Whatever the legal and economic technicalities of the fiscal cliff situation, one thing is clear: none of us can isolate ourselves from our connection to the well-being of our neighbors. There are myriad projections of what Sojourners’ Jim Wallis calls “the arithmetic of protecting the poor.”

As legislators and leaders deliberate these, I ask that we put faces on the numbers by considering seven people whose lives MIFA’s support impacts every day. Let’s go together on a Meals on Wheels route and visit seven home-bound seniors.

First on the route is Annie, who lives in an apartment complex. This time of year, her door is framed by Christmas lights and garland, and a stocking hangs from the knob.

Geneva lives a mile away; she is in her mid-90s and has no children or family in town. But her neighbors look out for her, and she loves to sit on her front porch and watch the children play at an elementary school across the street.

Around the corner, John and Susan have a nice house and enough money to get by, but MIFA meals allow them to remain independent and in the home they’ve lived in for 60 years.

One block over is William, a World War II veteran whose family takes him to Gatlinburg each year for a convention of the surviving members of his battalion.

A few houses down, Gladys and Josephine live next door to each other. Every day, when Gladys gets her meal, she calls Josephine on the phone to tell her the MIFA driver is on the way.

The fiscal cliff is a conceptual name for a national situation which requires wisdom and decisive action. Annie, Geneva, John, Susan, William, Gladys, and Josephine are individuals, whose quality of life depends on our leaders’ remembering that they are their neighbors as well.