I have heard several times in my life, and from various people, about the importance of borderless faith, but I am learning so much more is required to at least begin to make progress.

Much more challenging, and maybe more important, I am learning (slowly), is borderless willingness.

Given how easy it is to identify and pursue the most seemingly comfortable path forward in any given moment, it is worth considering the results of decisions made on such a basis, comparing them with those made from a willingness to do whatever is most helpful, and learning.

Several years ago, in the course of a search for opportunities to serve, I was asked to do community development work in a neighborhood familiar to my family (although not to me).

Not only adjacent to a street where my great-grandparents lived for many decades, the assigned neighborhood was one where they had seen – and experienced – profound, important, and, sometimes, painful, change.

Although historic transformation of the community was well-documented, it was not well-understood, really, and involved much more violence than at least seemed to be acknowledged in discussions about revitalization.

Being from Scotland, where, I believe, her family owned and operated a bed and breakfast, my great-grandmother did what was most natural in blooming where she was planted in a lovely, but, eventually, tumultuous community. Devoted to lifting other people up, this might involve furnishing a struggling family’s home in exchange for musical lessons for her children, or welcoming other newcomers.

But, once crime became severe, including a number of terrible attacks on widows in their 80s and 90s, my great-grandmother arguably had no choice but to leave, despite what I believe could be probably termed a borderless willingness to stay and serve.

On the Inner City

It is beginning to seem like almost every post on this blog is going to at least reference my experience with the Larry King Live team at CNN.

One memory of this that has stood out most starkly is the feeling of being pressured to move quite far into what I considered to be the distant suburbs of Atlanta and, while noticing and appreciating the grandeur and considerable luxury with which I was suddenly surrounded (although I could hardly afford it), feeling totally wrong about this. Although I had not yet become a terribly engaged neighbor in my former community, where I had loved my affordable life in a downtown area considered less safe, I had still felt a much greater sense of purpose and usefulness there.

Ironically, as I had agreed to rent this apartment under pressure by a man with whom I did not feel ready to move in, while it was remote geographically, it was the inner city of one of the most difficult challenges of my life.

As I attempt to apply a more borderless willingness to address problems in the present, I notice that the more directly I face obstacles, and try to avoid dawdling in less productive and meaningful suburbs of thought and action, the more I feel I am able to help both myself and others. I am grateful for the examples of heroes who measured their progress not according to geography or outward success alone, but by inward growth. (I am learning a little, I believe, from Joseph’s emphasis of his continued relatedness to his brothers in the New Living Translation of the Bible: “I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into slavery in Egypt. But don’t be upset, and don’t be angry with yourselves for selling me to this place. It was God who sent me here ahead of you to preserve your lives.”)

To the degree that we can exercise it (and there are limits to this), I am grateful that we all are equipped with a grace to find ourselves led to the inner city, so to speak, of problems in need of our attention in order to help lift up others who may be in greater need than we realize – whether it looks like it or not.