By now, many of you have heard of the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. It’s certainly an interesting case, and political mouth pieces from both sides have been doing what they do best—vomiting up an impressive amount of useless words. Bi-partisan word-vomiting. It’s not that I don’t care about opinions and editorials and so forth. I do. I want, and need, to hear what others think. But it just gets frustrating hearing the same fallacious arguments over and over.

Thankfully, whenever I need a breath of fresh air, I can also look in at what one of my e-friends has to say. Thomas Turner, blogger at Everday Liturgy, is almost always that fresh air. Thomas writes:

“What this incident defines for me is not whether we are racist or not, whether police act stupidly or not, or whether arresting someone for disorderly conduct on their own property is ethical or constitutional. There is only one thing for certain in this mess, one problem that stands out above the quagmire: we don’t know who are neighbors are.”

The fact of the matter is that Henry’s next-door neighbor didn’t recognize who he was. Think about that for a minute. She didn’t know what her very neighbor looked like. This isn’t just against her. This is an indictment on both of them. Even more so, it’s an indictment against us all. Thom continues:

“Not knowing the person who lives across the street from you, that’s just sad. But that’s the state of affairs in all of America (not just the suburbs). We have become anti-neighbor. That’s just not a cultural fault. We are supposed to treat everyone as a neighbor. We as a people are failing as a culture to follow the golden rule on a daily basis in part because we are not mean, rude, belligerent, or nasty. It’s far worse. We are indifferent and apathetic. We are lukewarm neighbors, ones who cannot even stop to wave or chit chat.”

Though I’ve quoted quite a bit, I suggest going and reading the entire article: Won’t You Be My Neighbor?