Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Who Even Is My Neighbor?
I sat at the pint-sized table at the coffee shop downtown, my knees banging against its worn wooden edge each time I shifted in my seat. Across from me sat my dear friend Becca. Her hands were wrapped around a mug of coffee, probably something exotic like Sumatra or Ethiopian blend, all direct trade, naturally. But Becca doesn't particularly care about the origins of her beans, and I'm a tea-drinking contrarian. The coffee was never the point.
Conversation percolated around us, bubbling up now and then into laughter among women flushed and limber from morning yoga, stay-athome dads with strollers, city leaders, freelancers, and tunnel-visioned students. An orthodox priest in a floor-length black robe took the table to our left, and to our right sat two men knitting, one of whom wore a bun. Right in the middle sat the two of us, me hiding yesterday's hair under my signature red ball cap, and Becca wearing a sweatshirt decorated with an airbrushed, wintry landscape.
As usual, we were trying to figure out how to fix the world.
It wouldn't be unfair to classify this assemblage of two opinionated verbal processers as a glorified vent session, with plenty of comic relief mixed in. We were both political junkies (recovering and otherwise), so the upcoming presidential election was foremost on our minds, and the fact that we didn't agree on a solution only added punch to our discussion. On top of that we were both experiencing near-terminal church-related funk, the racial tension of our country continued to be revealed, religious people were damning each other to hell over a legion of issues, and there were new rumblings that we might be on the brink of war. It was a lot.
Along the way, Becca elevated the emotional atmosphere with stories about her former cough-dropaddicted house pig named Brats and her misadventures involving an accordion. When one of us rambled, the other went up for air, taking a sip of our now lukewarm beverages, careful not to miss a word. These coffee dates were not for the faint of heart, which presented a problem since Becca had been clinically diagnosed with a mouthful of medical jargon amounting to "faint of heart." As always, we tried to keep our cool.
Becca and I first met at the little Methodist church my family attends. Fueled by mutual intrigue and maybe a bit of shared loneliness, we graduated from Sunday handshakes to these intermittent Wednesday mornings.
Separated by twenty-five years, the two of us were never meant to be friends and certainly not coconspirators. She is a single woman with no children and a senior discount. I'm young enough to be her daughter. Our ideologies don't perfectly align. Our theologies tear away from each other now and then. Yet, in each other, we recognized the reward of stepping outside our norm, and our unlikely friendship grew. Before long, we were neighbors of the city and the heart, and, if I know anything at all, it's that the route leading from "neighbor" to "family" is surprisingly short. I never imagined myself with a friend like Becca, someone I would come to depend on in meaningful ways. And, yet, here we were. It wasn't hard at all.
Time after time, we circle back to a few key questions: Why is this world so messed up? Why does God choose to fiddle around with the likes of us? What on earth can we do to make this sad and beautiful world a little softer for everyone?
I can't say that we often walk away from our time together with clear answers or solutions. But I always walk away feeling more hopeful. This is the promise of Emmanuel, God with us, who came near in body and stayed in Spirit. It's no accident that the solace of eternity is so often parceled out in one-hour chunks and passed around the table.
I know you're right there with me and Becca at that tiny table, nodding along. We believe God hasn't forgotten us and that he has a plan to renew the beauty lost in the weeds. We are mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends. We want the younger generations to thrive in a new way. We want the older generations to feel seen, heard, and valued. We're no longer satisfied with a solution that only serves us and those like us. We want a plan that serves the whole sisterhood, stretching beyond bloodlines and the culture that for too long has pitted us against each other.
Where we've been taught to self-protect, we're now ready to reach out, not just to people who remind us of ourselves, but to anyone in arm's reach. We're ready to lean in. We're just not sure how to start.
Though our lives feel ordinary and small, we're compelled by the possibility of making a difference where the problems loom large. We want to offer the hope of Christ in a world that feels increasingly fractured and gloomy. We believe we can be world shakers from our own little corners, where there are crumbs on the floor and no righteous plan for the dinner hour barreling toward us. We're growing desperate to experience the mess of the gospel, trading our tight reins and safe ways for the mystery and mayhem of God's kingdom making its way down.
It's all too easy to lose our purpose in the details of everyday life: the leftovers, the empty gas tank, the meetings that run too long. We know we're called to love our neighbor, but we're leery of risk. We come from a long line of social awkwardness.
And, anyway, who even is our neighbor?
In Luke 10, we peer in on a Jewish expert of religious law unwisely trying to trick Jesus. After an intense volley of smug superiority (Jewish guy) and the sort of composed calm guaranteed to rattle even the most seasoned debater (Jesus), the man asks the same question we're asking, "And who is my neighbor?" (v. 29).
In classic Jesus fashion, his answer comes in story form. In this parable, a Jewish man mugged, bloodied, and left for dead on the Jericho road is rescued not by a Jewish priest or a temple assistant, both of whom saw him and kept walking, but by a Samaritan. The Jewish people loathed Samaritans, considering them half-bred lowlives. Yet it was he, the unlikeliest ally, who "felt compassion" for the wounded Jewish man, daubing his wounds, hoisting him onto his donkey, holding him steady along that winding road, emptying his pockets for the Jewish man's care, and pledging his help until healing came.
Through this parable, we don't hear a single word from the injured Jewish man's perspective. We don't know what he was thinking or how he responded. We aren't allowed the satisfaction of him weeping in gratitude or apologizing to his rescuer for the rocky history between their people. We don't know if he received assistance with humility or if he choked back the judgment still coursing through him, just happy to be alive. Simply put, we don't know if the merciful encounter with his sworn enemy changed him. It's hard to believe it wouldn't have, but that isn't the point here.
The story is centered on the Samaritan, the one who had everything to lose, who couldn't bear to see someone hurting and dared to get involved. Though it certainly cost him, he chose the neighbor way.
In Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech, given the day before his assassination, he said of the parable, "The question is not, 'If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?'" Rather, it is, what will become of our bloodstained neighbor if we choose to pass by instead? "What will happen to them?" Dr. King asked the crowd. "That's the question."
Who is my neighbor?
It's not the one who looks like me. It's not the one I am most comfortable with or the one with whom I share hobbies, talents, or a go-to Starbucks order. It's not limited to the person next door or my favorite coworker. My neighbor might even be someone I despise.
My neighbor is the one who comes near in mercy.
My neighbor is the one to whom I draw near in mercy.
At times I am the Jewish man, with my insider status, skepticism, and, despite it all, my deep, immediate need. Other times, I am the Samaritan man, taking a risk by getting myself mixed up in the mess of someone's life when it would be easier to keep my distance. As I see myself in both men, the two-way street of kinship unfolds in front of me.
This invites some careful thought. Life is pulsing around us, waving us closer. Who, then, are we with?
Living an on-the-ground, available-and-engaged, concerned-for-our-neighbors lifestyle doesn't necessarily require moving, downsizing, changing jobs, or adopting a child. It only asks that we view our immediate world with fresh eyes to see how we might plant love with intention and grit. This means we'll have to unlearn what we've wrongly absorbed about who people are and what they deserve. We'll have to scratch through the surface and get down to the roots of the stories playing out in our midst. We will have to choose to widen our circle and allow our lives to become tangled up with those around us.
There at the coffee shop, amid our questions, anecdotes, and rants, what Becca and I were really asking was, How can we help? and, What do I have to offer this cynical world?
For Becca, the journey toward intentional action began with seeing her knack for storytelling as a legitimate spiritual gift meant to fortify the bruised and battered body of Christ. When an opportunity to teach creative writing at the county jail opened up, she defied logic and surmounted the hurdle of self-doubt by simply, magnificently, saying yes.
At the age of sixty-four, she drove her old beater out of the city and into what many see as a wasteland, inviting long-forgotten mamas to reconsider their stories under a new lens of empowerment and purpose. Each Saturday, she sits with them in a windowless room to discuss the life force held in the folds of their personal histories. They are Romans 5:3 in shapeless, beige uniforms, suffering, resilient, growing, and hopeful: "We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance."
Every line extracted from their pain and scripted into fresh journals, every story shared without the threat of condemnation, every tear wept and every joke cracked has fused this haphazard gathering of society's outcasts into an abiding community of support and shared sorrow. As we sat together at the coffee shop, Becca marveled at the resourcefulness of the women —" They bring supplies and hand roll their own tampons while we talk! Have you ever imagined such a thing?" — and choked up at the ways this sacred space has fundamentally reshaped her worldview while she wasn't looking, immersed in simply loving them and being dazzled by their light. She can't fix the problems of drug addiction, broken families, or the plight of shattered confidence, but she can find her place in the lives of a few women and believe that it matters.
Somewhere toward the end of our coffee date, Becca smacked the table with the palm of her hand, and I knew to lean in. "We're paying attention now," she said. "This will change everything."
She's exactly right.
This mission humbly asks that we devote ourselves to the overlooked spiritual practice of paying attention to wherever God has placed us. That's where we begin, and, though it's not terribly complicated, it will ask more of us than we ever imagined.
Becca called early yesterday morning to say her heart was feeling faint again, but the doctors were working on it and she'd hopefully be as good as new for the next writing class.
I spent forty minutes this morning playing Emotional Bingo with an at-risk third grader at the elementary school who, in just two visits, had already mentored me on the ways of acceptance, fortitude, and grape-sharing.
Meanwhile, my husband, Cory, helped orchestrate an emergency bike delivery for a friend looking to be hired at the bacon factory across town, then shared lunch and a game of cards with his friends inside the jail where he works as the chaplain.
These small moments, over time, stack into something much bigger than ourselves. One tiny risk, one inconvenience, one imperceptible nudge after another, and here we are, thick in community among lonely neighbors, cranky neighbors, and neighbors whose love and optimism shine like the sun on our faces. There have been drug-addicted neighbors who drove us straight to the brink with them, and dark days when we watched despair grow fists and teeth and eat them alive. Even still, I couldn't have imagined the way this basic act of really being with the people near us would sweep through our lives like fresh air and impossible beauty.
The loudest revolutions often begin so quietly, so unassumingly near the ground that most don't bother to notice. I won't speak for you, but surrounded by cynics, worrywarts, doomsday prophets, and Facebook apologists with their lofty solutions, I'd rather be a hope-holder with mud on my shoes. We might have a zillion reasons to be jaded about our world, but that is not the kind of person I want to be. I want to be someone who clings to the grace and the gift and the good. Rather than spend my days scanning the digital horizon for a dopamine hit of false comfort, I want to keep my ear tuned to the groanings of my place. I want to stand ready, as Christ's ambassador in my neighborhood, wearing grace, flesh, and skinny jeans. I want to belong, just as I am, and I want to get better at loving people for every good and puzzling thing they are.
The world around us does its best to make us suspicious and wary, but when we stand together, we are closer to hope.
Wide awake and fully present, let's stick around and dig deep.
Who knows what might happen next?
CHAPTER 2
Locking Eyes with the World We're In
The paint was already flaking off the baseboards before I realized it was time to stop calling our house new.
The signs were everywhere. Mature grass finally blanketed the postage-stamp yard. The tree we'd bought with 2013's tax refund was large enough to produce a spot of shade exactly wide enough for one person to enjoy. And the clincher — we had returned home from an out-of-town trip and the house didn't smell new. Somewhere along the slow rush of time, when we were distracted by other things, the lumber, paint, and drywall had absorbed the precise essence of us.
My new reality still took me by surprise.
I had evolved from the fresh-faced farm girl living my version of the American Dream with a side of Jesus. I'd become the gutsy, subversive, city-loving advocate. The new neighbor. My kids went to a new school. We lived in a new house.
On and on it went, my fists closing around this latest rendition of my identity, just as they had before.
But as people came into our lives and left us, as the carpet wore down in the sorry way carpet is prone to disappoint us, it became harder to ignore. We were no longer new. We were just here. The headline had faded. The sparkle dimmed.
Our earlier questions — Where are we going? Why are we going? and Will we ever fit in? — were replaced with just one: Now what? Surely God did not lead us here just to live. Surely spending our lives for his sake would mean more than attending PTO meetings and allowing the neighbor kids to conspire with ours in tearing up the yard. Wasn't there some grand, specific thing he wanted and needed me to do here?
One late August morning, right in the middle of this heightened spiritual unrest, I decided to walk my kids to school rather than driving the short distance. I'm not sure what flipped the switch. It might have been the hissing shame that I was modeling an odd brand of privilege and laziness for my three young kids. But I had seen enough to understand that growth often requires death, and sometimes death looks like losing that extra fifteen minutes of sleep. Sometimes it asks us to surrender our softest pajama pants and lace up our walking shoes for the greater good, even if we're not quite sure why it matters.
We set out with no grand or holy awakening in mind. I simply wanted to be a more positive presence for the three quirky kids who greet each day with gusto and would surely benefit from their mom at least trying to do the same.
And so we began. We walked almost every morning that year. Day after day, my feet traced the path south, then home again. Rain, shine, under what was often still the cover of night and through the driving snow that makes us ask deep, philosophical questions like, "Does summer really exist? And if so, why does it allow winter to happen to good people?" We walked like a small assembly of sturdy postal carriers saddled not with junk mail, but with backpacks, a violin, and widespread concern over the daily cafeteria menu.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Ministry of Ordinary Places"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Shannan Martin.
Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
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