but who is my neighbor?

 If you've been part of a church for more than a year, you've heard the story of the Good Samaritan.

It's a parable in response to a question. A story to explain a complicated response. A proclamation against religious appearances. A social reckoning. Insight into the despised sector of society.

Each night we pray as a family over dinner. First, we thank Jesus for providing His body in our place to pay for our sins. We take the command literally to remember Him every time we eat and drink, moving communion from a sacred Sunday ritual to an incarnational habit. Little Love squeezes his hands together and scrunches up his eyes to keep them closed, standing on his chair and leaning over the food.

Next, we pray that God would help us love. We ask for more grace to love God more. We ask for strength to love each other well. We ask for God's help to love our neighbors, the people we like and the people we don't like.

The parable of the Good Samaritan can be simplified to that last stanza:

We are to love the people we don't like.

The Samaritan wouldn't have liked the beaten up Jewish man in Jesus' hypothetical story. The priest should have. The Levite should have. But they didn't. The Samaritan is called Good for valuing the humanity (God's image) in the battered man on the road side.

I journalize and editorialize the adventures in our literal neighborhood regularly. I've written a lot recently about loving our neighbors. To that point, this story challenges my inclusive definition of neighbor.

You see, the month before a polarizing election and two months into the fiasco of remote learning...I have a few people that I don't like. I find myself interacting with more and more Samaritans. I find myself exhausted, running late, and much like the priest in Jesus' story. Or worse, many days it feels like I'm the Jewish sojourner, shoved off the donkey and left for dead.

And now, thousands of years removed from the first telling of this story, there is advice for my unfriendly encounters. Maybe the Samaritan tears off their face mask and tells me I'm a baby-killer if I won't vote for Trump and Culp. Maybe the Samaritan lights my car on fire for saying there are "good police". Maybe the Samaritan calls those same police because there's a gathering of more than 5 people in my garage. Maybe it doesn't matter why I don't like them. They're still my neighbor.

Jesus extends the teaching of the Torah that loving your neighbor is larger than your comfortable family-safe circle. Jesus invites us to love the "other". Jesus calls us out of our monoculture into human community. For Jesus came to unite all humanity to the Father. And for that, I am grateful.

valuing life

 A year ago, the dead little one inside me left.

I've been pregnant for eight of the last twelve months to children ushered into the Father's arms instead of my own. Four possibilities. Four opportunities. Four rounds of devastation.

I have become familiar with loss.

And through this loss, my empathy has been strengthened. My patience grows with parents struggling to support their children, as I was unable to foster mine. I long for the day when my black sisters have the same hope of safe birth experiences in my own country. My heart breaks as every new murder headline is more than a hashtag, but a family and community devastated with violence. Loss.

Over 200,000 families have experienced loss this year, too, just because of COVID-19. Each time I wash my hands, each time I faithfully wear my mask, I pray for the families lamenting loved ones. I remember my babies each time someone tries to tell me that "the schools should just be open because kids don't even get the virus." I want to ask, "who have you lost?"

I'm only a year into this mama-identity marked by loss.

But loss and inequality are constantly shoved into my consciousness. This week, those I love are again talking about abortion and "pro-life" ideals to make reproductive care harder to access. It's not extreme to consider a scenario in the near-future where my own D&C surgeries would become illegal or prohibitively expensive with national law changes. 

It's hard, too, to watch major political figures who shunned medical advice be offered the best health care, paid with tax dollars. We paid $7,000 to lose Whisper. We paid $1,000 to lose Glimmer. We pay up to $500 every month for my on-going trauma counseling. Out of pocket. With no help from insurance or government. Will pro-life judges help my family when we lose beautiful embryos or fetuses?

I am well acquainted with injustice. I have lived in puppet democracies, visited for-profit theme parks of "elected" presidents, and always been grateful to return home to the "Land of the Free." Becoming a Loss Mama has changed my perception of my homeland. I see images of babies like mine used to stir emotions for fundraising with NO REGARD for traumatized mothers. I hear rhetoric that claims religious piety used to slander women, even coming from the lips of women.

I am tired of weeping. I want to see change. I want to see the Church rise to this opportunity and love women through loss. Love women regardless. Listen to women, like Jesus did. Value life at every stage, for everyone.

I pray my babies did not die in vain, that I may live and love well as their legacy.