Essays From West of 98: Neighbors
Love of neighbor is essential to rural revitalization
What does it mean to be a neighbor?
We use a lot of words flippantly in modern English. Everything is great, awesome, terrible, the best, or the worst. My mother used to scold me as a child when she asked about my day at school and I regularly answered “fine.” My response was mostly just a way to avoid further discourse, but in reality most daily activities are closer to “fine” than “awesome.” Not everything requires a superlative and that’s okay. If everything is awesome, nothing is awesome. I’m not here to give you a lecture on linguistic discourse, so there is a point to this! Words matter and have power.
“Neighbor” is a word that can be used flippantly, but it contains multitudes. The general definition is of a person living nearby. That sounds simple, but what does it REALLY mean? In small towns, we cherish “knowing our neighbors” and it is a value to cherish. But how well do we know *actually* know our neighbors? If someone gave us a 10 question quiz about our neighbor’s life and family, how well would we do? Would we correctly answer some surface level questions but totally whiff on the details of their life? Where does “neighbor” stop? Do our small town values include knowing only the person next door, or the rest of the way down the street, across the block, or elsewhere in town?
Mister Rogers famously asked “won’t you be my neighbor?” I feel confident that he wasn’t asking you to move in to the house next to his. Jesus notably taught that “Love your neighbor as yourself” was the second greatest commandment, secondary only to loving God. He, too, didn’t seem to limit that to the person in the next house.
I’ve been thinking about this topic a good bit lately. Wendell Berry’s latest book “The Need to Be Whole” centers our worldly problems (racism, inequality, violence and discord, environmental degradation and more) around our ongoing failure to follow the two greatest commandments. Love God. Love your Neighbor. It’s powerful, difficult, and vital. As I consider this topic, I realize how loving your neighbors and even just knowing your neighbors is too often a very passive thing. We know our neighbors because we see them regularly, we know their names, we exchange pleasantries, and our kids attend the same school. We often don’t truly KNOW them. Actually knowing your neighbors requires intentionality and work.
If you follow me on Facebook or a few other social media outlets, you might have seen that I have embarked on a new project. My friend Dan Stewart is pastor of First Baptist Church in Stamford and together we have launched “Rural Church & State.” It is to be a monthly conversation about loving community, living in community, and making community better. It is oriented around our lives in Stamford, but it is applicable the world over.
Inherent in this project is a conversation about our neighbors. As Dan and I think about the concepts of community, it is vital to love our neighbors in the manner that Jesus called us to do, even when we don’t like it and it makes us uncomfortable. Sorry, those are the rules. The Gospel didn’t have an asterisk.
I’ve written a lot about community this year. Building community is the core of rural revitalization. I will go out on a limb and opine that it is very difficult to truly improve your community without loving your neighbors. I’ve quoted this line many times: people won’t fight for something they don’t love. That includes our neighbors. We need to love our place and love the people in it. I hope you’ll subscribe to our podcast wherever podcasts are found and join us in this conversation.
Neighbor is a powerful word. Let’s explore that power.
Camera: aerial shot of post-World War II Stamford
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and podcast. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to West of 98 wherever podcasts are found.