I’m bad at hiking. I’ve discovered this over time and people who love me have helped me come to terms with it. There’s been an intervention and it’s time that I confess. It’s not that I can’t hike, I’m reasonably fit and can keep up. I don’t have a sore knee or irrational fear of squirrels. No, I’m bad at hiking because I spend most of my time looking down rather than looking at the unfolding scenery around me. While everyone is following the line of a bird flitting through the trees or enjoying the bob of glacier water as it lifts up and over a river rock, I’m staring at the ground. While my wife takes in the moment to wait for my daughters to poke at a dead log, I’m eager for what’s next.
I’m Preston, and I’m impatient and oblivious to the beauty unfolding before me.
The trouble with my hiking woes is that I’m not looking for enjoyment in the right places. I’m looking down when I should be looking out. I’m thinking about what’s for lunch rather than experiencing the moment. I have it upside down. While I would tell you I love hiking and living in the moment, my actions show that I have a lot to learn because I often don’t know how to experience the goodness that is right before me.
Most people would likewise say that they are loving people, or at least that they aspire to love everyone. We may believe we include people that are different. We shake our heads at stories of hatred and our Facebook pages might be full of loving quotes and inspiring videos.
Yet sometimes our values find a spotlight in our words, and languish in our actions. We may be abstract in our love, and general in our ambition. We say we love our neighbours in the same way I love hiking, but when we actually run into our neighbours, we find ourselves staring at our feet.
I’ve learned that for all my talk of loving others, I have to confess that I often don’t. Some people are strange to me and a few rub me the wrong way. In fact, my aspirational love is tested daily in the real world of chance encounters. That’s why abstract love finds its corrective in the actual places where we live – in real life. Our inspirational values make sense only when we open our homes and our kitchen tables to others. Strangers become knowable and even lovable after a shared meal. We cannot love our neighbours from afar, rather we love them in close proximity.
Neighbourism is about getting specific with our values. If we say we love our neighbours, then we actually get to the work of showing them. At first we may have to confess that we’re not good at it, but we don’t slump down on the nearest stump and call the whole effort a waste. Instead we remind ourselves that loving our neighbours is a profoundly beautiful way to orient our lives and we learn to look up and out, to live in the moment, and to turn our best words into attentive action.
I’m Preston, and I’m learning to love my neighbours.
