-- Tennessee Williams
Meditation: by Thomas Merton from a poem entitled “Stranger”
When no one listens
To the quiet trees
When no one notices
The sun in the pool
Where no one feels
The first drop of rain
Or sees the last star
Or hails the first morning
Of a giant world
Where peace begins
And rages end:
One bird sits still
Watching the work of God:
One turning leaf,
Two falling blossoms,
Ten circles upon the pond…
Closer and clearer
Than any wordy master,
Thou inward Stranger
Whom I have never seen,
Deeper and cleaner
Than the clamorous ocean,
Seize up my silence…
Reading: a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye entitled “Gate A-4”
Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning
my flight had been delayed for four hours, I heard an announcement:
"If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please
come to the gate immediately."
Well--one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just
like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. "Help,"
said the flight service person. "Talk to her. What is her problem? We
told her the flight was going to be late and she did this."
I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke to her haltingly.
"Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit-
se-wee?" The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly
used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled
entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the
next day. I said, "No, we're fine, you'll get there, just later, who is
picking you up? Let's call him."
We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would
stay with his mother till we got on the plane and would ride next to
her--Southwest. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just
for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while
in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I
thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know
and let them chat with her? This all took up about two hours.
She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life, patting my knee,
answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool
cookies--little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and
nuts--out of her bag--and was offering them to all the women at the gate.
To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the
lovely woman from Laredo--we were all covered with the same powdered
sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.
And then the airline broke out free beverages from huge coolers and two
little girls from our flight ran around serving us all apple juice and they
were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend--
by now we were holding hands--had a potted plant poking out of her bag,
some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradi-
tion. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.
And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This
is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that
gate--once the crying of confusion stopped--seemed apprehensive about
any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other
women, too.
This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.
When We Were Strangers
A Sermon Delivered on October 5, 2014
By
The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann
I have lived in Urbana/Champaign for 18 years now. As many of you know, my wife, Elaine, and I moved here when our son was two, and our daughter was just a few months old. The kids are both in college now.
We have lived in our big old house here longer than any other place in our lives. And though our kids were both born in upstate New York, Urbana is the place where they are rooted. It is familiar. It is home.
I like being here. I like living in a familiar place. I like being here in this church, surrounded by familiar faces. And it is comforting to know that my face is familiar to you.
* * *
This is not the way it has always been. For most of my life, I was a stranger, an outsider, an alien. Or that is certainly the way I felt. I was born in Germany, but moved to the U.S. with my family when I was three. Young enough to pick up English practically as my first language, but old enough to be singled out by classmates as a foreigner when I was in elementary school. Just when I felt I was fitting in and being accepted as a regular American kid, my family and I moved back to Germany when I was nine.
At that point I was an English speaker, and thoroughly disorientated when I was plopped into a German school, barely able to speak, read, and write the language, and unfamiliar with German classroom culture. Once again, I was a stranger. Two years later, when I was eleven, we moved to a different German city, where I attended a new school, but faced very similar challenges, and started from scratch, again.
Those were tough times. In my teenage years, I was convinced my misery was all my parents’ fault. Why did they have to keep moving us around like that?
But then, when I was in my early twenties, I chose to repeat a similar back-and-forth, every year or two, this time on my own. I went to grad school in Berkeley, California; then to Hamburg, Germany; then to back to the U.S. to wrap up my studies; then off to Germany to serve my first church. And then married Elaine, and then moved back to the States, this time to stay.
For the majority of my adult life, I have felt like a stranger, seen myself as an outsider, and throughout most of my years in America, was – in legal terms – a resident alien. Though I looked like a citizen, I was actually a stranger.
* * *
In the three great monotheistic traditions our understanding and appreciation of the stranger is a central religious theme.
In the Jewish scriptures, we are reminded again and again of our history: that we ourselves were strangers in the land of Egypt. In the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, we are told that we should not oppress the stranger, because we ourselves were once strangers. We should love the stranger as we love ourselves. In the book of Exodus, God says to Moses, “You shall not oppress the stranger; you know the heart of a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Ex 23:9)
In the Christian scriptures, Jesus says that he himself was a stranger, and that those who treated him kindly and fairly will someday receive a heavenly reward. “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” (Mt 23:35) And later Paul reminds us that we should never neglect to show hospitality to strangers. For in welcoming strangers, some of us have “entertained angels unawares.” (Heb13:2)
In the Muslim Hadith, the sayings and stories attributed to the prophet Muhammad, we read that the teachings of Allah themselves began as something strange. Those who first heard the words of Allah didn’t know what to make of them. And the wisest and most devout among the faithful often seemed strange to those who are less enlightened. The Hadith says: “Islam began as something strange, and will return strange as it began, [therefore always offer] glad tidings for the stranger.”
* * *
We should be kind and compassionate to strangers, because we were once strangers. Remember what it felt like to be a stranger. Remember what it felt like when you were in desperate need of help and support. Remember how, when you were a stranger, confused and afraid, the tiniest friendly gesture could lift you out of the fog of despair. Something as simple as a smile from another person felt as bright as the sun, dispelled the dark, and restored a vision of hope, even on our most difficult days.
* * *
There is something sacred about the stranger. And there is something strange about what we hold sacred. In the book The Idea of the Holy Rudolf Otto, describes the experience of the sacred as mysterious, terrifying, awe-inspiring, and fascinating. Men and women experience the divine as something strange, something “wholly other.”
Building on Otto’s work, Mircea Eliade distinguishes between the sacred and the profane, two distinct dimensions of the world and of our experience. The profane is the everyday world we know. It is the familiar material, secular, non-religious realm. It is the world we try to understand rationally and objectively.
The sacred is qualitatively different. It is rooted in subjective human experience that reaches beyond rationality. The sacred is found in a time and place set apart, where our experience of the world is heightened and deepened. We are no longer detached, objective observers of the world, but rather are profoundly affected and connected to creation, to the world and all people. We are touched and moved by deeper truths.
Every religious tradition, and every one of us experiences the sacred and approaches the fullness of life in our own way.
* * *
In the Jewish Hasidic tradition, religious truth is found through “a life of fervor and exalted joy.” In his study of Hasidic teachers, Martin Buber describes the 18th century Ukranian mystic Barukh of Mezbizh. Barukh was a “true and impassioned mystic,” for him the sacred and the profane were inseparable, Buber writes. “But his form of mystic life did not make for harmony with the world of [men and women]. It caused him to regard this world as an alien region in which he was an exile… He once [described] God and himself as two strangers in an unknown land, two castaways who make friends with each other.”
Elaborating on a passage in Psalm 119, Rabbi Barukh said:
“He whom Life drives into exile and who comes to a land alien to him, has nothing in common with the people there, and not a soul he can talk to. But if a second stranger appears, even though he may come from a quite different place, the two can confide in each other, and live together henceforth, and cherish each other. And had they not both been strangers, they would never have known such close companionship. That is what the psalmist means: “You, even as I, are [strangers] on earth and have no abiding place for your glory. So do not do not withdraw from me, but reveal your commandments, that I may become your friend.” (Tales of the Hasidim, p. 89)
* * *
There is something sacred about the stranger, the “wholly other.” But even on a profane, pragmatic level, strangers are important.
In a book entitled The Necessity of Strangers, the business consultant Alan Gregerman makes the case that we have very good reason not only to welcome and support strangers, but to engage them as fully as we can.
There is a common human tendency to regard strangers with suspicion and distrust. We have a natural inclination to keep to ourselves. We are most comfortable connecting with long-time close friends. We imagine we will be happiest, and most successful in our endeavors if we stick to the familiar. But this is a tragic mistake.
As Gregerman sees it, “99 percent of all new ideas are based on the thinking and practices of others – strangers – in other industries, disciplines, walks of life, cultures, periods in history, or parts of the world… [We] are taught to believe that it is whom you know that matters, [but] that’s simply too narrow a perspective. It’s [who we] could know that matters more. The future belongs to the most curious people – those who are willing to connect with, learn from, and collaborate with strangers.”
One example he offers is Scott and Amundsen’s famous race to reach the South Pole. Robert Scott was a British naval officer, well-trained, well-financed, “who relied on his knowledge and the best expertise that mainstream [British] science had to offer” on polar exploration. The Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, on the other hand, had taken two years during a previous arctic expedition to live and learn among Inuits.
The Inuits were strangers to the Europeans. But they were strangers who had survived for countless generations in one of the world’s harshest climates. Amundsen learned the wisdom to dress in animal skins, rather than wear the heavy wool clothes favored by the British. To travel, he learned to rely on skies and dogs, rather than Manchurian ponies and motor sleds as Scott did. And this contributed significantly to Amundsen’s success.
Gregerman identifies several principles that should guide our efforts to move beyond the familiar. The first three are: humility, curiosity, and respect.
Humility is the awareness that there are limits to our knowledge and expertise, and that there is always room for improvement. Curiosity is the “innate gift for being open to new ideas, people, and possibilities.” Respect is the conviction “that everyone matters, especially people who are different than us, and that [we] learn and grow by engaging other people on their own terms.”
* * *
A stranger is someone who seems unfamiliar, someone we don’t understand, someone who might be dangerous. And so our natural inclination is to keep our distance, keep to ourselves. But this is a tragic mistake.
We should be kind to strangers, because we ourselves were once strangers. We should love them as we love ourselves, for we know their hearts. We know what it feels like to be a stranger in a strange land.
We know what it feels like to be in stuck in an unfamiliar place, an airport, a bus stop, a train station, uncertain and insecure. Maybe we don’t speak the language, maybe the schedules have been changed, maybe we missed our connection and are stranded, separated from the safety of family and friends.
We know what it feels like to be in unfamiliar territory. When the car breaks down, or the gas runs out, and we are hopelessly, helplessly stuck. Or when we take a wrong turn and suddenly lose our way. Every step we take may lead us into deeper trouble. Every step may move us further away from where we long to be. We know what it feels like to be confused, disoriented, and despairing. Like the poor Palestinian woman stuck at the Albuquerque airport, unable to understand the language, and why her flight isn’t taking off.
And we know what it feels like when we reach out to someone in need. When we are the ones who speak the language, who know the critical bit of helpful information, who can serve as interpreter, as guide, as support. We know what it is like to offer a helping hand. And through a small gesture we wouldn’t give a second thought among friends, for the stranger in need, we are a savior.
We live in a world of strangers and saviors. We live in a world divided by fear and bound together by friendship. On playgrounds and in parks, on city streets and in countries near and far – wherever we are - we may encounter the “wholly other.”
Wherever we are we, when no one else is listening, we may hear the quiet trees. When no one else notices, we may see sunlight on water. When no one feels the first drop of rain, or sees the last star, we may see the work of God all around us. We may know divine mystery and wonder. We may know holy fear and fascination.
We can each be stranger and savior for one another. When we are all lost and far from home, when Life drives us into exile and we find ourselves in an alien land, with nothing in common with anyone. But even then – or especially then – we will regain hope, when we turn to one another.
And even though we come from different places, we can confide in each other, and cherish one another. Had we not been strangers, we would never have known such close companionship.
Then the simple act of sharing a sugar cookie can be a sacrament. And a cup of apple juice from a huge cooler can become a communion cup, that tangibly transforms a crowd of strangers into a community of friends.
This is the world we want to live in. A shared world, where no one is crying in confusion, where no one is apprehensive about anyone else. Where we are all covered with the same powdered sugar, smiling. This can happen anywhere. This can happen at any moment. It can happen here. It can happen today.
May we have the wisdom and the courage to reach out to the stranger.
When we welcome the stranger, we will be saviors,
transforming our fear into friendship.
In this way,
may we save each other,
and save the world.
Amen.
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