Love your Neighbors...
Love your neighbors.
For all that Jesus was, he was nothing if he wasn't astute. And this comment, though initially having the feel of a "no-brainer", packs a punch when you really try to live it out.
We live in the country, so our neighbors aren't snuggled up next to us in a suburban development or within spitting distance on a city block. We have to go out of our way to converse. We would have to walk across 3 acres of land to stand on their porch and chew the fat. Sometimes we're lucky and/or unlucky enough to be mowing our lawns at the same time which forces a closer proximity as we brush up against the property line that serves as the Berlin Wall in our relationship.
5 years ago they built a house next to us. We talked to them and welcomed them to our neighborhood. I even went over when their house was built and they gave me a tour of the place. I would guess they are in their 50's. Easy going. A little garden in the back. Quiet life. Occasional grandchildren stopping in. A deer-feeding, geese-feeding couple who love sitting outside on the back deck and having a bonfire every now and then. I was so grateful to have them as peacemaking, peacekeeping, peace-loving neighbors.
That was, until I killed a dirty black bird in my backyard.
I had no idea that they were animal lovers. Killing animals was a no-no in their eyes. I didn't know this until we received a message on our answering machine one Sunday after we returned home from church. "You better not be killing birds on our property or else." That was the first threat. And you could feel your heart take on the posture of something akin to an Israeli/Palestinian conflict. My property/Your property. My preferences/Your preference. My beliefs/Your beliefs. That's what threats do. Life becomes threatening. Neighborly relations tend to dry up at that point. And they did.
It might have something to do with me killing 3 groundhogs the previous year as well. They were digging under my shrubbery and ruining my freshly installed landscaping. They had lived under my garage for only God knows how many years...and I was putting down my foot. For all I know, they have a pet woodchuck that they sleep with at night, so this capital punishment--this brutal execution--didn't help matters much. I remembered that when I took a tour of their house, there were birds and animals--and pictures of birds and animals--around their house. This should have been a sign, but I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
For the next couple years, I would wave and wouldn't sense a reciprocation. It was clear that our lives offended them, and increasingly their lives were beginning to offend us. The longer time went on, the more our minds had figured out how to deify ourselves and demonize them. This, in case you hadn't noticed it, is what humans do to justify their own position. Our girls were even picking up on these vibes and saying things like "our mean neighbors". This bothered me, but I wasn't sure what to do to change this relational discord between us. I had stopped killing animals; I was trying to keep my lawn looking nice; I was zealous about keeping my girls off their property...but it didn't seem to be softening the situation.
Fast forward to Easter Weekend 2010--about a month ago.
My sister and her husband were here visiting for the weekend and we had just gotten home from church on Sunday afternoon. Heidi had planned out an Easter Egg hunt while the food was getting ready and then we were planning on having a feast on the back deck. The weather was beautiful. It was fixin' up to be a perfect relaxing afternoon with family and food.
The kids got changed and rushed outside to collect hidden easter eggs. They were excited as all to get out to explore the yard and find the plastic eggs latent with sweets.
It wasn't long before they came back inside to show us what they found. Much to our dismay, we realized something had gone woefully wrong as we found that some of the eggs had "cash" inside of them. We knew that we hadn't put cash in any of the eggs we spread around our yard, so the only way this could have happened is if the neighbor had put eggs around their yard for their grandchildren. Our suspicions couldn't have been more spot on.
We told the kids to put them back where they found them, but this was not enough. The neighbors had seen our kids pilfering their neatly placed eggs and were deeply angered at the scene. Even though we put back all the eggs that were taken, the drama was nowhere near over.
While we were on the back deck enjoying our Easter meal and some hearty conversation with my sister and her husband, I could see the neighbor-wife walking over to us with an Easter egg in her hand. I knew this wasn't going to be pretty.
As she reached the steps of the deck, she mentioned that one of the eggs we put in her yard wasn't theirs and then she took the opportunity to share some of her pent up anger at our family. Things like: "Do you know where the property line is?" "Do we need to put a fence between our property?" "If we find that any of our eggs are missing..." "Your daughters broke branches off our pine trees and they leave their toys on our property and. . ." As she was sharing, I was trying to explain things, Heidi was defending the kids, my sister was piping in with her take on things--it was not an amiable conversation needless to say.
As the neighbor walked away, I knew that our relationship had hit a new bottom. For some reason this just didn't settle well with me, but I lacked a solution to the unraveling reality.
Last week, I was hanging out with Taylor on a Thursday afternoon and I noticed the husband-neighbor digging around a dead cherry tree that had died over the winter. It was a tree that was very close to our property so it was hard to not say hi, though I was awkwardly trying to make like I didn't see him at first. As I was helping Taylor with her bike, I felt tugged to go over and talk to him. The interior war was on.
As I walked toward him, I was trying to think about how to start the conversation. Before I had time to formulate my opening line, I was standing next to him. "How's it going today?" He replied that it was quite a chore digging around a large tree to cut the roots. We talked for several minutes about cherry trees and their fragility to this climate. We talked about the weather. We talked about what direction the tree might fall. We talked about my trees and which ones I would like to cut down so that the grass could get more sunlight. We talked and talked and talked about everything but what I needed to talk to him about. Namely, us. Our relationship.
As a silent moment suspended into an awkward pause, I braced myself like a man and went there. "Hey, I just wanted to apologize about the Easter eggs debacle that happened a few weeks ago." I went into the story and how it was an accident and how my relatives didn't know where the property line ended and so on and so forth. I told him that it was my desire to have a great relationship with them and that we loved having them as neighbors. I told him that I didn't want to wage tribal and territorial warfare with them. I told them that he didn't have to worry about the tree he was cutting down falling on my property--I didn't care. I told him that I felt like emotions were high and that things were said out of defensiveness...and that I was sorry.
He thanked me for my apology and preceded to tell me that he just lost his job of 24 years the week before and that it had added a lot of stress lately. We then talked about his job and his fears about the future and how it was affecting him personally. It led into a beautiful conversation that would have never happened without an apology.
He then asked me how things were going at church. "Things really seem to growing over there" He said. We talked about the church and the changes happening and the excitement of being a part of it all. It's funny, I actually thought he wasn't aware of all that. It's funny what we block out when we don't want to deal with something.
I guess I share all that to say this. Jesus was onto something when he said, "Love your neighbor." It's not a suggestion; it's a command. And I'm not sure we can really love beyond the boarders if it doesn't start in our neighborhood, with our neighbors. They know who we are, rather, they know who we say we are. Now they are waiting to see if it's true.
I'm so glad I followed my heart instead of my head.
If I would have stayed hard-headed, it wouldn't be long before I became hard-hearted.
For all that Jesus was, he was nothing if he wasn't astute. And this comment, though initially having the feel of a "no-brainer", packs a punch when you really try to live it out.
We live in the country, so our neighbors aren't snuggled up next to us in a suburban development or within spitting distance on a city block. We have to go out of our way to converse. We would have to walk across 3 acres of land to stand on their porch and chew the fat. Sometimes we're lucky and/or unlucky enough to be mowing our lawns at the same time which forces a closer proximity as we brush up against the property line that serves as the Berlin Wall in our relationship.
5 years ago they built a house next to us. We talked to them and welcomed them to our neighborhood. I even went over when their house was built and they gave me a tour of the place. I would guess they are in their 50's. Easy going. A little garden in the back. Quiet life. Occasional grandchildren stopping in. A deer-feeding, geese-feeding couple who love sitting outside on the back deck and having a bonfire every now and then. I was so grateful to have them as peacemaking, peacekeeping, peace-loving neighbors.
That was, until I killed a dirty black bird in my backyard.
I had no idea that they were animal lovers. Killing animals was a no-no in their eyes. I didn't know this until we received a message on our answering machine one Sunday after we returned home from church. "You better not be killing birds on our property or else." That was the first threat. And you could feel your heart take on the posture of something akin to an Israeli/Palestinian conflict. My property/Your property. My preferences/Your preference. My beliefs/Your beliefs. That's what threats do. Life becomes threatening. Neighborly relations tend to dry up at that point. And they did.
It might have something to do with me killing 3 groundhogs the previous year as well. They were digging under my shrubbery and ruining my freshly installed landscaping. They had lived under my garage for only God knows how many years...and I was putting down my foot. For all I know, they have a pet woodchuck that they sleep with at night, so this capital punishment--this brutal execution--didn't help matters much. I remembered that when I took a tour of their house, there were birds and animals--and pictures of birds and animals--around their house. This should have been a sign, but I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
For the next couple years, I would wave and wouldn't sense a reciprocation. It was clear that our lives offended them, and increasingly their lives were beginning to offend us. The longer time went on, the more our minds had figured out how to deify ourselves and demonize them. This, in case you hadn't noticed it, is what humans do to justify their own position. Our girls were even picking up on these vibes and saying things like "our mean neighbors". This bothered me, but I wasn't sure what to do to change this relational discord between us. I had stopped killing animals; I was trying to keep my lawn looking nice; I was zealous about keeping my girls off their property...but it didn't seem to be softening the situation.
Fast forward to Easter Weekend 2010--about a month ago.
My sister and her husband were here visiting for the weekend and we had just gotten home from church on Sunday afternoon. Heidi had planned out an Easter Egg hunt while the food was getting ready and then we were planning on having a feast on the back deck. The weather was beautiful. It was fixin' up to be a perfect relaxing afternoon with family and food.
The kids got changed and rushed outside to collect hidden easter eggs. They were excited as all to get out to explore the yard and find the plastic eggs latent with sweets.
It wasn't long before they came back inside to show us what they found. Much to our dismay, we realized something had gone woefully wrong as we found that some of the eggs had "cash" inside of them. We knew that we hadn't put cash in any of the eggs we spread around our yard, so the only way this could have happened is if the neighbor had put eggs around their yard for their grandchildren. Our suspicions couldn't have been more spot on.
We told the kids to put them back where they found them, but this was not enough. The neighbors had seen our kids pilfering their neatly placed eggs and were deeply angered at the scene. Even though we put back all the eggs that were taken, the drama was nowhere near over.
While we were on the back deck enjoying our Easter meal and some hearty conversation with my sister and her husband, I could see the neighbor-wife walking over to us with an Easter egg in her hand. I knew this wasn't going to be pretty.
As she reached the steps of the deck, she mentioned that one of the eggs we put in her yard wasn't theirs and then she took the opportunity to share some of her pent up anger at our family. Things like: "Do you know where the property line is?" "Do we need to put a fence between our property?" "If we find that any of our eggs are missing..." "Your daughters broke branches off our pine trees and they leave their toys on our property and. . ." As she was sharing, I was trying to explain things, Heidi was defending the kids, my sister was piping in with her take on things--it was not an amiable conversation needless to say.
As the neighbor walked away, I knew that our relationship had hit a new bottom. For some reason this just didn't settle well with me, but I lacked a solution to the unraveling reality.
Last week, I was hanging out with Taylor on a Thursday afternoon and I noticed the husband-neighbor digging around a dead cherry tree that had died over the winter. It was a tree that was very close to our property so it was hard to not say hi, though I was awkwardly trying to make like I didn't see him at first. As I was helping Taylor with her bike, I felt tugged to go over and talk to him. The interior war was on.
As I walked toward him, I was trying to think about how to start the conversation. Before I had time to formulate my opening line, I was standing next to him. "How's it going today?" He replied that it was quite a chore digging around a large tree to cut the roots. We talked for several minutes about cherry trees and their fragility to this climate. We talked about the weather. We talked about what direction the tree might fall. We talked about my trees and which ones I would like to cut down so that the grass could get more sunlight. We talked and talked and talked about everything but what I needed to talk to him about. Namely, us. Our relationship.
As a silent moment suspended into an awkward pause, I braced myself like a man and went there. "Hey, I just wanted to apologize about the Easter eggs debacle that happened a few weeks ago." I went into the story and how it was an accident and how my relatives didn't know where the property line ended and so on and so forth. I told him that it was my desire to have a great relationship with them and that we loved having them as neighbors. I told him that I didn't want to wage tribal and territorial warfare with them. I told them that he didn't have to worry about the tree he was cutting down falling on my property--I didn't care. I told him that I felt like emotions were high and that things were said out of defensiveness...and that I was sorry.
He thanked me for my apology and preceded to tell me that he just lost his job of 24 years the week before and that it had added a lot of stress lately. We then talked about his job and his fears about the future and how it was affecting him personally. It led into a beautiful conversation that would have never happened without an apology.
He then asked me how things were going at church. "Things really seem to growing over there" He said. We talked about the church and the changes happening and the excitement of being a part of it all. It's funny, I actually thought he wasn't aware of all that. It's funny what we block out when we don't want to deal with something.
I guess I share all that to say this. Jesus was onto something when he said, "Love your neighbor." It's not a suggestion; it's a command. And I'm not sure we can really love beyond the boarders if it doesn't start in our neighborhood, with our neighbors. They know who we are, rather, they know who we say we are. Now they are waiting to see if it's true.
I'm so glad I followed my heart instead of my head.
If I would have stayed hard-headed, it wouldn't be long before I became hard-hearted.
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