From convert to friend to sacred other
How I see strangers has changed and is changing
I recently had the pleasure of reading this transcript of an interview with poet Robin Coste Lewis.* It got me thinking about my relationship with strangers: how I see them, who they are to me, how I do or don’t engage.
I feel like the way I’ve seen strangers has shifted dramatically over time, as my beliefs have shifted. Over the last few years, as I’ve walked away from the evangelical version of Christianity that I embraced in my twenties, I’ve sometimes felt a sense of loss of the ways I used to engage with strangers.
Evangelicalism taught me to see everyone as potential converts to Christianity, basically. I don’t see things that way anymore. But the good thing about seeing strangers that way was that, well, I saw them.
I was open to conversation. I was curious about how God might be at work, and what role I might play in that. I was interested in people’s lives, in their experiences of spirituality.
(I know not all evangelicals are like this. But I was taught a really nice version, really nice ways of attempting to evangelize. It wasn’t all bad. And these were some of the good things.)
I miss that openness. As I’ve moved away from any sort of need to proselytize, I’ve also moved away from engaging with strangers in that open, curious way. It has become harder to talk with people I don’t know already.
Of course, there are many good reasons to be wary of strangers. I’m all for an appropriate kind of suspicion that attends to and values my own wellbeing.
But part of me misses the way I used to see everyone as a potential friend (even if a potential friend who I hoped would embrace Christianity). Sometimes I feel sad about that. Sometimes I want to reclaim it, just minus the evangelicalism.
At the same time, though, I’ve come to recognize that I’m not actually wired to be friends with everyone. None of us is. And especially not hella introverted folks like me.
I don’t have the relational capacity for more than a small handful of close friendships, and a slightly larger handful of slightly less close friendships. When I try to be friends with too many people, I end up being a good friend to no one.
That’s not what I want, and I don’t think it’s what God wants for me.
So the stranger is no longer, to me, a potential convert. And they are also not necessarily a potential new friend. (I always want to be open to new friendships, but of course only a very small percentage of strangers I meet will become friends, and I want to be realistic about that.)
What does that leave, then?
It takes me back to that interview with Robin Coste Lewis. I thought the whole interview (by which I mean, what made it into the transcript) was lovely, and I’d highly recommend giving it a read. (If you do, holler in the comments—I’d love to hear what you think.)
But for those with limited time, I’ll pull out a couple quotes that stood out to me:
“There's a woman at the well and not just in Christianity but in lots of different traditions…it's a story that migrated through religions over time…[in which] the stranger is also always some kind of masked Messiah.”
“The stranger is the greatest gift.”
“There's a great line from one Indian mystic: ‘Oh, Shiva, look what you have become. Oh, god, look how you have manifested today.’”
“Things go swimmingly well, for the most part, if I stay in that awareness. And I think people feel it, you know? I think we all know when we’re being respected, and I think we really know when we’re being exalted.”
Whew. This is not how I see strangers, most of the time. But I think, at least in some ways, with lots of caveats for safety and using good judgment, it’s something to aspire to.
The stranger is not a potential convert. I respect them and their journey too much for that. They’re always welcome to come to church with me, of course, if that’s something they want. But it isn’t something I would push for. I don’t need to change them.
The stranger is not necessarily a potential friend. I do not have the capacity to be a friend to every stranger I meet—even if they wanted that, and even if they had the capacity to be a friend to me. We don’t have to stay in touch. The interaction can be brief and still hold meaning.
Perhaps the stranger is, though, a sacred other. A gift, as Lewis writes. An embodiment of the divine. (For Christians, if the language of Shiva or of manifestation feels off-putting, we might think instead of people as God’s image-bearers, a la Genesis 1:27. There is that of God in everyone, as the Quakers say.)
I love the sense of honor wrapped up in this, the sense of respect. The curiosity about what I might learn from the stranger. The freedom to let them go about their way. The beauty of seeing God in them. Every meeting, a potential divine encounter. Every interaction, brimming with dignity.
I don’t know how realistic it is to stay in that mindframe. But I like it. It feels healing. And I think it’ll continue to be a journey to get there.
May you see God in the sacred other this week.
____
If you have thoughts, I’d love to hear them. How do you see strangers, and has that changed over time? Have you, too, moved away from a need to convert others, or even a need to be friends with everyone, and toward…something? And if so, what?
*With gratitude to Mary Lane Potter for assigning this reading as part of her Writing Toward God class with the Collegeville Institute
.