summertime, summertime, sum, sum summertime

This summer is an experiment for me. I am wading through the call of God in Micah 6:8, that I know what is good, and what is left is for me to do it. I am also encountering the Jesus of Matthew 25, who is hidden in those people where I would least expect to find him. I believe that these two passages are intricately tied together in the way that I must practice them in my life.

Right now, I am reading Parker Palmer’s The Company of Strangers: Christians and the Renewal of America’s Public Life. He establishes public life as each and every encounter that we have with a stranger—at the grocery, riding the bus, taking out the garbage, ordering coffee—and reminds us that our lives are increasingly set up to avoid any contact with strangers.

From when we are small, we are told not to talk to strangers. This is very practical advice to give a gregarious four year old who would talk to a wall if there is nothing else to converse with. Many children easily place their trust in people, which can put them in danger. As adults many of us still fear strangers, but for different reasons. We have had our hearts broken, our trust betrayed, or have been physically hurt. We are afraid to let that happen again.

As an intern, the hardest part of church for me was talking to strangers. There is some irony to this. Everyone in the church used to be a stranger, even the people I now consider myself to know relatively well. Every relationship starts somewhere. Knowing that many of these encounters worked out well, what in me held me back from talking to people I didn’t recognize, people who came to church for the first time, or even long time members I just didn’t know?

This summer, I hope to explore what holds me back, and even more importantly, step out into practicing what can help me grow towards fulfilling God’s call to encounter and love the stranger.

"We miss understand public life if we equate it with politics, with the activities of the government. Not only do we misunderstand it, we also strangle our sense of public possibilities. The heart of public life is simply the interaction of strangers, and that is a basic and vital human experience." Parker Palmer, The Company of Strangers, p. 25