Neighbors are not strangers, not friends, not family. They are the people who we include in the territory we consider to be ‘home.’ Not everyone in our building, or the blocks surrounding our tent, or rental, or house is a neighbor. When we think of neighbors it is usually the people who are proximate, who we see repeatedly, and through the chance of repeated opportunities we recognize. They may be acquaintances, they may be becoming more like a friend, and they have influence over the quality of home for us. Is it a place of mutual reciprocity? Is it a place of surveillance? Is it a live and let live atmosphere? Is it a space of control and conformity? Is it a place where people would help you or call for help if they thought you were in trouble?
Or, when we look at the language of our 4th Unitarian Universalist source, are our neighbors every human being in the global village? Here is the language of that source: “Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as ourselves.” (By the way, if you’d like to see the full text of the six sources,1 they immediately follow our 8 principles in our covenant and are a part of the article 2 in the UUA Bylaws that are being re-drafted.)2 Loving our neighbors as ourselves in the context of Judaism and Christianity has ranged from people who exist in the wider community of those who believe and behave as we do, to the entire kin-dom of God. This is the Beloved Community as we call it in our 8th principle, including all people on earth.
One thing that is certain, the concept and the practice of being a good neighbor is prominent in both the American and the religious psyche. It is a part of our personal, national, and religious identity. This is true even as our individual and collective ability to live out and live up to being a good neighbor has faltered throughout history. Yes, the ideal of good neighbor and the informal relationships and organizing that are possible through it undergirds the possibility of more complex organizations of city, state, and government (of our entire democratic system of government) as well as many other civic and community organizations.
The concept of good neighbor extends to our relations between the states and between nations. Just think how during the pandemic, some states that bordered one another coordinated masking policies conscious that their region needed to be treated like part of a whole. Or, outside of formal government, those of us in the reproductive justice movement are ready to spring into action to support access for people in Idaho where abortion bans went into effect a little over ten weeks ago.
We also like to think of ourselves as a “good neighbor nation” in our relations with Canada and Mexico, and again, while we fall short of the ideal, the impetus and the impulse impact our actions.
1 https://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe/sources
2 https://www.uua.org/files/pdf/d/draft_chrg_art_ii_stdy_com.pdf
We, as First Unitarian Portland, also relate to other congregations in this city as our neighbors in faith. Over the years, we have organized together to support one another and our collective work to improve the lives of people who live in our city.
I am deeply conscious of what it means to be a good neighbor in all these senses as we move towards what feels like the looming results of the elections. (But will hopefully turn out to be enlivening results. We will be here together next Sunday in either case.) How will the results impact each of us personally? How will the results impact the neighbors where we live, where we work, where our children go to school, and where we go to church? How will they impact the people who live in neighboring states, neighboring countries, and ultimately neighbors near and far and everywhere?
What does the virtue of being a good neighbor look like? One answer is given in the book, “Good Neighbors: The Democracy of Life in Everyday America.”3 The author, Nancy Rosenblum, posits that being a good neighbor involves three things: reciprocity, speaking out, and live and let live.
Reciprocity can be anything from the willingness to give the proverbial cup of sugar for a recipe all the way to helping neighbors escape in a natural disaster like hurricane Katrina. When the government failed to organize effectively, it was neighbors who rescued one another.
When we bring over cookies to welcome a new neighbor, which the folks across the street did for us, it was a sign that we will extend ourselves to each other when needed. One good turn deserves another, and so we know we will be asked to reciprocate and will gladly return the kindness.
Another example, on the first day I brought my son here to our new home from New Jersey, he went bounding down the stairs to claim the room in the finished basement as his own. Quickly he ran back up reporting, “Mommy, there is water everywhere!” The water heater had broken, 50 gallons of water was on the floor, and it was continuing to flow everywhere except, of course, where the pump is located.
Our stuff hadn’t arrived yet, so I had nothing to address the situation but one bath towel and paper towels. I ran to knock on the neighbor’s door across the street to ask if they might have anything that could help. That neighbor knocked on the door of his next-door neighbor who he said was handy, and he also brought over a shop vac. The second neighbor came over with towels, figured out the important step of how to turn off the water heater, and gave me the number for their plumber. Both reassured me that all would be well.
Now, from a couple of conversations I have had with them since moving in, I gather that all three of us are not exactly in the same location on the political spectrum. But, that was not a test for mutual care and kindness among neighbors.
One challenge to politics today is dehumanizing people on the other side or somewhere else on the spectrum. And specifically, how the internet has contributed to this through anonymity, echo
3 https://www.amazon.com/Good-Neighbors-Democracy-Everyday-America/dp/0691180768
chambers, and the spread of disinformation. Unlike a good neighbor, politicians and others following their lead use language and choose policies that display a callous disregard for their neighbor.
It is horrifying to read some of the cruel remarks and jokes being made about the violent attack on Paul Pelosi. Donald Trump, Jr. even retweeted a photo of underwear and a hammer that included the caption, “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween Costume Ready.” A break-in where an octogenarian is injured is sad and frightening, full stop. May he make a full recovery.
Or, locally, I have heard people who identify as conservative, as well as progressive, and even here in our community use the language of sweeping the streets of houseless neighbors. Sweeping… that is something we do with dirt and garbage. Houseless folks are neither. It reminds me of several years ago when I lived in Morristown (NJ), people across the political spectrum used a similar phrase, “Sweeping the streets clean of immigrants.”
In both cases, they are all human beings, and our job is to enact laws, policies, and procedures that uphold their dignity as well as our own. We need to create healthy boundaries that protect and serve all who live in our city and not pit one side against another… Actually, it isn’t one side against another… that pit the many sides against each other. But rather, we need to bring them together to think about the best solutions. I am also aware that a number of you, members here, are engaged in this type of vital work.
The practice of neighboring is a skill that we all need to develop further. Some of the earliest votes I remember happened amongst the neighbors in the building where I grew up. All 36 apartments were invited to meetings in our lobby, one of our common spaces, to discuss the decisions which affected us. A few of those meetings got heated when there were differences of opinions, but an elevator is a very small space of repeated encounters (and our elevator had a particular habit of getting stuck) so you never knew how long the ride would last.
People spoke to one another and treated one another with respect knowing they would see each other again, that we all interdepended on one another for a peaceful coexistence, for babysitters, for sugar, for help in an emergency, and the like. In that building, the people also made decisions to host communal gatherings – a holiday party in the lobby where we exchanged the foods and winter customs of our respective cultures – and the occasional BBQ in our concrete courtyard. (If you ever visit NYC, you might see one these courtyards, a place where we would roll out the artificial grass carpet in the summer.) These social gatherings were where we took time to get to know each other, our stories, and our circumstances. This is one important way we practiced “Neighboring.”
Robert Frost wrote a famous line, “Good fences make good neighbors.”4 In the poem where it appears, he is questioning that reality and asks, who are the walls or fences built to keep in and who are they walling out? The elevator, the stairwell, all the common spaces in our building were a blessing. Our home included passing by, greeting, and asking, “How are you?” and meaning it. On election day you could hear cheers and groans rising up from the windows below.
4 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44266/mending-wall
Not everyone voted the same way in our lobby or at the election booths. But we learned that after the vote, we still had the work of running our village together, and that impacted our everyday.
After, reciprocity, speaking out is essential to be a good neighbor. This is about noticing when harm is coming to one of your neighbors and speaking out. If your neighbor’s home is on fire, calling the fire department. If the policies of your government (local or national) are harming them, speaking out. If other people who live nearby are harassing them, speaking out. Our history is filled with examples of times where people have practiced this form of good neighboring and times where we have fallen short.
One example from Oregon was when parts of the West were declared a militarized zone after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The US government started internment camps for Japanese immigrants and American citizens of Japanese descent. Not enough people spoke out on behalf of their neighbors, and the policy was able to be implemented. It was successful because the rhetoric of the time fueled white fear and the dehumanization of a whole segment of the US population. Japanese Americans were incarcerated for no other reason than racial identity. They did not make any effort to figure out who might actually be involved in espionage for the Japanese government, they simply “swept the streets clean” of children, youth, and adults who had committed no crime.
Many neighbors eventually helped themselves to the property and belongings of Japanese families and individuals who lived next door. It was particularly painful when people returned home, for those who were able to return to their home, to see a familiar looking couch in their neighbor’s living room. Do they bring it up and risk the anger of that neighbor who stole their belongings? Do they remain silent about this and all the ways they were harmed? They were all told, “let it go and move on.”
How could the neighbors not see what Japanese residents had been through? In part, this was because there was a disinformation campaign which put out propaganda claiming people “enjoyed their time at camp.” But, how could they have lived so close for so long and never truly see one another? One answer is because white neighbors took advantage of their misfortune. These folks were not practicing the virtue of being a good neighbor, in fact they don’t fit the definition of neighbor at all.
Now, there were others who resisted, who spoke out, and who made a difference. One particularly moving story is that of Bob Fletcher who resisted and spoke out about the Japanese farmers he worked with.5 He testified that they were good people and that it made no sense to incarcerate them. When his neighbors were taken, Bob Fletcher quit his job. He proceeded to work three farms for three families while they were interned and kept only half the profits. He paid all of their mortgages and bills. He decided to sleep in a bunkhouse on Mr. Tsukamoto’s farm because he thought it wasn’t right to move into the main house even though Mr. Tsukamoto invited him to do just that.
The Tsukamoto family wondered what they would find upon their return. When these three families returned, they returned to homes, to working farms, and to bank accounts with money. What they found was a neighbor who reminded them of their worth.
Research shows that when you speak to people like Bob Fletcher or the woman who harbored Anne Frank, Miep Gies, they have an elevated beloved community sense of the ethic of being a good neighbor. They practice reciprocity, speaking out, and live and let live. They do it because it wouldn’t occur to them to do otherwise. They’ll say things like, “It is just what we do when we are neighbors.” Neighbors, in this sense, care for one another’s well-being. We speak out when a neighbor is being mistreated, and we don’t care if they are different from us in race, gender, sexuality, creed, class, or political party. That is what happens when we love our neighbors as ourselves. We do it for them, and we believe that our neighbors would do it for us.
This good neighbor orientation, plus the addition of laws which “restrain the heartless” as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, is what undergirds the fabric of our democracy.6 We aim for a democracy that is “self-government over all the people, by all the people, and for all the people,” in the words of Unitarian Minister Theodore Parker, who inspired Abraham Lincoln.7 (Lincoln circled those words in Parker’s sermon.)
This vision requires constant tending by everyone of us. As we heard in the story for all ages, Equality’s Call by Deborah Diesen, it is a matter of voting on election day and opening the vote to all people.8 And, it is a matter of voting in between election days with our speech and actions to promote a Portland, an Oregon, and United States where we resist messages and acts of hate and dehumanization and where we love all the neighbors in our nation through mutual reciprocity. It is about finally getting it – that all of us need all of us to survive and thrive with our humanity intact.
The opposite choice is also before us on the ballots and in the days between this coming Tuesday and the next election day. There are people and politicians enticing us to go down the road of isolation and dehumanization – where the spoils go to the violent victor, to the tyrant and those in their favor, or to the few – but we are NOT a tyranny, we are NOT a totalitarian government, we are NOT an oligarchy. We ARE a democracy here in the United States. We must work for that to become ever more so. We are also a part of a global village whether or not we are ready to see it.
We human beings aren’t isolated individuals or groups, but rather interconnected through mystery and miracle to the universe, to our earth, and to one another. None of us, or whatever groups or identities we carry with us, is here without the constant helpful intervention of others. So, let us remember that one good turn deserves another and cultivate the virtue of being and becoming a good neighbor. May it be so!
6 https://www.uua.org/ga/past/1966/ware
8 https://www.amazon.com/Equalitys-Call-Voting-Rights-America/dp/1534439587
Topics: Neighbor