Post #6
Language is interesting in that the same word can contain many different meanings. For example, "stranger" can be a noun meaning "a person we don't know" or a comparative adjective to describe "something more odd than another." Unfortunately, both meanings are often used in a negative sense. Thus, people we don't know, especially if they are very different than us in cultural, racial, religious, or other significant ways, are too frequently considered "undesirably odd."
Yet not all of us think of "strangers" with a condescending attitude. Perhaps our experience with diverse groups or individuals teaches us to accept people; perhaps our own reasoning tells us that all are equal; or our faith teaches that all people come from God's heartbeat. For multiple reasons many of us all over the world are open to caring for people we don't know and who are not like us in a variety of ways.
When I think of the topic of caring for strangers, I'm reminded of the story told by Jesus in Luke 10:25-37, which is usually entitled "The Good Samaritan." We are told that before telling the story Jesus makes a simple statement about the necessity of loving your neighbor. Immediately the man he was instructing asked a not-so-simple question: "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus takes the term that we usually consider a label for someone who lives near us (and in far too many situations is also of our same ethnicity, social class, etc.) and reinterprets it to indicate that it is the person who provides care for the hurt stranger who is the neighbor--not those in the story who share his ethnicity but don't care enough to pick him up off the road and care for his needs.
The lines between family, neighbor, friend, and stranger are often difficult to define, and they are also changeable. Let me give a personal example. At work I met a Ugandan woman with two children. Of course, our cultures were different and we had very little knowledge of each other. However, in time she and I became friends, and we formed a unique bond since we are both caregivers at heart. We became family when she and her daughter moved in with us to help me take care of Mom. The arrangement benefited all of us--we wouldn't have to be up every night, and they would have an extended family, not only to provide shelter and community, but also to help navigate the differences between American and Ugandan cultures. (If you would like to read more about our adventures as a culturally mixed family you can read a few of my blog posts on the website for Focus Girls 4 Education-- a nonprofit we started together to provide care and education for war-orphaned girls in Uganda.) https://focusgirls4education.com/a-little-bit-of-uganda-right-in-austin/
Although challenging, living with someone from a different culture can force us to be more adaptable and open-minded. We realize that there are many ways of living and understanding the people around us. Even when we don't agree, we can appreciate the fact that we all see the world through different lenses, which were formed in our previous years as we learned to interact within our own cultural norms. (Saxe's poem retelling the Eastern tale of the "Blind Men and the Elephant" reminds me of how most of us cling to our own experience and comprehension of reality: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_poems_of_John_Godfrey_Saxe/The_Blind_Men_and_the_Elephant. )
When someone moves to a new environment that is vastly different than her (his) own, she is often dependent on others to care for her in unique ways until she learns how to operate by the new expectations. Many laws, habits, and cultural mores are so ingrained in us that we take them for granted. The cultural shock experienced by many immigrants is very real and can be debilitating: it can cause people to stay hidden in their homes or to jump feet first into the culture and then find themselves ostracized because they behaved in an "unacceptable" way-- according to their new social environment.
Caring for strangers can take a variety of forms. Perhaps you have volunteered to "adopt" a refugee family -- you give of your time to help them feel welcome, teach them practical English phrases, how to use public transportation . . . . Or maybe you are a foster parent who must help your new child fit into a new school, a new home, a new way of living and loving. Many of you have probably found yourself (or will find yourself in the future) traveling to another geographical region to give emergency care in the midst of a disaster.
Today's world offers us so many opportunities to care for people. Whether you are called upon to give care in the long or short term, I believe you will find that the strangers you care for will evolve into neighbors, friends, and sometimes family.