Tin Cans with String
In the certain corner of Christian life I encountered in Tennessee, the sweet and good and true corner I call home even while trudging out beyond it, I learned the way to true compassion for the Other is to be in relationship with them. At my home church, we did missions that way and I was raised on it.
Those summers in Russia, as my dearest and oldest blog readers know, were the days I learned that lesson best. I learned that Christian love and ministry is nothing but solidarity with the hurting, although solidarity can have a thousand faces. Our small and me-centered perspectives are always insufficient and the only cure is to go live from someone else's side for a while. I learned what Russian culture is, how the politics play out in people's lives, and what the prevailing opinion on America is from Eurasia, but what really shapes the person I am today are my friendships with them. They are my family. I miss them like I miss my own parents. And never in a million years would I be able to look at politics, wars, disagreements, economies, or tragedies in Russia/Ukraine without seeing through their eyes.
The same thing happened, of course, when I met Jews in Israel. And Palestinian Christians or Muslims. And immigrants at the El Paso/Juarez border. And American guards at the fence. The issues are not dismissible when you have friends in those places. It is going to affect how you vote, how you spend money, what you endorse, and what you say. You won't take the prevailing opinion for granted anymore.
In my college and now grad school years, I have had the opportunity to build relationships with people outside my sphere, from so many different sides. These days I have friends who are Buddhist, Jewish-atheist, Catholic, humanist, undecided. I know lesbian priests, gay preachers, democrats, republicans, and everything in between. I'm sure you all do too. And I've noticed it is impossible not to care about things when you have friends in places of hurt and strife, friends who are involved in issues on all sides of the fences.
Lately I've been pushing the envelope on certain things as a part of my growth as a person. I've been challenging my own ideas on social issues in order to find myself as a Christian minister and ethicist. And I've felt the pushback from my friends on certain sides of certain fences, which is expected and good in most ways. My church tradition and the corner I call home is my anchor, and I believe in being hesitant to leave it. I am finding I cannot leave it, in fact. I'm finding I cannot venture out on my own and change my moral code without pausing at the words and opinions and wisdom of my evangelical home. I must give it voice in my venture; I must hear the thousands of years and voices that are behind me and beside me even as I move along on my own. And by the same coin, I am compelled to hear clearly the voices I have never heard before, and to know the people I haven't been able to see before because of the fences between us.
The reasons for this are simple. For one, God cannot be known in isolation. I cannot know God apart from my neighbor, even when I think my neighbors are crazy idiots. And second, being in relationship with my neighbors will lead me to a compassion that sees their faces and hears their voices. I am in relationship with both conservative evangelicals and progressive academics, whether I like it or not, and that means I genuinely care what they have to say to me.
So the bridge goes both ways. I'm in deliberate relationships with the Other in order to see them with the eyes of Christ and not statistics. I'm in deliberate relationships with people from my conservative "home base" which means I cannot ignore them and be a willy-nilly heretic.
I am caught in the middle.
Sometimes there is crossfire.
I'm ok with that. I don't always love living in the tension.* It sometimes makes me really anxious and fired up because I can't fix it.** But I am 120% convinced there are things the different sides of the fences have to say to each other, and I hope I can stretch a few tin-cans-with-string telephones across them in my lifetime. I only ask that my dear friends will join me.
*I'm a 9 wing on the Enneagram, obviously
**I'm a 1 on the Enneagram, even more obviously
Those summers in Russia, as my dearest and oldest blog readers know, were the days I learned that lesson best. I learned that Christian love and ministry is nothing but solidarity with the hurting, although solidarity can have a thousand faces. Our small and me-centered perspectives are always insufficient and the only cure is to go live from someone else's side for a while. I learned what Russian culture is, how the politics play out in people's lives, and what the prevailing opinion on America is from Eurasia, but what really shapes the person I am today are my friendships with them. They are my family. I miss them like I miss my own parents. And never in a million years would I be able to look at politics, wars, disagreements, economies, or tragedies in Russia/Ukraine without seeing through their eyes.
The same thing happened, of course, when I met Jews in Israel. And Palestinian Christians or Muslims. And immigrants at the El Paso/Juarez border. And American guards at the fence. The issues are not dismissible when you have friends in those places. It is going to affect how you vote, how you spend money, what you endorse, and what you say. You won't take the prevailing opinion for granted anymore.
In my college and now grad school years, I have had the opportunity to build relationships with people outside my sphere, from so many different sides. These days I have friends who are Buddhist, Jewish-atheist, Catholic, humanist, undecided. I know lesbian priests, gay preachers, democrats, republicans, and everything in between. I'm sure you all do too. And I've noticed it is impossible not to care about things when you have friends in places of hurt and strife, friends who are involved in issues on all sides of the fences.
Lately I've been pushing the envelope on certain things as a part of my growth as a person. I've been challenging my own ideas on social issues in order to find myself as a Christian minister and ethicist. And I've felt the pushback from my friends on certain sides of certain fences, which is expected and good in most ways. My church tradition and the corner I call home is my anchor, and I believe in being hesitant to leave it. I am finding I cannot leave it, in fact. I'm finding I cannot venture out on my own and change my moral code without pausing at the words and opinions and wisdom of my evangelical home. I must give it voice in my venture; I must hear the thousands of years and voices that are behind me and beside me even as I move along on my own. And by the same coin, I am compelled to hear clearly the voices I have never heard before, and to know the people I haven't been able to see before because of the fences between us.
The reasons for this are simple. For one, God cannot be known in isolation. I cannot know God apart from my neighbor, even when I think my neighbors are crazy idiots. And second, being in relationship with my neighbors will lead me to a compassion that sees their faces and hears their voices. I am in relationship with both conservative evangelicals and progressive academics, whether I like it or not, and that means I genuinely care what they have to say to me.
So the bridge goes both ways. I'm in deliberate relationships with the Other in order to see them with the eyes of Christ and not statistics. I'm in deliberate relationships with people from my conservative "home base" which means I cannot ignore them and be a willy-nilly heretic.
I am caught in the middle.
Sometimes there is crossfire.
I'm ok with that. I don't always love living in the tension.* It sometimes makes me really anxious and fired up because I can't fix it.** But I am 120% convinced there are things the different sides of the fences have to say to each other, and I hope I can stretch a few tin-cans-with-string telephones across them in my lifetime. I only ask that my dear friends will join me.
*I'm a 9 wing on the Enneagram, obviously
**I'm a 1 on the Enneagram, even more obviously
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