Welcoming the Stranger

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of visiting Friends Meeting of Austin for a weekend committee meeting. I found such a sense of welcome and invitation to the stranger in their new meeting house. It was quite an undertaking hosting all of us who had come to that meeting, yet we were fed and housed and nurtured with a warm embrace. The meeting welcomes its families and children and extends its reach into the community in many ways. They’ve chosen a neighborhood that increases the likelihood that their community’s wealth of diversity (ethnic, economic, sexual, and political) will walk through their doors.

On Sunday, I arrived at the meeting early and was asked to help unload a member’s car that was stuffed to the windshield with bread. The meeting collects leftover bread from Whole Foods and distributes most of it to homeless shelters in the area.

In the forum before worship a young Friend told the story of his spiritual journey, which included moments of excruciating pain and a sense of separation from God, as well as the light which emerged from that sad time. Austin Friends invite their members to share their pain and to look into one another’s eyes without flinching, seeing each other fully and acknowledging the struggle we all face.

It’s a large meeting and once we had settled into worship the silence was deep and embracing. At the back of the meetinghouse, several children played quietly with a few adults. There was for me a real sense of communion and of awakening together to the presence of God in that ordinary and quite extraordinary place.

After meeting, as we were loading the car, a young African American man approached me and my host (both of us European Americans) and asked if we could give him a ride home. He told us he was a Christian. It seemed to be his way to say, "I intend you no harm and I believe you, as members of the church, intend me no harm." My friend didn't hesitate - "Sure, we can give you a ride." We arrived at the young man's house and he got out, reached in his pocket for his wallet, and tried to give us some money. My host said, "There's no need to pay us, all I ask is that the next time you encounter some one in need, you pass on the kindness."

The meeting in Austin has found a way to lovingly welcome the stranger as a full realization of its distinctive Quaker faith. Since my visit, I’ve prayed about this experience and the practice of welcoming the stranger home. Sometimes there is a sense that one welcomes the stranger for the stranger’s sake, as a practice of kindness or mercy. But really, when we welcome the stranger, when we extend our hand and hearts, it is we who are transformed. I recall vivid times when God was revealed to me through an encounter with some person with a range of experience very different from my own, or seemingly similar, but who could see much more or deeper than could I.

Books and stories can help us walk the stranger home, expand our understanding and perspective. I’ve picked a few that we carry at QuakerBooks of FGC that have helped to open my eyes and make the blinders I wear shrink a little.

Encounter Point is an 85-minute feature documentary film that follows a former Israeli settler, a Palestinian ex-prisoner, a bereaved Israeli mother and a wounded Palestinian bereaved brother who risk their lives and public standing to promote a nonviolent end to the conflict. Their journeys lead them to the unlikeliest places to confront hatred within their communities. The film explores what drives them and thousands of other like-minded civilians to overcome anger and grief to work for grassroots solutions. For those of you who listen to Speaking of Faith, this film features two people interviewed by Krista Tippett recently. Robi Damelin lost her son David to a Palestinian sniper. Ali Abu Awwad lost his older brother Yousef to an Israeli soldier. Through the Parents Circle - Bereaved Families Forum, listening to one another’s experiences and being honest with each other, they work together to end the conflict. The two of them have been transformed by their friendship, across the boundaries of religion and ethnicity, to teach others to extend the hand toward the stranger, for peace.

The Irresistible Revolution: living as an ordinary radical by Shane Claiborne is a straightforward, prophetic call to live an authentic Christian faith. His book is full of plain stories of looking for and finding the true church and courageous followers of Christ. His book offers story after story of ‘welcoming the stranger’ and seeing God and the sacred in the faces of the weary, the poor, the oppressor and the oppressed. He tells one compelling story of inviting a prostitute into his home to get warm and have some tea. She begins weeping and asks whether he is a Christian. He says he is and she responds, “I know you are Christians because you shine. I used to be in love with Jesus like that, and when I was, I shined like diamonds in the sky, like the stars. But it’s a cold dark world, and I lost my shine a little while back. I lost my shine on those streets.” A few weeks later, Claiborne opens the door and he doesn’t recognize the woman to whom he offered hospitality. She says to him, smiling ear to ear, “You don’t recognize me because I’m shining again, I’m shining.” Later, when reflecting on this incident and others, he says, “When we have new eyes, we can look into the eyes of those we don’t even like and see the One we love. We can see God’s image in everyone we encounter. As Henri Nouwen puts it, ‘In the face of the oppressed I recognize my own face, and in the hands of the oppressor I recognize my own hands. Their flesh is my flesh, their blood is my blood, their pain is my pain, their smile is my smile. We are made of the same dust. We cry the same tears. No one is beyond redemption. And we are free to imagine a revolution that sets both the oppressed and the oppressor free. ” The Irresistible Revolution is a powerful challenge to Quaker faith, for us to move together in the Spirit of transformation arising from offering hospitality and welcome to the stranger.

White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son by Tim Wise uncovers what each white person inherently understands about race in this culture, but doesn’t fully perceive, because of the advantages it affords us. Through stories and many, many moments of growing awareness, compassion and action, Tim Wise gently and very pointedly opens white eyes to the implications of white privilege and black oppression in which we all swim. He says, “The first thing a white person must do in order to effectively fight racism is to learn to listen, and more than that, to believe what people of color say about their lives. This may seem obvious, even trite, but I assure you that it is more important than it may appear. One of the biggest problems with white America is its collective unwillingness to believe that racism is still a real problem for nonwhite peoples, despite their repeated protestations that it is. Survey after survey for decades has demonstrated the same pattern: whites saying that racial discrimination is pretty much a thing of the past, and people of color saying that it continues regularly and that they have personally experienced it, often several times a month.” Wise organizes the book into progressive sections moving from beginning to perceive racism and understand its implications, to resisting its presence in day-to-day interactions and in larger ways, and understanding the commitment as one of faith, acting toward effecting change quite beyond oneself and one’s lifetime. This is an excellent, accessible and incredibly clear book.

In Turning to Earth: Stories of Ecological Conversion, F. Marina Schauffler contends that in order for real, radical transformation of human relationship with the earth to happen, we must restore our inner ecology. Her examination of a shift in human relationship to nature provides a pathway for moving beyond considering the earth apart from or subservient to humanity, i.e. a stranger, to understanding ourselves as arising from it, as inseparable from our place, and the environment. She says, “Restoring the health of outer ecology – the collective web of life and elemental matter in which we participate – depends on a renewal of inner ecology, the spiritual beliefs and ethical values that guide our actions. Inner and outer ecology complement each other, forming an indivisible whole. Ecology originally meant “household,” or “home,” deriving from the Greek word oikos. In this ancient sense, ecology involves how to be at home on Earth. .. Inner ecology provides an essential complement so that we are not simply turning from the destructive forces and habits of Western culture. We are turning toward a new vision of humans’ place within the whole. … a turn to earth is propelled not by fear or guilt, but by love – a deep and enduring attachment to place.” She draws eloquently on what she calls natural autobiographies of such writers as Friend Scott Russell Sanders, Terry Tempest Williams, and Paula Gunn Allen to demonstrate the process of ‘turning to earth.’

Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color by Elizabeth Alexander and Marilyn Nelson tells the story, in poems, of Quaker Prudence Crandall’s school opened in 1831 in Canterbury, Connecticut. Crandall opened the school at the request of the town citizens, a boarding school for girls. Crandall welcomes Mariah Davis and other young African American women to attend classes. She warmly welcomes into her care and embrace young women the townspeople consider the stranger. The white townspeople react violently, pulling their white daughters out of the school. They begin a long series of harassment, ending in 1834 with burning the school to the ground. The poems explore the perspectives of Crandall and her students and questions that came up for the authors about the story, like “What kept Crandall motivated in her righteousness in the face of overwhelming pressure? What was it like for young women just barely removed from slavery to educate themselves? What did faith mean for each of these parties?” The poems are rich, dense and powerful and examine the transformation of both students and teacher. Here is an excerpt of one of the poems:

“Though the state has said no to slavery,
we know how it happens with colored girls
and white men, their red-devil eyes and tentacles.
Our mothers have taught us remarkably
to blot out these fears, black them out, and flood
our minds with light and God’s great face.
We think about that which we cannot see:
something opening wide and bright, a key.”

My son, Simon, loves Children Just Like Me: a Unique Celebration of Children around the World by Barnabas and Anabel Kindersley. We pour over the pages and looking at the photographs of the food different children eat, the schools they attend, the houses they inhabit. He loves discovering the different types of toys that children have and wonders about tasting the different foods. I’ve found it a real gift for him to understand that his day-to-day existence isn’t the experience of every child and he looks at this book with unadulterated curiosity and affection, as though he would like to visit each child. It’s a wonderful introduction into the lives of children of the world and is an opening to talk about how we live and possibilities of other ways of living.

Enemy Pie by Derek Munson, illustrated by Tara Calahan King is a father’s answer to his son’s complaint about his enemy, a way to get rid of him. The ingredients are secret, and the most important ingredient is to spend a day with the enemy, to offer hospitality and welcome to the stranger. “Even worse you have to be nice to him. It’s not easy. But that’s the only way that Enemy Pie can work.” In the process the boy does indeed lose his best enemy.

All of these books help to illuminate the lives of those reaching across borders, working to make connections and offering hospitality to the stranger. In the process the authors and characters are transformed and their sense of connection deepened, to other people, the earth and the divine.

Posted by QuakerBooks on March 16, 2008 5:06 PM | Permalink