Talking to Strangers

"There are no strangers here;

Only friends you haven't yet met."

-- William Butler Yeats

Reading: by the Christian author Henri Nouwen from Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life (p. 49) 

In our world the assumption is that strangers are a potential danger and that it is up to them to disprove it. When we travel we keep a careful eye on our luggage; when we walk the streets we are aware of where we keep our money; and when we walk at night in a dark park our whole body is tense with fear of an attack. Our heart may desire to help others: to feed the hungry, visit the prisoners and offer a shelter to travelers; but meanwhile we have surrounded ourselves with a wall of fear and hostile feelings, instinctively avoiding people and places where we might be reminded of our [good] intentions.

Reading: by the journalists Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton from an article entitled “Hello, Stranger” (The New York Times, 4/25/14)

If you’ve ever been on a subway or public bus, you know the rules. Don’t make eye contact, stay as far away from other people as the space allows, and for the love of God, don’t talk to anyone. But what if the rules are wrong?

The behavioral scientists Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder approached commuters in a Chicago area train station and asked them to break the rules. In return for a $5 Starbucks gift card, these commuters agreed to participate in a simple experiment during their train ride. One group was asked to talk to the stranger who sat down next to them on the train that morning. Other people were told to follow standard commuter norms, keeping to themselves. By the end of the train ride, commuters who talked to a stranger reported having a more positive experience than those who had sat in solitude.

Reading: by the Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg from The Kindness Handbook. Here Salzberg recounts her attempt to fly from New York to Tucson to hear the Dalai Lama speak, but instead find herself stuck in the plane on the runway La Guardia airport for over four hours. (p. 127)

Looking back on it, I sometimes refer jokingly to those hours as “the breakdown of civilization.” It was hot, and it grew hotter. After a point, people started yelling, “Let me off this plane!” The pilot resorted to getting on the PA system and saying sternly, “ No one is getting off this plane.”
 
I wasn’t feeling all that chipper myself. I couldn’t seem to get in touch with the people who were supposed to pick me up at the airport, and I was concerned about them. I had an apartment to go to in New York City, and kept thinking, to no avail, “ I can just go back there, and try again tomorrow.” I was hot. I felt pummeled by the people shouting around me.

Then I recalled an image that Bob Thurman, professor of Buddhist studies at Columbia University, often uses to describe kindness and compassion that comes from seeing the world more truthfully.  He says, “Imagine you are on the New York City subway, and these Martians come and zap the subway car so that those of you in the car are going to be together…. Forever.” What do we do? If someone is hungry we feed them. If someone is freaking out, we try to calm them down. We might not all like everybody, or approve of them – but we are going to be together forever, and we need to respond with the wisdom of how interrelated our lives are, and will remain.

Sitting on the airplane, I was struck by the recollection of Bob’s story I looked around the cabin, and thought, “Maybe these are my people.”

It was fascinating to note that my impatience – “Couldn’t’ you be a little quieter?” – and distress – “How much long is this going to last?” – changed to taking a greater interest in those with me: Who are these people? Is it really imperative that they be on time? What is awaiting them? I watched the interplay of forces in my own mind as interest opened the door to a measure of kindness, and as “How much longer?” encountered “Forever,” I saw my worldview shift from “me” and “them” to “we.”

Talking to Strangers

A Sermon Delivered on May 11, 2014

By

The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann

“Don’t talk to strangers.” That seems to be the perennial lesson every mother teaches her young children. Our mothers are concerned for our safety. When we roam out of earshot, they want us to be watchful and cautious, and mindful of dangers that may await us out in the world. 

* * *

Now, though my mother was loving and caring, and certainly always concerned about my well-being, I don’t remember her ever saying, in so many words, “don’t talk to strangers.”

And when I conducted an informal survey of my family yesterday, our kids, who are now 18 and 20 years old, said they didn’t have a clear recollection of ever being told by their mother or father that they shouldn’t talk to strangers. But they both said they were well aware of the rule, which they say they probably picked up at school, or watching kids TV programs. 

* * *

Maybe it’s the messages we received as children, for the sake or our safety, that have led us to be distrustful of strangers as adults, when we travel, when we walk the streets, when we stroll through the park. 

Maybe it’s the messages we received as children, that have taught us the habit of keeping to ourselves on subway trains or public buses. 

* * *

Jared Diamond, the author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel, recently wrote another book that takes a very long historical view of human civilization. It’s called The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? 

In it he makes the case that for the vast majority of human history stretching back millions of years, we lived in small clans and tribes, and in this territorial and competitive tribal context developed some deeply seated social habits. For instance, in these small-scale societies, we learned to divide people into three categories: friends, enemies and strangers. Friends, he says, 

“are the members of your own band or village, and of those neighboring bands and villages with which your band happens to be on peaceful terms at the moment. “Enemies” are members of neighboring bands and villages with which your band happens to be on hostile terms at the moment. Nevertheless, you probably know at least the names and relationships, and possibly appearances, of many or most individuals in those hostile bands, because you’ll have heard of them or actually met them in the course of negotiations […or] periods of peace.

[But “strangers” are] unknown individuals belonging to distant bands with which your band has little or no contact. Never or rarely do members of small-scale societies encounter strangers, because it is suicidal to travel into an unfamiliar area to whose inhabitants you are unknown and completely unrelated. If you do happen to encounter a stranger in your territory, you have to presume that the person is dangerous, because the stranger is really likely to be scouting in order to raid or kill your group, or else trespassing in order to hunt or steal resources…” (p. 49-54)

Thousands of years ago, as our societies grew larger, and as our first cities were established, we learned to see strangers not as threats, but potential friends. As our earliest market economies developed, as we learned to trade with neighbors near and far, we learned that strangers have “potential positive value as prospective business partners, customers, suppliers, and employers,” writes Diamond. 

And so it is perhaps no coincidence that many ancient mythologies included stories about strangers who turned out to be gods or goddesses in disguise. The moral of these stories was that we need to be kind and hospitable to strangers. In the Jewish Torah there are 36 passages that instruct us to welcome strangers. Our obligations to the stranger are mentioned more often than the love of God, or the call to keep the Sabbath. The same sentiment is found in the Christian scriptures, most memorably in the Letter to the Hebrews, where it says: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

* * *

Whether it was our mothers who told us to be wary of strangers, or whether it is an echo of our ancient tribal history – there does seem to be something within us that is fearful of strangers.

It is as if there were dueling impulses within each of us: a tendency toward independence and isolation on one hand, and on the other, a longing for connection, for relationship, for belonging in a supportive and caring community.

Scientists say most people dread the thought of speaking with their seatmate on the bus or train. And when asked what constitutes a pleasant commute, most people say, it would involve sitting alone and undisturbed. We imagine that by avoiding eye contact we will be more comfortable and happier. But research shows actually the opposite is true. Our collective assumptions are wrong. When we keep to ourselves and miss opportunities for connection on our train ride to work, we have “fewer positive emotions than any other common daily activity.”

In another study, scientists asked people on their way into a busy Starbucks to have a “genuine interaction with the cashier.” Simply smile and have a brief conversation. Others were told to be as efficient as possible: get in, get out, get on with your day. What the researchers discovered is that those who lingered for a moment for a friendly word left the coffee shop feeling more cheerful. Efficiency, the study seemed to show, is over-rated.

Another study examined the effect of avoiding eye contact, and found this common form of avoidance is not as harmless as we may think. The experiment went like this: at a large Midwestern university, like the U of I, a young woman walked by people on campus and either made eye contact and smiled, or directed her gaze beyond the ear of the passers-by, deliberately avoiding eye contact, or looking right through them. Surveying the people who for this fleeting instance were ignored, researchers discovered that they felt uncomfortably disconnected.

“Simply acknowledging strangers on the street may alleviate their existential angst; and being acknowledged by others might do the same for us,” Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton write. And they conclude: “Rather than fall back on our erroneous belief in the pleasures of solitude, we could reach out to other people. At least, when we walk down the street, we can refuse to accept a world where people look at one another as though through air. When we talk to strangers, we stand to gain much more than the “me time” we might lose.”

* * *

Reaching out to people is one of the three movements Henri Nouwen identifies as essential for a healthy spiritual life. The first movement is to reach inward, to re-connect with our own inner world, our hopes and fears, our experiences of hurt and happiness. The second movement is to reach outward to other people in a spirit of hospitality rather than hostility. The third movement involves reaching out to the ultimate reality, which he calls “God,” and which involves piercing the illusion of separateness, and realizing how deeply we are connected with one another and with all existence.  

Scientists and religious scholars agree that we are deeply social beings. We cannot thrive in isolation. As Sharon Salzberg puts it, 

“We humans are social beings. We come into the world as a result of others’ actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others’ activities. For this reason, it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationship with others. Nor is it so remarkable that our greatest joy should come when we are motivated by concern for others. But that is not all. We find that not only do altruistic actions bring about happiness, but they also lessen our experience of suffering…  In our concern for others, we worry less about ourselves. When we worry less about ourselves, the experience of our own suffering is less intense.” (p. 125)

Henri Nouwen says, if our goal is to 

“reach out to strangers and invite them to become our friends, it is clear that this can take place on many levels and in many relationships. Although the word stranger suggests someone who belongs to another world than ours, speaks another language and has different customs, it is important, first of all to recognize the stranger in our own familiar circle.” (p. 55)

* * * 

We like to think of this church as a caring community, a welcoming congregation, a community of friends. We say we welcome all people: young and old, rich and poor, gay and straight, black and white, liberal and conservative. That’s the kind of community we want to create; a place where all are treated fairly and welcomed kindly. We want to build a better world, beginning with ourselves right here. 

But I have to tell you, we are not always as welcoming as we would like to be. Because we are profoundly individualistic, we easily assume an attitude of independence and isolation, and we miss precious opportunities for connection.

We are all travelers, each of us on our own individual life journey. We each come from our own particular past, heading into our own unique future. We sit side by side in this sanctuary on Sunday mornings, sometimes sharing a ride, sometimes simply stuck. Sometimes we try to sit in silence, alone and undisturbed. Sometimes we stay as far away from other people as space allows, especially strangers, because we imagine we will be more comfortable and happier that way. 

We are each surrounded by strangers. I think it is safe to say, not a single one of us knows the name of everyone here this morning. And – if we stop and think about it – in many ways even the people we know are strangers. It was Mary Tyler Moore who said, “Sometimes you have to get to know someone really well to realize you're really strangers.”

There is something within us that resists reaching out to strangers. But we will be happier, and we will make others happier, if can learn to overcome our resistance. When we are able to overcome the walls of fear that divide us, we are taking a crucial step towards creating a better world. 

We all feel better, when we are able to reach out.

And so let me take this opportunity to depart from our usual sermon format, where I do all the talking, and you do all the listening. Instead, I will invite you, for a few moments, to talk and listen to each other. I invite you to make eye contact with each other, and smile, and say a few words. I invite you to do this twice. 

I invite you to turn to someone close by, maybe say your name, and then each share a few words about a favorite place you have visited, a favorite place you have been in the past – this might be where you came from this morning, or a place you visited long ago. Then I will strike the chime, which will be your sign to turn to someone else, maybe say your name, and then each share a few words about a place you hope to visit in the future. Then I will strike the chime again, and invite you to be seated.

(congregation engages in conversation)

* * *

“Don’t talk to strangers,” is what our loving mothers taught us. And for children, that is often good advice. But some mothers take a different approach, they teach their children a lesson that we as adults should certainly have learned: to talk to strangers, kindly and carefully. 

We are all surrounded by strangers. And we always will be. Forever. Think about it. The people around us are our people. And when we learn to talk with these strangers, our world view will shift from “me” and “them,” to “we.” 

May we learn this lesson.

Amen.