Living in the Company of Strangers
LIVING
IN THE COMPANY OF STRANGERS:
PARKER
PALMER AND THE HEART OF DEMOCRACY
by
Wayne
Martin Mellinger, Ph.D.
May
we no longer step blindly past the stranger who huddles in the cold
outside the door! May I no longer pretend not to see the woman with
massively disheveled hair crawling out of her wheelchair to sleep in
a door well. Let no one continue to walk past the elderly Latino man
riddled with dazed confusion begging for food in front of grocery
store, because they are in such a hurry to grab their lunch.
To
live in the city is to live in the presence of strangers. For those
of us living in cities, passing strangers on busy streets is
unremarkable. We rush to our next appointments, preoccupied with our
own thoughts, navigating through crowded sidewalks. On “autopilot,”
we don't even think about our many brief encounters with unknown
others in public spaces.
This
past week, I had the opportunity to hear Parker J. Palmer, a fellow
sociologist and spiritual seeker, speak at the Lobero Theater.
Sponsored by the Courage
to Lead,
a local non-profit for professional renewal founded by Ken Saxon,
Palmer's talk was entitled “Healing
the Heart of Democracy”,
which is also the name of his new book. I will not attempt to
summarize his talk here but merely relate some of his ideas about
valuing strangers and reaching out to them in ways that we might be
unaccustomed.
Of
course, every ancient wisdom tradition promotes the virtue of
hospitality to strangers, and Palmer's promotion of kindness to those
we do not know is not unique. What is
particular about Palmer's argument is the role that he places on
community engagement with unknown others in a healthy civic life and
political democracy.
Palmer
argues that we need to learn to value otherness. American society
has become one too much dependent upon an "us versus them"
thinking. We spend so much of our time in “tribes” and
“lifestyle enclaves”, often hanging out with people like us,
whoever us might be. The good news is that through continual
discipline and practice the human mind can overcome these accustomed
limitations and learn to allow “otherness” to enlarge and
revitalize our lives, including kinds of otherness that initially
seems scarey and frightening.
“All
of us are strangers to people who are “other” than us, so we live
in a world of many two-way streets. For me, the great value of
reaching out to the stranger is at least two-fold: the stranger has a
perspective on reality that I need to understand if I want to see the
whole picture; and in a world of endless diversity, the more I get to
know “the stranger” the more at home I feel on the face of the earth. (In almost every case of “fear of the other” that I know
about, a face-to-face meeting with people who represent that form of
“otherness” reduces or removes that fear).” (Parker Palmer,
2012 personal correspondence)
For
a number of years I have worked as a social worker for our neighbors
on the streets, often encountering unknown urban nomads in need of
lots of kindness. I have learned that once I have learned someone's
name, that person becomes my kin. And if I have heard that person's
life story, it is then written on my heart. And, if I have become
their companion, I have learned more from them I have taught. The
odds are that their kindness to me has been greater than mine to
them.
Unfortunately,
many of those strangers on our city's streets are increasingly
marginalized, displaced and silenced by a cruel machine called
“modernity” that that feeds off of smily-faced worker /
consumers, and spits to the sides all the “others” it does not
need—the different, the distant (think gender, race, sexuality,
age), all the others without “purpose” in the capitalist system.
Many of these people end up on our streets and in our shelters.
How,
Parker Palmer seems to be asking, might we come to listen to these
unknown persons, come to see them as a friends and neighbors that we
have not yet met? Those unknown others might have something
important to offer us:—an important piece of information we need to
know in order to make a decision, an radically different perspective
on an issue that we have never even considered, or even a beautiful
song of joy that we might not have ever even imagined.
There
are so many good reasons why we should go up to absolute strangers in
public spaces, speak to them, and be hospitable. When we exchange
names and smiles, we confront the myths, false beliefs and
uncritically assimilated assumptions about strangers that we have
gathered over a life time.
According
to sociologist Richard Sennett, a city is a human settlement in which
strangers are likely to meet. With the norms of civility in modern
public life we typically glance at one another quickly and then look
away, in a ritual that Erving Goffman calls “civil inattentions
(see my essay “Encountering Strangers in Public Places”).
Next
time that you are out for a walk downtown and are open for a
transformative learning experience, go up to a stranger in a public
space, speak to them kindly, introduce yourself, reach out to them,
engage them in a meaningful dialogue, open up your heart, and
practice real democracy. As Parker Palmer says, “become a gardener
of community,” allowing otherness to expand your universe.
Wayne
Martin Mellinger, Ph.D. Is a writer and activist who focuses on
issues of social justices. He teaches at Antioch University Santa
Barbara and is on the Board of Clergy and Laity United for Economic
Justice (CLUE)
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