The company of strangers

In a time of discord, finding ways to bridge our differences becomes essential

I’ve been gathering notes and adding to my pile of books about strangers for months. I also made a list of things to look up, including the Bible story of the Good Samaritan. I’d forgotten the details but was sure it had something to do with strangers.

It turns out to be more relevant than I could have imagined.

Here’s the story, from the King James Version of the New Testament. Keep in mind that the injured man would have been Jewish, and the Samaritans were the enemies:

A certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?
And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.
And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.
But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?
And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.
And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.
But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him,
And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.
Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?
And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.

For the background, and the story in a modern text, see this Wikipedia article.

It is hard to find a wellspring of compassion at a time when there is so much to make us angry with other people - notably the so-called strongmen “leaders” and their followers, and the terrorists, all trying to dismantle the rule-based order that we so badly need to maintain and strengthen.

But we don’t make things better by going tribal ourselves. Bill McNeill¹ was all too prescient about the risks ahead, in a world where traditional forms of community had virtually disappeared:

Either the gap between cities and villages will somehow be bridged by renegotiating the terms of symbiosis, and/or differently constructed primary communities will arise to counteract the tangled anonymity of urban life. Religious sects and congregations are the principal candidates for this role. But communities of belief must somehow insulate themselves from unbelievers, and that introduces frictions, or active hostilities, into the cosmopolitan web. How then sustain the web and also make room for life-sustaining primary communities?

Ironically, therefore, to preserve what we have, we and our successors must change our ways by learning to live simultaneously in a cosmopolitan web and in various and diverse primary communities. How to reconcile such opposites is the capital question for our time and probably will be for a long time to come.

In his preface to the forthcoming Chinese edition of the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History, Bill continued on this point:

These volumes invite Chinese readers to join the web of discourse about World History more easily and in greater number than before. I welcome you, hoping and believing that our encounter will be fruitful for all concerned. The editors and authors have diverse points of view and differing expertise but they created these pages to embody the world-wide web of knowledge and common concerns that weave us all together.

When I started this letter - before 10/7 - I was simply thinking about third places, and how we can revive those special places where everyone, anyone, is welcome, where we have a chance to meet people who are different from our close friends and family and work colleagues.

The story of the Good Samaritan is about mercy, rather than friendship. But at a time when health officials and politicians are talking about an “epidemic of loneliness,” we need to take a serious look at how we form and sustain new and varied relationships. What means do we have to communicate? What do we talk about? How open are we, and how do we feel after spending time with other people, online as well as offline? What physical settings foster a sense of connection?

Not long ago, I had coffee in New York with Joe Kehone, author of  The Power of Strangers: The Benefits of Connecting In A Suspicious World. One of the quotations at the beginning of the book is, “People are strange when you're a stranger.”²

Kehone’s account is fascinating not only because he spends time with people who are running programs that bring strangers together, but because he describes the sheer pleasure of talking to strangers. Hanging out with people different from you, sharing a laugh, learning some new things, can be and should be fun.

This isn’t a call to practice “small talk,” a skill practiced at “networking events” and cocktail parties. In The Joy of Tippling, Ray Oldenburg quotes Leonardo Boff, the Brazilian philosopher:

There are taverns, cantinas, or toscas, all over the world, including the poor communities where I worked for many years. There a true democracy prevails: the tavern (where people with less buying power go) welcomes everybody. A college professor can be there drinking his brandy alongside a construction worker, a stage actor at the same table with a scoundrel, and even the village drunk, who is downing a cold one. One only has to come in, take a seat, and call loudly “pass me a very cold beer.”

We can go to Little League games, or bowling, or even go to church. We can be courteous on the street, behind the wheel, on the train.

Am I a good model? Drinks out are too expensive these days. I’m not a church goer, and I don’t play team sports. And I am always in a hurry. I complained about annoying experiences when grocery shopping and my daughter’s response was, “Mom, you need to get out more. And not just at Harvard.” Yet I know that, as Joe Keohone says, making a connection with someone different from me, even in a check-out line, can bring a shot of joy. (Here’s a riddle, which a clerk at the Berkshire Coop shared: I stay in my corner but travel the world. What am I?³)

I heard about a Unitarian church that had a “stone soup” lunch after services on Sunday. “Stone Soup” is a fable about how strangers found their way into a new, and not very welcoming community. They built a fire, hung a pot, and filled it with water and a stone, and acted as if it would somehow turn into nourishing food. But if you want to have some, they said, you could always throw in something else. The villagers brought different things to add to the pot, and in the end everyone shared a hearty soup. A trick? Or a clever way to bring people together? In any case, it was a way for those attending that church to create a meal together.

Winner of 1948 Caldecott Honor

And in the US we have two holidays coming up that are geared to strangers, Halloween and Thanksgiving.

On Halloween, children go from house to house asking for treats and - in the old days, anyhow, threatening to play tricks. (A favorite story when I was a kid was how my father and his pals diverted a state highway into a cow pasture.) “Stranger danger” is a worry for some, but where I live parents are more worried about sugar intake. My small-town neighborhood, in fact, has kids coming from miles around to treat-or-treat. We joke that they’re being bussed in.

The best part is the excitement of the children, their eagerness to have their costumes admired, and the nervousness of the littlest ones (sometimes carried in a parent’s arms). I’d like to think that it’s a good thing for the children to get smiles and greetings and admiration from strangers, along with the treats.

Then there’s Thanksgiving, a celebration that is for every American, unrelated to any religion or ethnicity. The traditional story is that we’re recreating a feast at which the Indians, the local and native Americans, shared a meal with the immigrant Pilgrims. It’s a bit like the Chinese Spring Festival, a family gathering at which we are also expected to welcome strangers - newcomers, people without family nearby - to join us at the table. To break bread. To be thankful.

Thanks for reading, and for being there.

1. William H. McNeill, author of the National Book Award winner The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community. The quotation comes from the conclusion of The Human Web: A Bird’s Eye View of World History (Norton 2003). Bill was editor in chief of the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History, soon to be published in China.

2. From a 1967 Jim Morrison (The Doors) song.

3. A postage stamp.