Unapproachable - A poem about loving your neighbor

Unapproachable

By Jeff McNair

If where we end up,

is based on where we have been,

then what is pervasive,

reflects on how we begin.

The greatest is love.

It is what we sing of.

Sung of so often one might think love is trite,

not the battle demanding in which we must fight.

And we are losing.

Love is taught as unapproachable.

It’s the thing of saints, not me.

Expectations mean, and lean

in the hope, of love seen.

Is the subject of love obvious?

If where we began was right,

the target would be in sight

and we not oblivious.

The evident target is unseen.

My mirror blocks my view.

I step over someone wondering,  “Who is this neighbor I should love?”

That’s been asked before, and answered.

Could love resurrect with a ride, a couple bucks and a hotel?

You assume outcomes about you and he, but don’t know for sure.

Love feigned at its core, when demanded, slinks by

to play at love to an audience who fears it. Unapproachable.

Seriously?

Must I worry and scurry around,

bound by love’s fetter and forcing action

toward those who don’t get better?

Constipated by wealth, I go away sad

reeling from the frightening answer to, “What must I do?”

No pervasive love expectation

because it’s amazing, saintly, unapproachable.

My choices challenged,

I agree neighbors should be loved.

But my self-standards are too low.

I think my Bible tells me so.

My loveless leaders confuse me.

Guiding Sunday school to seminary,

they have fed my fears with ease about love

and fed my ease with fears about love?

Should I love my neighbor as myself?

No, it is unapproachable.

 “You don’t have to love that neighbor.”

I take my ease among the reproachable.

I learn no neighbor love demanded.

God’s love for me is confusing.

I love myself unchanged and unchallenged

because neighbor love is just a high ideal, unapproachable.

So, I do nothing.