Chatting in the wee small hours at a party recently we fell into conversation with a psychotherapist. When a friend helpfully revealed I was at ‘vicar college’ , her reponse was immediate: ‘Change to psychotherapy while you have the time, if you are a vicar you’ll have to love your neighbour and that is too difficult.’ Had it been earlier in the evening I might have pointed out that as a Christian psychotherapist or Christian anything I would remain obliged to at least try and love my neighbour, however difficult.

Loving your neighbour is one of those principles that is generally accepted to be a good thing in theory. But I have to admit in practice it is quite hard. We have reasonably near neighbours who between their kids, pets, electric tools and loud phone-calls outdoors make our garden pretty much unusable. We are on nodding terms but underneath the thin veneer politeness there is a (probably mutual) seething hostility.

Last night at an event hosted by Islamic Relief to celebrate their 30 years of work and launch Ramadan, Professor Timothy Winter gave a brilliant exegisis of Surah 41 with a particular focus on verse (or ayah) 34: “And not equal are the good deed and the bad. Repel [evil] by that [deed] which is better; and thereupon the one whom between you and him is enmity [will become] as though he was a devoted friend”  Or as the Bible says is 1 Peter 3 v 9: “Don’t repay evil for evil. Don’t retaliate with insults when people insult you. Instead, pay them back with a blessing. That is what God has called you to do, and he will bless you for it.”

So just as Professor Winter urged Muslims to respond to Islamophobia with mildness, kindness and patience so to I need to work on my response to my actual neighbour (who are clearly not evil, merely inconsiderate). I don’t know why it is as hard as it seems to be to put the theory into practice.

When we first moved in here our Muslim neighbours whom we now know quite well – offered us food and friendship before we offered them anything. They had no knowing what attitudes they might encounter from us but they were prepared to take the risk. I hope they feel that risk paid off!

I wonder what I can risk in order to offer some genuine friendship to the family down the road? How do you offer friendship when you don’t feeel friendly? Do you need to like your neighbour in order to love them?

Thinking over these questions during a night of caffeine-induced imsonnia, it dawned on me that the answers probably lie in Jesus’s commandment to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. (If the constant sound of a dustbin lid being banged on concrete counts as persecution.) Theologian Ann Morisy says prayer is a rehearsal for the moment we are called to perform so I hope if I can pray enough, I might have the lines I need when the opportunity to perform arises.

But if not, it is good to know if I don’t sort out the relationships on our street – at least I can become a psychotherapist!

Its odd how you mainly hear what you want to hear or what you are already thinking but  the main things I took away from the Mission Apprentice Day held in Birmingham were that wasting time with people is never a waste of time and it is easier to build relationships shoulder to shoulder or side-by-side than face to face.

(Mission Apprentices are people who have been attached to 7 churches across the city exploring how to connect churches with their communities in a number of ways. The two year programme has been carefully evaluated and the  findings were presented on Friday.)

I ended up having the same conversation at the Dave Andrews day in Birmingham held last month which inspired lots of us to think again about our involvement in communities. We talked how in relationships with teenagers great conversations happen when you are driving them somewhere, cooking, playing football – sit them down for a serious talk and you’ll get nowhere. Somehow conversation is much easier when its not the sole purpose of a meeting. Shoulder to shoulder is far more comfortable for us than face to face.

When Dave was last here about three years ago he talked about the differnce between the Yiddish words ‘schmoozing’ and ‘maching’. He said we need both but one is informal and involves barbecues, coffee shops and pubs. The other is more formal and involves starting groups or new initiatives. He added that schmoozing happens most when we are young adults and then disappears when family and work pressures kick in so middle-age is generally a time of maching. Schmoozing often begins again when we retire but in the times between we need to nurture it as it generates deeper personal relationships. You can read more about this in his book, Out and Out: Way-Out Community Work.

I think some of the success stories we heard from the Mission Apprentices on Friday arose because they had time to schmooze. I also wondered in the back of my mind if vicars generally get sucked into maching leaving a deacon free to schmooze – I will test that out over the next few years but I hope its true – bring on the coffee shops and barbecues!

Our next round of Near Neighbours grants open on Monday. In the last round we were able to support around 140 projects in Birmingham that brought people together both to mach and schmooze. We have got some new areas now and some ongoing support available to all our old areas. There’s a lot going on in this city at the moment so I really hope the grants are well used and people of different faiths can find the time, that will never be wasted, to hang out, shoulder to shoulder with their neighbour and continue to build the trusting relationships that knit our city together and deepen our appreciation of one another.