Who Is My Neighbor?
How do you relate to the notion that your neighbor is someone you decide, not someone you have to choose? Can you share a personal story of a time you created a sacred form of relatedness with someone else? What helps you go beyond the limits of your conditioning to truly create relatedness with another?
Here's my take on this text as a preacher: Jesus was saying "Your neighbor is the person you least want to be 'beholden to'." That's a colloquialism from my youth growing up in Appalachian USA. So I totally agree with Ivan Ilich!
I've not felt like I had to chooose which one I'd want for a neighbor. I do know my heart will tell me who my neighbor or is though.
'My neighbor is someone I decide' means to me that my neighbor is someone I decide to relate to with true care and in a way that helps him or her have what is needed to heal and/or grow. There have been times that I have listened carefully, responded in a way that was respectful, responded in a way that the other felt safe, responded in a way that connected with the othier, provided what was needed, and the other benefitted. Such times were sacred forms of relatedness with the other. What helps me create relatedness with another is to truly be present with the other and listen to and respond to what the other is presenting, not to my tlhinking, prejudices, expectations, agendas, or judgments, which allows intimate healing sacred relatedness.
Ivan Illich, an exiled Russian in Mexico, would know what he is talking about. He had to redefine "family" and "neighbor" in order to have a life in community instead of an exile of alienation. Thank you for reminding me of one of my heros from my youth. Indeed, Illich provoked new definitions, thinking and behvior in me, precisely, because he forced me to realize how connected I was to all of society and humanity, not just those who looked like me or lived/thought/assumed the same way. Like Illich, my life and thinking expanded the more I met and befriended 'the other.'
