Neighorhoodliness

So I have been thinking a lot about what it looks like for me to be fully rooted with others in the place God has put me. As I dug up blackberry bushes, weeds, and vine maples in my back yard I realized how these diverse and competing plants had actually worked together underground to create a complex root system that made a strong foundation. They had interweaved so well together that it was a huge pain in my butt to get rid of them, each one was surprisingly strong but was even harder to remove because of all the other roots surrounding it.

I believe that we are called to be rooted, to have a theology of place, to live with and love people as neighbors rather than passing through life like a tourist. Our story needs a clear setting, a place from which all the events and relationships in our lives find their orientation. Our story needs a unifying connection we call neighborhood, a place where relationships make sense because life is really being lived together.

For a long time the Christian heros were wandering evangelist, revivalist, and itinerant preachers. I think we need to look to the new heros all around us, to those embedded in neighborhoods on the margins where they love the people, to the new monastic movement, to people like John Perkins and Shane Claiborne, and most of all I think our faith is calling out to rediscover what it means that Christ has sent us to live out the fullness of our human existence in the lives we have been given. We are each uniquely and beautifully created, each reflecting the creator in some way, and I believe we are all in need of the messy process of becoming rooted with those around us. The Spirit of God is renewing the call to the Christian virtue of Neighborhoodliness, and it is beautiful!