Loving our Neighbors through Place | Tabi Summers '24

Editors’ note: Horizons Fellows wrestle with questions of faith & vocation within a small cohort during their 4th year. One of the questions we wrestle with is: What does it look like to love our neighbors through our particular places in which we find ourselves? Tabi reflects on that here.

What does place mean to me? How has it shaped me and how do I think of it in relation to my calling? How do my daily habits and attention towards my neighborhood and the land affect my calling?

My dad is a skilled carpenter, but he deferred the career, and the salary, that he could have had, and arguably needed, raising four children on one income. For 35 years, my dad has preferred to devote his high-quality carpentry to people who could not otherwise afford decent home improvements. He has committed himself to offering noble construction at accessible and flexible rates, consistently doing odd tasks and small projects free of charge. My father’s service through place has extended into our own home, opening our home as residence to a series of young men as they find their own footing. 

My father’s craft made me aware of my interest in architecture; his honest realization of vocation has inspired my own. As a student of architecture, place means more to me than it does to most people. It can be commonly understood that architecture aims to create place, it is also deeply affected by place. The ways in which architecture responds to place is my primary preoccupation within the study. Architecture is necessarily rooted in site: this includes local and non-local ecologies, accounting for the systems surrounding the design intervention, but architecture also demands consciousness of its resource consumption, and the ecologies impacted by material sourcing. Site also must consider stakeholders, building occupants, and even more temporary observers. 

Place is too often misunderstood as static. When people argue that architecture should create a sense of place, they are often asking for the architecture to conform to a historic trend, to preserve a visual sense of place. Place is rarely static, especially when considered in the context of neighborhoods and the community of a place. Relationships and individuals are constantly changing, shifting, even entering and exiting. I found a meaningful motif in John Perkins’s community development ministry. While Perkins refers to these values as the “3 Rs:” Relocation, Reconciliation, and Redistribution, I was struck instead by the repetition of “Re.” In each case, “Re” seems to imply that community development efforts should be cyclical. We should continually return to the efforts that enrich our places. We should maintain a pulse on our community, our place, and its needs. 

For example, Jesus relocated among us; Perkins implies that relocation calls us to move outside of our comfort zone to be in proximity, immersed, in communities we aim to serve. My father’s invitation of young men into our home reminds me of this “R.” My father’s continual practice of opening our house to a series of young men, even after difficult experiences with each, reminds me of the “Re” component of this “R.”

Altogether, my attention to place, neighbors, and land, must not be an effort of creating or preservation, but of continual recommitment to vocation, and a cyclical understanding of my aspirations and actions.