The readings for today seem to be asking us to prepare ourselves for the time to come. We are to prepare in this season with fasting, with mourning, with prayer, and with reconciliation. These directions all seem to have a temporal aspect to them. We are preparing ourselves, through time, for something, for the moment to come, for the kairos, the time of action. What does it mean to be prepared? In my experience growing up Catholic, that term, preparation, was always put to the singular person and pushed toward the area of sin. The preparation time of Lent was for the preparation time of your soul, for the second coming. Lent was a time to rid yourself of your worst habits. Looking back, not only do I now realize that the parts of myself I was told to get rid of (sexuality, empowerment, plain old desire) are actually beautiful expressions of divine love, but also that none of these were actually preparing me for the time to come here on Earth.

As I grew older, and came into more contact with liberatory Catholic and political groups, I came to see this lenten preparation differently. Liberation theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez guided and encouraged me to go deeper down these paths. I recently came across his short essay “The Hermeneutic of Hope,” and I found myself reflecting on the ways in which my preparation for the time to come was always individualized. I was trying to get myself ready, and even when I pushed that preparation towards liberative goals, I was still individualizing them. For example, I vowed to become more educated on queer issues in the legislature, read more working class history, get more confidence to talk to people at book readings, etc. But in his essay, Gutiérrez talks about making neighbors with people. He says,“When we approach other persons, we are meeting neighbors; we are converting a person to neighbor, and I become, myself, the neighbor of this person” (8).

Now, I know that the concept of a neighbor is easy to turn into nothing but an idea, a nice thing to think about, however vaguely. But for Gutiérrez, and all other liberation theologians, this concept of a neighbor is a material reality. It is a reality of living with others and welcoming others in as neighbors – and through trust and relationship – allowing ourselves to be converted into neighbors, too. This is the preferential option for the poor, where communities of neighbors are created together to fight against the grave injustice and evil of poverty. After all, it is organized communities that we need to fight against the vastness of evils such as poverty. This includes the vastness of other evils, too, such as fossil fuel extraction, immoral and ruthless immigration laws, patriarchal abuse, white supremacy, and many others. While these evils are huge, and have created complicated systems, they are dismantled through real, organized communities of neighbors. As the world decomposes around us, we do not need more self control, or to rid ourselves of bad habits – we need neighbors. 

So, for Lent this year, let us reflect on the ways in which we are neighboring to those around us, and especially to those oppressed by the systems of power in our society. Let us turn our lenten preparation to the suffering in the world, and the unraveling of society we see around us, and let us seek out neighbors to face these realities together. Let us make neighbors with all peoples and persons. May we finally realize that in order to become neighbors with someone else, we are participating in the vulnerable act of allowing ourselves to be changed. This act of allowing ourselves to change, and participating in changing power structures, is vital. If we still try to become neighbors through the capitalist, white supremacist, patriarchal, and homophobic landscapes we function within, we will just replicate those evils in our attempts at neighboring. Let us be transformed this Lent, indeed! Yes, this is the preparation that we need to be doing. This is the blowing of the trumpet in Zion from the first reading from Joel. This is the preparation for the anointed time that will bring upon salvation, spoken about in the second reading from 2 Corinthians.

“Behold now is a very acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” 

Take a moment to think about being neighbors with people who you don’t understand; people who make you feel uncomfortable; people with different tastes, desires, and priorities than you. Think about how you would interact with them. Think about the power dynamics between yourself and them. Be very honest. It’s likely that these dynamics are unequal in some way. It’s very possible that you have more power in the dynamics than you realize you do.

What does your neighborhood or community need to do to allow more horizontal interaction between neighbors, the ability to meet each other on more equal terms? What power do people enter into interactions with or without? How does this shape the ability of all members of the community to have autonomy, self-determination, and respect? What makes you feel respected? 

Whatever the answers to these questions are, do you show those same things to your neighbor? How might they feel respect and autonomy in ways that are different from you? Is there a way you could ask your neighbors and community members how they best feel respected and valued?

Winona LaDuke is an Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) organizer, and community leader. She has spent her life making neighbors with the people around her, preparing them for the future, and asking settler communities to be neighbors to the Indigenous people whose lands they live on.

LaDuke’s work focuses on moving into a new world, with a just economy to support it. Her projects include the White Earth Land Recovery Project, with branches that include food sovereignty and access to traditional foods for Native people, and reclaiming pieces of land stolen from the Anishinaabe. She also founded 8th Fire Solar, an Anishnaabe-run solar panel company; Winona’s Hemp and and Heritage Farm, growers and manufacturers of hemp products and Indigenous foods; and co-founded Honor the Earth, doing Indigenous and environmental advocacy.

In addition to this economic and community work, LaDuke has spent the better part of the last decade opposing Canadian oil company Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline, which creates a new pipeline corridor through delicate wetlands and ecosystems that the Anishnaabe rely on, as well as cutting under the Mississippi River. 

A tireless advocate, not only for the community she has made, but also for all people’s wellbeing, LaDuke’s great neighboring can be summed up in this quote from the 8th Fire Solar website:

According to Anishinaabe prophecies, we are in the time of the Seventh Fire. At this time…we have a choice between a path that is well-worn and scorched, and a path that is green and unworn. If we move toward the green path, the Eighth Fire will be lit and people will come together to make a better future.  

On the 29th of January 2023, a group of migrant asylum seekers who had been staying in the Watson Hotel near New York City’s Columbus Circle started to be evicted from their city-allotted rooms. The only option they were left with was to take a bus to the Red Hook Ferry Terminal, where the heat barely worked and the city had set up hundreds of cots, placed three feet apart from each other. 

Seeing the conditions, some migrants got right back on the bus and went back to the Watson Hotel. They shared videos of the ferry terminal, and began to organize together. They became neighbors to each other. These were men who had only met each other recently, but all through their shared journey of migration, had empowered each other to demand better and just conditions that the city was content not to provide. They decided to sleep outside the Watson Hotel in protest. Mutual aid groups from around the city helped to provide warm food, warm clothes, and other cold weather gear as needed. It became a lively section of the street. The group of migrant men would often gather to make collective and consensus decisions, and then would break out into a chant in Spanish, roughly translated as “we stay here.” 

While the NYPD eventually conducted a sweep, forcing the men to leave, the migrant men radically displayed the possibilities of neighboring, and what collective action can provide. 

Read more about the situation in NYC here: https://gothamist.com/news/standoff-outside-midtown-hotel-where-migrants-refuse-to-go-to-inhumane-1000-bed-shelter-in-brooklyn

Donate to Red Hook Mutual Aid here to help ensure migrants have access to needed clothes and other essential items: https://opencollective.com/red-hook-bk-mutual-aid/projects/asylum-seekers-in-red-hook