Who is My Neighbor?

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God is not our neighbor
by Chris E.W. Green

1.
We suffer, we seethe, 
Protest, invoke, fester, beg. 
Pray and pray and wait.

And wait and wait and -- 
nothing

2.
In the dark, God wonders why
We wait, why we ask
For him--
you have each other!

God is not our neighbor

3.
I am the man good as dead
In the road, the lurking 
Brigands and the hasty priests.

You, you are the stranger, showing
An alien kindness, the weary keeper
Waiting like my brother at the inn

God? Well, God is Jerusalem and Jericho,
And the treacherous road that binds them;
the ass that bears us, the inn 
(in which there's always room), 
and the coins that buy our stay.

God is the binding that binds all wounds.
God is the oil and the wine.

4.
God is not our neighbor, and cannot be,
Waits and prays for you, for me--
Samaritan, scapegoat, sinner, saint--
To find each other
In the dark

You are the one to bind my wounds.
Yours is the oil and the wine.