At the end of last month, I attended the Religion and media Conference at Methodist Central Hall in Westminster. The keynote speech was given by the Archbishop of York on how religion is central to life and vital for rebuilding trust in the media. He said, ’We prize honesty, truth-telling, kindness, the importance of penitence and the opportunity to start again….and loving our neighbours is an absolutely non-negotiable core value.’ Non-negotiable! That struck home. It’s easy, isn’t it to make excuses why not to love our neighbours….
Where we live, we only technically have one set of neighbours and this little family are delightful. The four-year-old boy, is getting to know our movements and seems to wait by the kitchen window until he sees our car draw up in the drive, then he opens the front door and rushes out to greet us – enthusiastically recalling events of his day so speedily that we can’t catch everything he says in his ‘English as a second language’! On one recent hot evening, while watering the plants at 10 pm, my partner was surprised by a ‘hello!’ and looked up to find mini neighbour at his bedroom window eager to have a conversation.
The Archbishop went on to say,” You don’t get to choose your neighbour, and whether you like it or not, your neighbour is the person who is alongside you right now and the people we have been called to live with.” I wonder, if we could choose, who we would choose and what would that say about us. I’m not sure I would have chosen a mixed East European family – I may have been frightened of not being able to communicate freely or the confusion over different dates for Christmas and other traditions – but I’m so glad I didn’t have to choose and that God sent this amazing little family to us for us to love and learn from.