Won't You Be My Neighbor

I just returned home from watching the movie Mr. Roger’s. My tears began to flow in the opening scene as Tom Hanks brought Mr. Rogers, who I remember on a small t.v., to life on a jumbo screen before me. The music, the pacing and his calming voice freed my emotions from the little black boxes they have been stored in over the past few months. As I write this blog my daughter’s, who were two young for the PBS show back in the day, are singing: Its a beautiful day in the neighborhood. It’s a beautiful day for a neighbor. Won’t you be mine. Won’t you be mine.

I think my movie experience resonated so deeply with me today because I finished a manuscript for a book on Love yesterday. The working title is The Love Project. The book explores Jesus teaching about the good neighbor - also known as the Good Samaritan. So after studying the Dueteronomic instruction: Love the Lord Your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and the addition Jesus made…. and love your neighbor as yourself, I realized that Mr. Roger’s show lived out God’s greatest commandment. And I didn’t realize that until today. I think Mr. Rogers was one of the greatest evangelist’s of his time.

I am profoundly affected by Mr. Roger’s testimony. He encouraged hard conversations and held space, literally investing precious dollars by holding television airways silent, so that we could feel. In the movie there is a scene where Mr. Roger’s asks for one minute of silence to allow another character to feel. Today, I am challenged to give myself quiet to feel, grow and heal. I need more than sixty seconds but I will accept the minute and take more.

This Thanksgiving I have given myself the gift of a week off from my therapy job. I am encouraged that time off, down time, and quiet are gifts to myself. And they are gifts to others as well.

My health as a human being is shaped by this act of kindness. The kindness is the gift of time. It is the gift of not being defined by what I do or produce but rather by who I am.

God’s greatest command is to LOVE Him, to LOVE others and to LOVE ourselves as God loved us. There is truly nothing new under the sun. Mr. Rogers was saying what Jesus taught when he revolutionized Moses instructions at the dawn of civilization. The teaching leaves me with a choice. Will I embrace my own feelings? Will I hold space for uncomfortable emotions? Will I do my own hard work? Because as Mr. Roger’s taught me. If I can sit in the uncomfortable swirl of emotions and ask the hard questions it will allow me to sit with other’s when they have their own difficult emotional experiences. This process will give me the ability to ask one of the most life changing questions of our time: Won’t You Be My Neighbor?