And Who Is My Neighbor? { 28 images } Created 21 Oct 2016
In the New Testament, the Parable of the Good Samaritan takes the question “who is my neighbor” and turns it into another question, “to whom must we become a neighbor?” It redirects us to service and love, not categorization.
I began this project after reflecting on the increasingly contentious geopolitical landscape. My hope is that this project will (1) introduce the viewer to some of our neighbors and (2) encourage us to consider what it means to live in a neighborly relationship with what is happening around us. Like the Good Samaritan, we are at our best when we care about what we see, taking risks and making sacrifices as we respond.
I began this project after reflecting on the increasingly contentious geopolitical landscape. My hope is that this project will (1) introduce the viewer to some of our neighbors and (2) encourage us to consider what it means to live in a neighborly relationship with what is happening around us. Like the Good Samaritan, we are at our best when we care about what we see, taking risks and making sacrifices as we respond.
![I met Noa in 2010 through Couchsurfing, a social networking site where people offer to host people in their homes; Noa and her two flatmates in Jerusalem hosted me for several days. In 2015, we met again. She had moved to Tel Aviv by this point and hosted me for a night. It was during this second visit that she asked if I knew who Kayla Mueller was.<br />
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Kayla Mueller had been in the news. She was a young woman from Arizona who had gone to southern Turkey to do humanitarian work. During a trip across the border to Syria in August 2013, she was kidnapped by ISIS and reportedly forced into a marriage with the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. She was killed in unclear circumstances in early 2015. She was 26 years old.<br />
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Before going to Turkey and Syria, Kayla had volunteered elsewhere, including in Israel and the West Bank, and she was active on Couchsurfing. Noa asked if I knew who Kayla was because, in the months before Noa had hosted me, she had hosted Kayla. And now Kayla was gone forever. <br />
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Kayla had asked to stay with Noa because she saw on Noa’s profile that they had something in common: they both had worked with women in shelters. As Noa talked about her brief experience hosting Kayla, her description painted a picture of one who, as Noa put it, “was really going in” and “not afraid to get dirty”. I would later read about two Yazidi girls who were held captive with Kayla (the two girls escaped). One of the girls said, “When she came back [from seeing Baghdadi], sometimes she just lay down without saying a word. Sometimes she would cry under a blanket. She tried to hide that from us. She didn't want to upset us. She wanted to seem strong.”<br />
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Noa’s offering of hospitality to strangers through Couchsurfing is part of what being a neighbor looks like. So was Kayla’s venturing far from home to be with the marginalized and suffering.](https://www.joelcarillet.com/img-get2/I0000m_uKZ8beThU/fit=188x188/fill=/g=G0000opx_rxBHclw/I0000m_uKZ8beThU.jpg)
![Coron, Philippines - July 20, 2019: Anthony Ojeda, from Manila, has lived for three years in Coron, where he operates a tour company (the office is cattycorner to where he is sitting, out of view). I asked if the boy with him -- the boy's name is Jerome -- was a relative. Anthony said no, that Jerome is one of the many street children in the city. “I’ve not adopted him, but I...[he searched for the word and I suggested 'care for him']... yes, care for him.”](https://www.joelcarillet.com/img-get2/I0000TT2SH_X7n_Y/fit=188x188/fill=/g=G0000opx_rxBHclw/I0000TT2SH_X7n_Y.jpg)
