A Parish Story from Rosewood Street

Written by Amanda, a Parish Collective member in a suburb in Oregon

On Rosewood Street, nestled into an older suburban neighborhood, parents walked with strollers, basketballs bounced, skateboards flew by, and kids twirled along picking daisies planted just for that purpose. 

On a random day in May, a handful of neighbors met at the top of the hill, the boundary of the neighborhood, and strutted down wearing old Halloween costumes, blowing bubbles and dancing to someone’s bluetooth speaker, passing out dozens of balloons and collecting more people as they went. A Neighborhood Parade of Joy, participants eager to notice and be noticed, inviting others in as they went out. 

A trinitarian dance of imaged discipleship. 

Follow me.  Let’s go! To the Out Theres! So with the “thems,” we can become, together, a “we.”

Rosewood had Gardens. Gardens built with plants still in the plastic containers they came in. A sign reading “plant me” in a front yard, spades and gloves scattered through the recently plowed earth. Everyone invited to care for this Creation! 

And care they did! For months, years after, toddlers are now grown up (!) and they walk by to pick that daisy they planted, enjoy some kale, eat from a strawberry plant that’s been growing in that neighborhood for almost as long as they have. 

We sold that house years ago but we still hear from the neighbors about the little library we made during covid— aged and falling apart on the outside, the bold handprints of a dozen kids turning pastel in the sun. But the books–still shifting in and out.trollers, still stopping. Moms, still giving in to the excited demand to “go to the library!”  

And the Garden, still blooming wildly.  

The parades don’t happen anymore. Not on Rosewood. 

But for as many of those families have moved out and away to other suburbs across the country, new parades are springing up.

 Follow us. Let’s go.