Hi Friends,

Before I share about David, I want to share something I read recently from the author Henri Nouwen*:

To become neighbors is to bridge the gap between people. As long as there is a distance between us and we cannot look into one another’s eyes, all sorts of false ideas and images arise. We give them names, make jokes about them, cover them with our prejudices, and avoid direct contact. We think of them as enemies. We forget that they love as we love, care for their children as we care for ours, become sick and die as we do. We forget that they are our brothers and sisters and treat them as objects that can be destroyed at will.
Only when we have the courage to cross the road and look in one another’s eyes can we see there that we are children of the same God and members of the same human family.

                                                                                                          Bread for the Journey, “Bridging the Gap Between People”

Regardless of religious affiliation (or lack thereof), this was a good reminder of the things I so easily forget. “[T]hey love as we love…become sick and die as we do.”

*Nouwen, a prolific author and Catholic priest, is probably most remembered as the pastor of L’Arche Daybreak in Canada, a community where people with disabilities and their assistants live together as family. He wrote an amazing account of his time there in the book Adam after the death of his disabled friend with whom he lived.