Welcoming the Other

it starts when you say Weand know who you mean,and each day you mean one more.

The Low Road by Marge Piercy

Dear Friends,

On Tuesday mornings at 10am, we gather in the church office to have conversations about faith. During the Summer, I’m calling it Coffee, Conversation & Koinonia. In the session we had this week, we watched the video, A Larger Welcome, which featured an interview with Parker Palmer. In the video, he referenced the poem above by Marge Piercy.

In our lives, we tend to live with a sense of duality. We tend to categorize things as right/wrong, good/bad, in/out. One of these dualities is us/them. For some people, the us is them and one other person. For some, it means their immediate family. For others, it means the people in their tribe, their clan, their village, their church… you get the picture. When there is an us, it means there is a them.  Them are the people who are the other… because of place, ethnicity, belief, language, or whatever.

In my reading of the gospels, Jesus invites us to an ever-expanding idea of we and us. The us in the Bible began with Abraham and his descendants. Jesus expanded it to include Gentiles and we are part of that “expansion.” Jesus constantly reached out and included people who were considered “other” by the religious authorities and to break down the barriers that separated us from each other.

Right now in Alberta, we are having a conversation about whom is the other. The conversation is framed with words like: citizen, Alberta, immigrant, permanent resident, and separation. In particular, I’m referring to the referendum questions we will be voting on in October. Many of the questions have to do with people who are immigrants and newcomers and whether they will have access to health care and education.

About 10 years ago, that would have applied to me. I immigrated from the U.S. and was pleasantly shocked that I had access to health care. It was also a huge gift to us that our son could immediately enroll in public education. This Canadian compassion is one of the things that makes me proud to be a Canadian (Yes, we are citizens now). Many immigrants have much less support and resources than we had. To put up barriers to health care and education makes a hard situation even harder… and I’m not sure anyone would really benefit from it.

As followers of Jesus, we are called to overcome our fear of others and to work to constantly expand our sense of we. I hope you relate to your vote as an opportunity to show hospitality and mercy to those who have chosen--or even been forced—to uproot their lives and find themselves here in Alberta.

Peace,

Pastor Phil