Family

But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he was moved with compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him.

     I love my Nebraska family through Facebook.  Like, Like, Love, Love, Wow, Sad.  The secret to maintaining a loving, long-distance relationship through technology such as social media and phone calls is to ignore political commentary.  I do not react to their political posts, and if something political should come up during a phone call, I change the topic.  How are the kids, your health, your home?

     This is not cowardly.  This is practical.  It is a strategy common to many relatives of Fox News watchers.

     Writing poems, especially ones about family members, has turned out to be effective love-of-neighbor training.  This rigorous exercise usually begins when a memory of what a loved-one said or did or planned bubbles up from wherever memories are stored and then gets associated with a broader social trend.  Often, it is not a complimentary association.

     At first, the family poems unnerved me.  What if a poem had the power to hurt feelings or harm a relationship?  Did I dare make the poem public?  Publishing the family poems became an option once I became clear on the fact that the poem was not about my loved ones in their entirety.  One poem could never capture all that they mean to me now and have meant to me in the past, nor can it express my belief in the future potential of my loved ones as they are transformed by grace.  This one thing about them that became the poem does not communicate all of my feelings or opinions about them.

      Whenever a societal annoyance gets personified and a loved one becomes the face of something larger, I do not have any difficulty remembering that this person is more than the topic of the poem.  I have other memories and experiences that ensure my opinion of family members is more than one dimensional.  

     The poem does not represent an entire character.  It is a work of art with a narrow focus on one detail.  That tight perspective draws attention to a societal issue that I want to comment on.  The poem is not a critique of my family, it is an observation of the times in which I live.

          Transferring that realization from my family to the annoying stranger is becoming more automatic.  Just as one incident does not define my family neighbor, so too one annoying encounter should not define the stranger.  I try to stay open to the possibility that my next encounter with this person will be more positive, that this stranger neighbor has a better self, one that I might find easier to love.

     So, I try to love in hopes of.  I confess that I have not achieved the more divine perspective, to love in spite of.