Two

Neighbouring is my favourite.

It's really the only Jesus-ism I can hang my hat on: love God and love your neighbour, that's all that matters.

Loving my neighbour is generally pretty possible. In my day-to-day I hardly ever run into someone I can't be kind to. And kindness is where love starts as far as I can tell.

The thing about neighbouring that I think maybe some people don't know, is that all of us have to go first. Waiting for someone to start is what wrecks neighbouring. Two people waiting for someone else to start is a recipe for loneliness at best and more likely, resentment and sad and eventually probably war.

Good Neighbouring is smiling first, saying hi first, and asking for help first.

What??

Yep. Good neighbouring is asking for help first. I think.

Giving help feels so much better of course. Being free with all we have is all kinds of good and right, and helping a neighbour is always the right thing to do. But probably not the first thing, not if you're practicing Good Neighbouring. Because of course giving is also elevating. Even when it's done humbly, there is an inevitable lift of the One Who Has over the One Who Has Not, be it an egg or a shoulder to cry on. Because Good Neighbouring depends on mutuality, this lift undermines the heart of good living together. At least it can.

So instead, we show ourselves to be the least, the last and the lost. Because of course, we are. Not a one of us doesn't start a meal short the rice vinegar from time to time, or raise a child short the patience every now and then, or paint a deck short the time, every time. By exposing our Not Enough we don't just give another the chance to give, a worthy gift to be sure. But better yet, we give the first opportunity for a Me Too experience, the very heart of neighbouring.

You fail and forget and flounder? Me too.
You wonder if you were really meant to parent those children? Me too.
You find this life at times overwhelming and too much? Me too.

Oh, the wonder of Me Too, that lets neighbouring bloom.

It is holy, this reminder that not one of us Is Enough, Has Enough. That's what Jesus was telling us: between God and our neighbours, we will find our way to Enough. But surely to God, not on our own. Jesus was all over the part where all on our own, life's a disaster. To pretend otherwise would be to say we don't need a God, we don't need our neighbours. That pretense is where death lives.

But Life? Life lives on the stoop, where Jesus is known in the sharing of food and wine and tears and laughter. Where we bump into the sacred in those who, when we confess our need, our Not Enough, say Me Too.

That's what I think about that.