of view.

I know that I’m not going to let loose a volley of ground meat, but the man behind me has just watched me straddle a very fine line. When it is our turn to pick up our food, I give him a thumbs-up and a smile before getting my meatballs and walking away—just so he was clear about which side of it I’m on.

By Susan Frampton

At 3 a.m. on June 18, 2015, the yelp of my alarm boomed through my normally tranquil bedroom. My oldest son Ethan and I were getting up especially early that morning to meet two of his closest friends and their dads. We were all catching an early flight to Arizona for a father-son expedition to hike the Grand Canyon.

It didn’t take long for me to learn that while I was sleeping that night, tragedy had struck Charleston. The news was reporting that a gunman had entered a Wednesday night prayer meeting and killed nine innocent people at Mother Emanuel AME Church—less than thirty miles from our driveway.

On the drive to the airport, we gathered a meager amount of details from early news reports before we entered the smartphone dead zone that is the Grand Canyon. We all speculated what kind of Charleston we would return to at the end of our trip. Would our beloved city be on fire like Baltimore? Would our streets be filled with rioting like in Ferguson? Five days later, when we arose from thirty miles of hiking, I was amazed to find the story coming from Charleston was one of unity and community compassion.

The whole world marveled as Charleston declared, “To division we say, ‘No way, not here, not today!’”

So how did Charleston resist the plunge into divisiveness seen in other cities? The answer is simple. Few communities in America have been blessed with the purity of heart found in the members of Mother Emanuel AME Church. Their example of forgiveness led the way for Charleston to come together and unify like no other city which faced this adversity. Forgiveness settled in their hearts before vengeance could attack their minds.

Like their brothers and sisters who died around a table for prayer, the members who remained illustrated this passage from Psalm 23: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil…You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies … [yet] goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.”

So when hate groups with megaphones tried to capitalize on these events to further their agenda, the members of Mother Emanuel drowned out their messages of hate with even louder songs of worship. Over 20,000 people walked the Ravenel Bridge, showing the world that Charleston stands in forgiveness and unity with Mother Emanuel. A human wall of all races and creeds assembled at each funeral. They stood arm-in-arm to guard the families against the protesters’ attempts at disruption and degradation.

I saw in the people of Charleston the same purity I observed in our sons on our hiking trip. Watching the boys jump from waterfalls and throw rocks together, I found the answer to the question I had been asking since we left Charleston: “How do we bridge the divide between races and finally see reconciliation in our state?”

I watched my son walk through the Grand Canyon with his best friend who doesn’t share the same skin color. Theirs is a friendship that is not contrived or forced, but natural and voluntary. Like typical thirteen-year-old boys, they consume huge quantities of food, neglect to deodorize themselves, and laugh uncontrollably as we onlookers shrug our shoulders at their hysteria. They rattle on about grinding rails, heal flips and Paul Rodriquez. I know nothing of what they are talking about, but their persistent skinned elbows and gashed jeans reveal the shared brotherhood of their fraternity.

In his generation, this is not uncommon. In my generation, it is much less frequent, but for the generation of my parents, this type of friendship is rare. In their case, friendship settled in their hearts before prejudice could attack their minds.

There’s no debating the fact that racial issues continue to plague our country. I do not believe we will solve the 200-plus year divide between blacks and whites with changes initiated at the state house or the White House.

It will require changes made at our house.

Changes in those we invite to birthday parties and Christmas celebrations. Changes in those who we welcome into our homes. Changes in with whom our children play and with whom they call “best friend.”

There is much truth in watching children lead the way.

By Will Browning

Unfortunately, words are like toothpaste—once they’re out of the dispenser, they’re not going back in. The biggest preaching blunder of my career involved words I wish I could take back.

I stood facing the largest crowd our new church had ever seen. They had all gathered to listen to my most controversial sermon. A few months earlier I had foolishly decided to preach a series of sermons entitled, Burning Questions. One of my leaders suggested, “Will, why don’t we start a website and let anyone on the Internet ask questions? The most frequently asked questions will be the subjects of each sermon.”

Sounds like a great idea, right? When I received the final list of questions, my heart sank. The most frequently asked question: What is allowable in the bedroom for a Christian couple?

You know that feeling in your stomach as you ascend the Tower of Terror at Disney? Yeah, that was what I felt. Stomach in knots, I led the congregation in a quick prayer. And for some reason my mind went to a conversation with an older lady in a former church.

Mrs. Betty had burst into my office. “Will, you need to dress more appropriately.”

I quickly looked down at my outfit, uncertain. She then told me a story from her childhood: “Here you are in shorts. I will never forget the moment when, as a little girl, I first saw my pastor with shorts on. Seeing his legs felt scandalous. I came to a conclusion that day: A pastor should never be seen in anything other than pants that fully cover his legs.”

I stood facing the large crowd gathered to hear me address this burning question, and I began to pray: “God, you know this subject is one that I am embarrassed to address. While you are the author of sexuality, it seems unsuitable to talk about this in church. [Thinking about my conversation with Betty, I continued.] Lord, there are people here at church today who just aren’t used to seeing their pastor without his pants on.”

Completely unaware of my blunder, I continued, but nothing else I prayed after that mistake mattered.

You can imagine everyone, their eyes closed as they listened to me pray, thinking, What am I going to see when I open my eyes?

This fact remains: We all make mistakes, pastors included. Although, I aim to be perfect—to be like Jesus, I am fully aware that perfection is not in the cards for me, or any of us, for that matter. Fortunately, we have something else in common as well. God is willing to forgive all mistakes, big or small. Sometimes in life we have to take a long hard look at ourselves and make some life changes. At other times, we just need to laugh and take Taylor Swift’s advice and “Shake It Off.”

And no, my pants were not around my ankles. It was an unintentional blunder.

One that I, and now you, will likely never forget.

By Will Browning

When I pull into the driveway, my neighbor from across the street waves at me, and points toward the roof of my house. I step from the car to meet him in the middle of the street. On the way, I notice that our roof is pristine, without a leaf or pine needle in sight.

“He did it again. He was up there with the blower, just goin’ to town.”

“Did he at least tie himself to the chimney this time?” I ask, eyeing the steep pitch of our second story roof.

“Nope. But I watched him, and kept the phone in my hand just in case. He only gets up there when you aren’t here to catch him,” he says, referring to my husband’s obsessive compulsive need to court disaster each time he cleans off the roof. “He’s crazy, you know.”

It is a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black, and I shake my head. The bright yellow of the “For Sale” sign in his front yard catches my eye, and my heart sinks a little. I am going to miss this man who has been my husband’s cohort in crime, and the one who gleefully relates their escapades when they return from the woods scratched and battered and grinning from ear to ear.

For twenty years I commuted almost an hour each way to work, and my husband mostly worked out of town. We rarely saw our home in daylight, and were hardly there enough to even qualify as residents. The people across the street were just smiles and waving hands in cars, as we all scurried off in different directions. But a few years back we left the rat race, and discovered the treasures that had been right there under our noses all along – our neighbors.

I realize that it might not have worked out that way, and it doesn’t for everyone. You can very rarely pick your neighbors, and it can go terribly wrong, leaving you nowhere to run. (We had a downstairs neighbor once that actually squished me between partially closed doors to chew me out for walking too loudly.)

There are neighbors who cannot get enough of your business, and won’t let you get the mail without a cross-examination, and those who “borrow” your stuff, never to return it. There are the creepy kinds that you suspect might have a body under a tarp in the trunk, and there is nearly always one who has thirty-two cats, and is oblivious to the fact that most of them use your flower pots as port-o-lets.

So it is an unexpected blessing when you find the perfect fit. I think back to the folks who have lived next door to my parents for over fifty years. Over the course of those years, they and my parents celebrated weddings and births, mourned tragedies and losses, and shared the everyday minutia that makes up a lifetime of living side by side. Hardly anyone stays in one place long enough to have that kind of connection any more.

When we moved into our neighborhood, the folks across the street were elderly. We rarely saw them and didn’t know them very well, and I worried about them because they were very frail. When I received a frantic phone call from the husband one day, I immediately assumed they needed help. As it turned out, he was calling to tell me my husband was passed out in the front yard from chopping tree roots on a blistering hot day. When I ran out the front door, they waved and smiled from their picture window.

All too soon, he was gone and with too much house for her to keep up alone, the house went on the market and was sold to a lovely couple with two girls—the youngest right about our daughter’s age. We were delighted, but work and school, and ballgames and cotillion and weekends at the lake kept us on the go, so we never really made a connection.
It wasn’t until my husband retired and I began working from home that we were home enough to get to know them, and to realize what we had been missing. Since that time, we’ve been blessed to experience the kind of kinship my parents had with their neighbors. We, too, have celebrated weddings and births, mourned tragedies and losses, and shared the everyday minutia.

But continuity is a luxury in today’s neighborhoods, and even though we knew it was coming, the day the yellow sign went up across the street, my husband and I looked at each other with our lips all but trembling.

“I guess they’re really serious,” my husband sighed.

I nodded my head, “They’re breaking up with us.”

Our neighbors are only moving across town, and they are the kind of friends that we will forever hold dear, but it won’t be the same. There is something about meeting at the mailbox with sleep still in your eyes, or in the middle of the street with arms loaded with groceries, which makes the shared moments feel more intimate.

There will be other neighbors in the house across the street. I am sure they will be lovely people, but they may not think it’s their job to keep watch when you-know-who gets on the roof. They won’t have known our daughter as a little girl, or remember the huge pine tree that once leaned perilously toward our house. They won’t know how long it took to get the puppy house broken or that it is okay to make fun of me to my face when I’m in sweaty, nasty yard clothes.

We won’t know their grandchildren’s names or where their daughter’s new house is, or whether or not they can bake a rum cake that makes your mouth water just to think about it. But the fact of the matter is that it probably won’t be long before we start thinking about downsizing, so we probably won’t have the benefit of years of shared experiences with the new owners anyway. And eventually, we’ll move some place and become the new folks someone else will wonder about and wish were more like the people that lived there before.

It has been said that we become neighbors when we are willing to cross the road for one another. We’ve crossed the road many a time – fourteen years is a good, long run by today’s standards. We’ll cross other roads down the line; most of us will cross many before our days are done. May we all find such good neighbors waiting on the other side.

By Susan Frampton