Just read this post on your blog. A very good post and very convicting. Thanks.

I like your blog. I will be back.

(I responded to the comment which you left on my blog. Thanks for coming by).

…

I found you via Scot McNight’s mention of this post.

I’ve just read the syllabus for the ethics course I’m taking at NPTS this term. The prof has assigned a “putting on Christ” project. We must choose: 1) befriend a “saint” (read a saint, prophet or biblical author and journal about it.); 2) voluntary poverty or similar; 3) serve your neighbor.

A “serve neighbor” project was the first the enter my mind. My spiritual director has asked me to join her, offering spiritual direction to inmates at the county jail. She visits the men. There is a waiting list. The invitation haunts me. She’s being patient with me.

Just after I thought of the jail, I thought, “I could read the prophets daily and journal my insights and responses! Yes. I think I’ll read the prophets daily and write about my forming friendship with Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah and Nahum. Yes. I’ll read and write. I’m a good reader. I’m a good writer. I can do this. Yes, I can.”

Now you have me thinking. “Can I offer myself in spiritual conversation to male criminals far outside my native culture? Can I? Will I?

We’ll see.

Gracias,
Katie

I think so many of us are tempted to use our “outsider” status to justify doing nothing…which is precisely what makes the Samaritan story so powerful as Jesus’ response. At least in North American culture, there are so many divisions and such great fear and mistrust between groups of people–it gives us such a brilliant opportunity to be the countercultulral followers Jesus envisions. I am certain that you are running into many of these same challenges in your ministry–God bless you there!

Erika

Thanks for your example and the story at Ralph’s. I’m challenged and inspired. In my setting I feel like an outsider which in some ways mirrors your place of ministry. And yet it seems that when we are most like the outsider, loving our neighbor, that it has the most impact. I’m thinking of the story of the Samaritan, clearly an outsider, which was actually given as a story in response to the question you mention at the top of your post–”And who is my neighbor!”

My heart and mind are whirling in the ironies and implications of the Biblical injunction as well as your post.