What does it mean to be a neighbor? That was the central question of Wednesday’s interfaith prayer breakfast at Family of Christ Lutheran Church in Felida.
The Southwest Washington Interfaith Coalition, a group of around 30 faith leaders that meet monthly at Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center, aims to hold the breakfast annually. It didn’t happen last year because the group couldn’t find a place to have the gathering.
Vancouver Mayor Tim Leavitt said that in order to be a good neighbor he goes by the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
“Your choice to set aside differences in beliefs, dissimilar traditions and variations of faith — the very core of who you are — in order to grow a collective effort that was designed to inspire community and encourage justice, it’s really remarkable. And, it shouldn’t be, but it is,” Leavitt said, addressing the dozens of people who attended the breakfast Wednesday morning. “So many of the concerns, issues and true problems that we face each day could be remedied if more people would make this choice.”
Khalid Khan, who’s part of the interfaith coalition, is on the board of trustees for the Islamic Society of Southwest Washington and lives in Felida. He and his wife regularly share food with their next-door neighbors, and the other day Khan said he mowed part of his neighbors’ lawn while mowing his own. Khan, who recited from a book of Friday sermons, said Islam emphasizes the rights of neighbors.
“You are not a Muslim … if you go to bed with a full stomach and your neighbor is hungry,” Khan said. “If you make a sandwich, make a little bit more so you can share it with your neighbor.”
When the Founding Fathers set up the country, they didn’t set it up as a Judeo-Christian republic, Khan said, but a godly republic.
“Which means people of all faiths and no faith would come together, live together and prosper together,” Khan said. “(The Founding Fathers) were really intellectual giants, and they had a worldview which was very different from some of our current leaders. The current leaders do not match up with that intellectual level.”
Jackie Stone, who is transgender, knows all too intimately the divisive political chatter surrounding transgender bathrooms, a controversy that she says dehumanizes a minority group.
“We’ve been fighting this in this country ever since the beginning, haven’t we?” said Stone, a Vancouver resident who heads the Portland-area group Northwest Gender Alliance. “The No. 1 key to overcoming barriers is education, sharing our story, letting people get to know who you are.”
Stone grew up in the Jehovah’s Witness community, and her father came from a racist family, she said. So, when a black family joined the congregation, Dad wasn’t happy at first. Eventually, through getting to know the family, he came to a realization: “ ‘You know what, they’re just like us. They can’t figure out their wives, their kids drive them crazy, they struggle to make a living. They’re just like us!’ I almost expected him to say, ‘How dare they be just like us,’ ” Stone said.
Stone has found success leading classes and lectures on what it means to be transgender. She encourages people to be welcoming and said there’s power in simply saying “hello.”
A few years ago, Adam Kravitz’s neighborhood was between 78th and 99th streets in Hazel Dell, where he was homeless. He would fly signs at offramps and onramps, and patrolled dumpsters.
“There was a breaking point when I realized that I was OK and I lived in God’s house,” said Kravitz, who now heads homeless advocacy organization Outsiders Inn. “I never had a relationship with God until I lived outside, until I had to survive, until I separated myself from the rest of society. I lived day-to-day with the scrutiny of my neighbors.”
Those neighbors were primarily other homeless people and the employees at gas stations and grocery stores he frequented.
“I quickly realized that because I was going to be scrutinized so often and because I was part of the neighborhood that I had to have a code. I could not lie, I could not steal, I could not cheat, no matter what I thought the world owed me,” Kravitz said. “They got to know that I had rules and that I followed them.”
Sometimes he would write messages on signs to make people think differently about homeless people.
“I would fly a sign that said, ‘Have a nice day.’ I didn’t want nothing from you except for you to have a nice day. I actually ticked a few people off because they had to slow down to read my sign, and then they called to complain and then the cops came. I had to explain to the cops that I was telling people to have a nice day.”
Outsiders Inn hosts monthly meetings of the Unhoused Residents Association at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in west Vancouver. Although the homeless aren’t considered a neighborhood association because they don’t have geographic bounds, the group meets to discuss issues and interests of the homeless community.
The Rev. Gwen Morgan, who leads the interfaith coalition and manages spiritual care at Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center, closed the breakfast with a benediction: “May we continue to welcome every neighbor and every person in our community wherever we go.”
The next planned communal gathering of the Southwest Washington Interfaith Coalition is an interfaith Thanksgiving eve service to be held at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Vancouver.
