love thy neighbor

Jim Rice 3-23-2022
Illustration of Dean Spade with quote "Elite solutions to poverty are always about managing poor people and never about redistributing wealth."

Dean Spade is a lawyer, trans activist, professor at Seattle University School of Law, and author of Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) / Illustration by Becki Gill

IN OUR COVER article, Mennonite pastor Isaac Villegas looks at communities of people taking care of one another in examples of “mutual aid.” As Villegas explains, Anabaptists—the ethnic and spiritual forebears of several Christian denominations, including Mennonites—have a long history of such mutual care, tracing back not only to the Radical Reformation of the 16th century but to the earliest Christian communities, as portrayed in the New Testament book of Acts.

Brian G. Gilmore 4-25-2018

You shall love the Lord your God with
all your heart, and with all your soul,
and with all your strength, and with
all your mind; and your neighbor
as yourself. —Luke 10:27

such is the lawyer.
we need to know.

road less traveled.
not robert frost.

in that space.
like a typewriter

on table, sewing
machine sitting still

this is why i do this
work. not the walking

dead. not some george
romero extra. like the

young troubled girl in
my neighborhood just

last week. no one reached
out. they called the police.

locked their doors, windows.
they became priest, levite

on the other side of the
road. it was like when

i was 13 standing on the
high dive. gravity take

over. send me to water
below. don’t be everyone.

ask of myself each second:
will i cross the road? “it is

written in the law.” heart
& soul. love. neighbor.

even if they aren’t nice. another
chance to hear that answer.

Gareth Higgins 4-25-2018

THERE'S A crazy-beautiful idea in Paterson, Jim Jarmusch’s film about a bus-driving New Jersey poet (or a poetry-writing bus driver), that makes it honestly inspirational, and perhaps even holy. Inspirational because this story of an ordinary guy in an ordinary town shows us how to see our own ordinariness as full of wonder; holy because this ordinary guy is an icon of integrity—he loves, he lets his yes be yes, and judgmentalism finds no foothold in him.

The crazy-beautiful idea is that everyone is an artist, and that when not subjected to the trappings of academia, the publishing industry, or commerce, creativity can just flow as part of everyday life. Adam Driver is perfectly ordinary enough to be a gift in the lead role (Paterson his name, Paterson his town), containing his tall muscular frame with gentleness, but ready to use it to protect (a military past is invoked through the subtle use of an old photograph). The Iranian actor Golshifteh Farahani brings a lovely, mild eccentricity to the woman he loves. Their kindness and dreaming together makes a blue-collar house a palace.

Paterson unfolds over a week, and I do mean unfolds—the day-by-day account replays the moments that repeat themselves in most of our lives (waking up, the commute, encounters with others, the walk home, dinner, and a beer at the local pub). Each day’s experience reveals more about the people we’re watching.

Someone has called Paterson a “utopian” film, and although it would be easy to read only the surface and see a pleasant tale of a guy and a girl and the music of words, it earns that term. For one thing, the community in Paterson is one of the most racially diverse in movies—there are distinct African-American, Indian-American, and Middle Eastern voices here. The average white guy is in the minority—and utterly satisfied with his life. Not only is he not striving for the public acclaim usually featured in stories of struggling artists, he is so mindful about the world and his place in it that he may not even notice that his poetry isn’t winning him any awards (never mind income).

He also may not notice, nor does the film remark upon, the most idyllic fact of his life: In a movie set 40 minutes from Manhattan, in an era where louder voices are telling us to fear the other, home is a white U.S. veteran and a brown-skinned Middle Eastern free spirit, figuring life out together. Another crazy-beautiful idea. Or maybe not so crazy.

Joe Kay 4-08-2016

Image via /Shutterstock.com

Will we sit and listen to a refugee mother talk about her family’s horrific life in her war-torn country, and realize we’re no longer afraid of her? Will we talk to the gay couple that needs a cake and hear their love story, and feel a bond because it reminds us of our own love story? Will we look into the eyes with the homeless person begging just outside our car window and see another human being in pain, and suddenly feel an urge to help them? Will we make ourselves divinely vulnerable?

In that moment, we reach beyond our fear. We’re finally freed by love. No longer hiding in a tiny room behind a locked door. That. We all need more of that.

Kylie Beach 3-21-2016

Image via /Shutterstock.com

With Australia’s Harmony Day falling during Holy Week this year, this is a timely opportunity to meditate upon Jesus’ call to love thy neighbor and ask, “What is the connection between loving God and neighbor?” And, “Can you have one without the other?”

On this first day of our campaign, Louisa Hope — taken hostage and shot in Sydney’s Lindt Café siege, that made international news just over one year ago — tells her story. It’s a challenging testimony of how Jesus’ love, seen in his death on the cross, can overflow into love of others.

Joanna Foote 7-17-2014
Image of a bus. Image courtesy phipatbig/shutterstock.com

Image of a bus. Image courtesy phipatbig/shutterstock.com

“The United States is wonderful,” said one woman, after I helped get her oriented to what buses she would take from Tucson to Florida, gave food and snacks to her and her 8- and 9-year-old sons, and helped her find sweaters and a blanket to stay warm through the inevitably extreme air conditioning of the buses. In that moment, I thought about other U.S. towns passing laws to keep people like her out and protesters angrily blocking buses full of unaccompanied minors or mothers and their children.