Muslim Americans, I am honored to be your neighbor.

I trade my shorts for jeans, even though it is 90 degrees inside and out. It has been so long since I wore long pants that I've forgotten what it feels like. I print out a short note, translated by Google into Arabic. I arrange a few fresh baked cookies on a plate and take a deep breath.  This is hard for me, so hard.  To do something as big as introduce myself when its so much easier to keep to yourself; to do something as small as offer cookies when the need for love to bridge the gap and erase the injustices is so great.  I'm not sure which of these makes tears well up in my eyes, but they do, and stay there.

Overdressed for the weather, cookies in hand, I head out the door.  It is a short walk.  It is sunset.  It is Ramadan.

I find the right building and eventually the right door.  I knock.

She opens the door, dressed all in black from head to toe.  She speaks no English and I no Arabic. Between my hand gestures, my translated note, and my cookies at least part of the point comes across.  My note explains how I came to know of her and her horribly difficult day; that the cookies are a gift as she breaks her day's fast; that I am grateful to have her as a neighbor and will pray for her family.  She invites me into her living room.

I stay only for a moment - we can only smile awkwardly at each other for so long - but it is good to be here, to be neighbors, to sit together as people with real lives. 

As I go to the door she indicates that I can come anytime, and I try to do the same.  As the door closes behind me the tears finally spill out.  I cry the whole walk home and much of the rest of the evening.

I wonder often what it is like to be a Muslim in this country, these days, and I have watched with deep sadness as so much fear, hate, and misinformation has been stirred up lately by the controversy over the Islamic Center being built in New York, and the 9-11 Quran-burning, among other things.  If this is truly about Religion, how could so many Christians find that fear and hate - the two things we are to conquer with love - instead have conquered our love?  How could so many freedom loving Americans find so little value in extending freedom to their fellow Americans, motivated again out of fear of losing their own?

What amount of good can my little voice have among all the hurtful shouting and worse?  I wish I had better than a plate of cookies to tell this Muslim American family, and hundreds more - I am honored to be your neighbor.