“I need you to be a part of this community.”

More easily said than done, especially when the place in question is a poor neighborhood in Detroit.

I was spending the afternoon with the Reverend Faith Fowler, executive director of Cass Community Social Services (CCSS), a nonprofit organization that for many years has worked to transform a cluster of largely abandoned city blocks into a functioning community, an oasis of truly normal life in an urban center where a typical “normal” day may include sporadic gunfire.

What does it take to help people in our most blighted cities?

Imagine a winter night in northern Delaware, no wind, just quiet, with the snow-covered land sparkling in the glow from the stars. The temperature is in the teens—cold for the mid-Atlantic, but not unusual. Six young people are climbing a hill, a steep, open slope, struggling upward and sliding halfway down, laughing, helping each other up but also grabbing at coats to pull back those in front. Me, my three best girlfriends, and a couple of boys. We were 17.

I breathed in the cold, exhilarated, filled with a sense of wanting to be exactly where I was, brought alive by the snow, and the company, and the feel of belonging. I vowed I would always live somewhere with real winter. Cold was part of me. I was part of it.

Which is why, six years later, I was so utterly stunned to find myself huddled miserably beneath blankets in my bedroom in Oregon, unable to get warm.

On the windowsill by my desk, lying lightly between a prism and a small china bowl, are two black-and-white feathers that to me symbolize courage. It’s crazy how they came to be there—crazy because their significance grew from a personal superstition. They were dropped in our yard by a pileated woodpecker, a grand, lovely bird with a huge bill and a bright red crest.
Twenty years ago I was living quite happily in this house, on an island tucked in piney woods, with Jeff and our young son. My life was exactly as I wanted it. I loved my work, my family, and our home on the Outer Banks. And then, out of the blue, Jeff asked me if I’d be willing to move. There was a job that interested him in another state.
I began waking each morning with a sense of dread.

Quick: In the next 30 seconds, think of all the hats you wear, and the roles you play—parent, child, breadwinner, friend, peacemaker, strong one—and perhaps even write them all down.

Now look over the list and think about which roles you could comfortably step away from. How many of them would you be reluctant to give up? How many cause you to feel overwhelmed?

This is not at all a novel exercise, but it is enlightening. I’ve tried to keep it in mind over the past decade, ever since I encountered it in a book our wonderful adult Sunday school class was reading: Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose.