...the hardest spiritual work in the worldis to love the neighbor as the self--
to encounter another human being not as someone
you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll,
convince or control, but simply as someone
who can spring you from the prison of yourself,
if you will allow it.
All you have to do it recognize another you "out there"--your other self in the world--
for whom you may care as instinctively as you care for yourself.
To become that person, even for a moment,
is to understand what it means to die to yourself.
This can be as frightening as it is liberating.
It may be the only real spiritual discipline there is.
Barbara Taylor Brown in An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith
After all these years, the above finally gives me a handle on what it means to love my neighbor. Summarily, "Be who you are." It again reminds me of Woody Allen's "99% of life is just showing up." Theologians call it The Incarnation. I'm trying to leave it up to Jesus and the Holy Spirit to further flesh it out for and to and through me.
