Challenging times have a way of showing us who we are. At FCNL, when the political landscape gets tough, we ground in our values. FCNL’s “Love Thy Neighbor, No Exceptions” message has long served as an important foundation for our community and our work.
The principle is now reflected in the first of our core values, “radically love,” which states: “Faithfully build relationships, across even deep divides. We trust that in embracing the creative potential of differences and nonviolent conflict, the world we seek can emerge.” At FCNL, we seek to live into our call to love our neighbors with integrity in both what we do and how we do it.
In late January I joined hundreds of faith leaders in a church sanctuary on Capitol Hill for the prayer service that served as an opening for a Faith in Action lobby day against ICE funding. The service included reflections from a rabbi, an imam, and a minister about the importance their faith traditions place on neighbors. Each faith has distinct considerations about who our neighbors are and what our responsibilities are to them.
I say and believe “Love Thy Neighbor” regularly in the context of my work and my personal advocacy initiatives, so it feels second nature to me. The Faith in Action prayer service invited me to reflect on the discernment required of each of us to determine exactly how we are led to answer the call to love our neighbors.
There are myriad ways to put our love into action. Individually we cannot do all of them; the world we seek takes a village to build.
In Minneapolis, local organizing is literally happening by neighborhood, and that is working effectively for them. Friends in DC have traveled to Minneapolis in recent weeks to bear witness and amplify their voices. They consider those in need across the country to be their neighbors. And when I write letters in support of people in Ukraine or Venezuela or Gaza or Sudan, I am also clear that those are my neighbors in Spirit. If we truly love our neighbors, we are called to act solidarity with them, wherever they are.
There are myriad ways to put our love into action. Individually we cannot do all of them; the world we seek takes a village to build. I believe we must be each other’s village, each other’s neighbors. FCNL is often asking our community to make calls, send emails, and drop by congressional offices. Some members of our village may be able to take all of those actions, and some may be able to take only one action at the moment and need to rely on neighbors to take others. We may even be in a position to recruit new neighbors to be part of our village.
FCNL’s core values call us to act with integrity and engage with perseverance. Howard Thurman said, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Each one of us can inspire those around us when we take the actions that we are led to take. The world we seek needs all of us and the diverse ways we love our neighbors.
