Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
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I've long admired Fred Rogers. The more I learn about him, the more I admire him. I admire his focus, his thoughtfulness, his tenderness, his modeling of healthy masculinity, his loving pursuit of his neighbor.
In a society that doesn't practice what it preaches, it is easy to be lost. It tells us freedom, justice, and liberty for all, but then instead rewards and celebrates industry and uses might over right as an operating principle.
You want what I have?
You can take it as long as the laws approve. And this country habitually changes laws to benefit people who have more and strip from those who don't have the guns & bombs & the influence & the money. It serves landowners, corporations, lawmakers, law enforcers, the rich.
The American dream has the fence around it - the white picket fence to let others know what's ours and to inform them they need permission to enter. We have expressions like "good fences make good neighbors" rather than "mi casa es su casa."
It's not that we invented selfishness and self-interest. Jesus addressed this in his sermon on the mount. The question - “who is my neighbor?” - was essentially asking: how small can my neighborhood be? Who can I limit my love to?
Do you, like me, ask this so often?
Jesus in typical fashion responded with story because stories get through in ways that other forms of communication can't.
The story of the good Samaritan reveals that we are all each others’ neighbors, even the people our culture teaches us we ought to despise, hate, and look down on. In the story, the Samaritan, who is essentially a racial and religious bastard, and thus outcast from the Jewish community, was by far more loving, generous, and neighborly, even more so than the Jewish religious figures in the story. And thus, the good Samaritan was born.
Mirroring Jesus, Rogers flips this limiting question. Won’t you be my neighbor? And you, will you be my neighbor? How big can my neighborhood be?
Fred was a minister in disguise. He got the training - Presbyterian ordained - but didn't announce it, didn't flaunt it. He just went about his work - sharing what is in him - the love, the creativity, the leadership, the dynamism.
He did this despite his hurts, not to the exclusion of his hurts, but he included those. He was harmed as a youngster being excluded for being "different." He was sensitive. This was very painful. His hurts made him bigger not smaller, even though hurts never went away. Healing is like that - better. The hurt is transformed, some say transmuted, but it doesn't go away.
He was determined to let love be his guide. Who was his neighbor?
They say "hurt people hurt." A society determined to live autonomously will not thrive, even if the stock market says otherwise. A country full of hurt people will lead to a country that hurts people and has no issue bombing people and the natural world to oblivion or extracting all the resources it can from people and nature.
Such behavior are red flags of great unhealth. And societies can be unhealthy (e.g. unhealed generational trauma). You will see this in the rhetoric of politicians stoking the fear fires of fearful people.
But the truth is not all hurt people hurt.
Fred Rogers showed up to life doing his work - sharing the God gift in him. Speaking, and even singing, truth to power. There is congressional film to provide it.
143 was so important to him. A meditation. He checked every morning. His weight maintained constant over the years. 143 pounds. A message from God: I LOVE YOU.
If hurt people hurt, then healed people heal.
If hurt societies hurt, then healed societies heal.
What the world needs more than ever is healed people.
Thank you, Mr. Rogers.
Thank you, Jesus.
God help us.
143.
Won’t you be my neighbor?
Questions for Contemplation:
Who do you consider your neighbor?
Who are your models helping you live your most healed life?
What do you appreciate and what are you skeptical about the american dream?
What are you reminders that you are inherently loved and loveable?
May you always see the blessing, beloveds.
-esb