Do We Even Know Each Other?

The other day I was rereading some musings from my friend and mentor, Jim Kelly.  In one of his pieces he quoted a poem by William Stafford a former Poet Laureate of Oregon

 ---

If you don’t know the kind of person I am

and I don’t know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

---

in order to make a point that we need to listen, learn and try to understand the concerns and hopes of those around us. 

Jim’s  concern was that all too often we work with people, or sit with people, or listen to people, or look at people without really having the slightest idea what is truly meaningful to them in their daily lives.  Churches can be like that.  

Why would any of us allow that to be true?  We are social creatures, all of us.  Our family, friends and acquaintances sustain us.   They give us hope.  They care about us and let us care about them.  They help us fill our watershed of resilience as we age and they are there to circle the wagons when “things happen”.   How can we allow the persons sitting in front of us at church, or in line behind us at coffee or in the car next to ours in the parking lot be total strangers?

Is it easier to lump all older people together in our mind as being alike, or all teen-agers, or all the exceptionally well dressed people, or all the not so well dressed people, or all the families with noisy kids, or all single mothers, or ???, than to get to know them as human beings and learn the kind of person they are?   Unfortunately that happens way to often for me.  If it were not for Grace, I’m afraid I would be too ashamed of my own shortcomings to even write these words.  

Yet, together we can make a difference in what happens at church.  We can make a difference in what it is like for people to sit in a sanctuary.  We can make a difference in whether or not people feel less lonely when they leave church than when they walked in the door.  We can make a difference in their well-being -- together.  Isn’t that kind of what Jesus had in mind?  Isn’t that sort of why we have the gift of life?

Bruce