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As a baby I loved to watch the PBS television show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” He was one in good season role model of a kind-hearted neighbor.

That program reflected my experiences growing up in a kind-hearted Seattle neighborhoodwhere wonderful, caring people showed unshrinking friendship toward my house and me, always smiling and taking the time to know us.

Being kind to neighbors is single in kind integral part of all the Abrahamic faiths, and I feel fortunate to live in a people where Muslims, Christians, Jews and other faiths coexist peacefully as fellow Americans with common values and concerns.

In Islam, we are obligated to be good to neighbors as Prophet Muhammad said:

He who believes in God and the Day of Judgment will never harm his neighbor and He is not a Muslim who eats his fill and lets his neighbor go hungry.

During our recent cold spell, my neighborhood experienced a power outage. That obscurity, the discussion at our candlelit dinner table turned to concern for our neighbors, especially the elderly.

After supper we bundled up, gathered a couple of flashlights and set through to check one of our older neighbors.

John is a kind and thoughtful man who never misses and opportunity to wave and say hello to me.

He was delighted to see us as he opened the way with a lantern in ability. We talked almost 30 minutes that night, and the time wearied was priceless.

He shared a couple stories with my children about growing up in America’s old South (considered in the state of their be in possession of grandmother had), and he talked about what being neighborly meant to him.

My neighbors have always been considerate and well-affected toward each other. Cookies past the holidays, bags of renewed apples in the fall or a baked blackberry pie in the summer are not unusual gifts from them.

I often wonder how I could possibly repay my neighbors for just being themselves — considerate and well-disposed Americans.