Being a neighbour is a classic and well-worn theme of our tradition.
One of Jesus ‘greatest commandments’ is to ‘love our neighbour as ourselves’. We recognize then that learning to love ourselves has to be a priority. Valuing ourselves, seeing ourselves as loved and lovable, accepting ourselves with our gifts and skills, and our quirks and flaws must be a lifelong endeavour.
And so the wisdom goes: If we can try to do it for ourselves, then we can try equally to do that for others – learning to see each other as a mix of sinner and saint, beauty and ugliness, success and failure…and respecting and honouring the humanity of another.
This is loving our neighbour. It doesn’t mean blanket acceptance of anything and everything, it means caring enough to learn about each other, to speak the truth to each other, to fight for each other’s human rights, even when it may take us out of our privilege, out of our comfort zone, out of the safety of the nice cocoon we may build for ourselves. This is loving our neighbour.
Trees teach us this wisdom in rather selfless ways. They offer their shelter to whoever comes their way. Birds needing a branch to build their nests, a squirrel who might find a crook or a hole to make their home, spiders in need of their branches as foundation for their webs, children climbing and their parents making a tree house, or offering a strong limb for a tire swing. This offering of shelter, this idea of being sensitive to the community of neighours around us is a lesson to heed.
We could read the book “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein, but I’ve never liked its core message…provide for others, give of yourselves, even at the expense of your own wellbeing. That tree keeps giving until it allows its own destruction. Where is the balance in love for self and love for others in that? No, I prefer the wisdom that’s shared in the modern fable by Neal Layton. When it comes to respect for neighbours, giving shelter and living together in a mutual relationship, we’re required create win-win solutions. We’re required to look around us at the impacts of our decisions. We’re asked to be mindful that our living has direct effect on the living of other people and other creatures. In this simple fable, a couple realizes that building their home will mean the destruction of other’s homes. That doesn’t fit with their values, so they alter their plans. Perhaps at great expense, perhaps at their inconvenience, but in the end, in their new home they’ll have happiness… not only because they have accommodated so that their neighbours aren’t harmed, but because they’ve made decisions that make their neighbours even stronger. What a beautiful global lesson that is for us on so many levels.
In another teaching, Jesus offers this:
Here is a simple rule of thumb for behaviour: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you; then grab the initiative and do it for them! If you only love the lovable, do you expect a pat on the back? If you only help those who help you, do you expect a medal? If you only give for what you hope to get out of it, do you think that’s charity? I tell you, love not just your friends but also strangers and opponents. Help and give without expecting a return. (Luke 6:31-36)
Like most teachings, this comes right down to love and compassion…making space and sheltering another. The teacher Jesus uses an example from his own experience. He’s in the congregation on a Sabbath. The rules say that the Sabbath is a day of rest. He notices a woman in great discomfort and long-suffering pain and he makes it better for her. And the synagogue leader says “No. Uh-uh. Come one of the other 6 days for that, but today’s a day of rest.” To which, the teacher replies: “You frauds. On the sabbath, don’t each of you have compassion on your animals – untying them to offer them exercise and water and food? And you have a problem with a fellow human being and giving her the same compassion to free her from what binds her?”
We leave the shelter of our own constructions – our too-firmly held convictions and beliefs, our rigid and unbending family rules, our concocted understandings of how the world should work – We leave those to encounter real-life…we have to leave those in order to provide shelter, compassion, understanding to another….especially those most vulnerable.
But if this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that we can see ourselves as one species that can tackle a common problem; that we are as only as strong as our weakest members; that we can shelter ourselves and each other, knowing there’s value in prioritizing a global issue and working together to solve it.
I don’t know who’s living in the trees of your life – what animals, what creatures, what symbiotic organisms are in the trees, bushes and burrows of your world. Bees? Butterflies? Hopefully not bears. Birds?
Find out with me and learn how you can be the best neighbour you can to them…how to strengthen the shelter they find.
I don’t know who is the most vulnerable in and around your experience. Find out with me and learn what you can do to reach beyond yourself to offer what you can. Is it an online donation? Is it the strength of your listening ear? Is it needing to refill your car with a few restaurant or grocery gift cards for those moments that arise? Is it the amplification of voices that need to be heard through a letter to the powers that be, a post, a retweet? Is it an action that needs ALL OF US to accomplish?
Let’s strengthen the spirit of our worlds by making decisions that include, by altering our plans if we have to, by recognizing that we all can be the tree that shelters, the builder that respects, the neighbour that lives by compassion’s ways.
And in whatever ways we’re able, may it be so…in so many ways.
-Chris New
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