You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  (Matthew 22:39b)

Sometimes my neighbor is closer than I want her to be. When neighbor is an abstraction like the migrants fleeing Syria it is easy for me to love them.   Or when my neighbor is the hungry person in the public housing complex down the road, it is easy for me to love him. And when my neighbor is the mentally ill person across town or the eldery in the convalescent home that I never visit, it is easy to love them. But as it happens, the neighbor I need to love lives right next door.

One of our favorite stories from the recent past is what some of our friends dubbed “Chicken Gate.” On Easter, our 93-year-old neighbor, “grandma” Doreen, gifted my children 2 chicks, which they named Cheep and Peep. Doreen said to me, “Won’t it be fun to watch them grow!?” (Of course Doreen meant it would be fun to watch them grown in the Luna yard!)

Folks in our town worked hard for over a year to pass an ordinance that would allow home-owners to keep chickens. One of the requirements is obtaining a permit to keep chickens, upon which our neighbors needed to agree. One of our neighbors was not in agreement so we were called to City Hall for a hearing. (She was vehemently opposed and wrote a nasty letter about us and called City Hall several times complaining about us.) Come to find out, she would rather have quiet neighbors next door, and our active family does not fit her definition of quiet.

The day before our hearing, the City Planner called to remind us to be at the hearing. The day of the hearing, our City Council member knocked on our door to talk about the chickens and to remind us to be at the hearing. When we arrived at the hearing, the Mayor introduced himself and said he was looking for us and was glad we showed up to the hearing. (We were thrilled—this was small town democracy at its best and a great hands-on civics lesson for all of us!) After some deliberation, and me and my husband declaring we didn’t mean to cause strife in the neighborhood, we were granted a one-year permit to keep our chickens. Our City Council member suggested we take some eggs to the neighbor as a peace offering.

A few weeks into building the chicken coop, the neighbor’s son gave Benjamin a stack of egg cartons (a peace offering?). Julie took him a half dozen eggs (two chickens don’t make many eggs) and turns out he is something of an expert on chickens—he could identify the kinds of chickens they were by the type of eggs, and he is good at caring for sick birds and offered his assistance if needed. Our neighbor (his mom) still hasn’t come around, but we are not giving up on her!

My children feel our neighbor’s animosity towards our family and are bewildered. I keep telling them, we need to love her. She is suffering in some way that we will never know, but all we can do is love her.

I like to think that this story is one small example of how we live our Christian story every day—birth, life, conflict, judgment, reconciliation, redemption, and even death (e.g. letting go of judgment about our neighbor).  And most of an example of how the neighbor I need to love sometimes lives right next door.

In the aftermath of the Paris shootings and bombings, I am once again reminded to love my neighbor—all of those involved including the shooters and bombers. I don’t condone the violence and am aware that the shooters and bombers must be in a state of suffering and despair to put themselves in a position to kill. But again, this is an abstraction for me. In a county, like France, where the unemployment rate of the Middle Eastern immigrants is greater than 20%, I wonder what would happen if the country embraced the Middle Eastern neighbor and helped him/her find a job and live a more dignified life. What would happen? Instead, the French government is breaking into homes looking for weapons (this is a necessity, I understand). What would happen if this was balanced by social programs that supported Middle Eastern immigrants? What would happen if the neighbor, the Middle Eastern, immigrant felt loved? How can we love this neighbor?