The Mysterious Stranger, by Greg Williamson
You see him everywhere, a face in the crowd.
He lingers by your side And stalks the shopfront windows, slightly bowed,
Matching you stride for stride.
He lurks behind the mirrors of waiting rooms,
Behind the marble walls Of railway stations, banquet halls,
and looms In the two-way mirrors of malls.
He hides in the jackets of books, in lavalieres,
In the glossy monochrome Of negatives,
and after dark he peers In the windows of your home.
He knows your heart by heart,
where an old disgrace You buried yet survives,
And secret loves reflected on your face In spoons and kitchen knives.
Your Doppelganger, silent partner,
laid Out at the bottom of lakes And coffee cups,
or loitering in the shade Of lamps, as long as it takes
He'll ride along in buses, welcome you At tinted doors,
and slog Through rainy puddles in the avenue,
Weathering both the fog Of light bulbs and the snow of paperweights,
To call on you one day.
Beware of him, the stranger in town,
who waits To give yourself away.
Strangers are everywhere. One need only venture into traffic and discover how many of them are roaming all over town. Drive down any street and see all the houses these strangers live in. Step into a grocery store and be surrounded by them. Some of them look like us and some of them don't. Most of them speak English, but some speak unrecognizable languages. Even retreating into one's home, the strangers come knocking on the door to deliver mail, drop off packages, clean the carpet, spray for bugs, repair the roof, and cut the grass. And even when they leave us alone, we see those strangers driving by looking at our home, fearing perhaps, if they slow down, they may be interested in taking some of our possessions and doing us harm.
Strangers are a particular dynamic of Florida - especially here where the chamber of commerce is trying to attract them and relieve them of their vacation money. We have a regular stream of strangers coming to play and enjoy themselves. Port Charlotte didn't exist until it was invented by General Development Corporation. If one were to go to Port St. Lucie, another GDC development, one would discover how un-unique Port Charlotte is as a community. Port Charlotte has no heritage and precious little history. Port Charlotte is a collection of strangers who have nothing in common save the desire to enjoy Florida's climate and the recreational opportunities the Peace River offers.
Not only are we strangers to each other and this place, but also to the ecosystem. They didn't have palm trees in Delaware where I grew up. We didn't have red ants or chameleons running around, or mangrove gnats or palmettos and palmetto bugs. Most of us are strangers to the flora and fauna of Charlotte County, one of the reasons we are writing our book to help people appreciate the beauty native to this ecosystem.
Strangerhood is a permanent, even necessary, fixture of civilization. One can't really know more than several hundred people (if even that). This is a problem for members of a large congregation. I remember during my internship in Rochester, New York, the effort I put forth to try to learn just the names of the 700 or so members of that congregation. By the time I left a year later, I imagined that I still hadn't met a significant number of members of the congregation. Any grouping of human beings that grows to over several hundred people must begin struggling with strangers in their midst.
While we may prefer close-knit cozy little groups where everyone knows everyone, nature has a different opinion. Scientists from Charles Darwin on have noticed that when it comes to mating, females often find the stranger very appealing. The very existence of male and female reproduction encourages and rewards the mixing of strange genetic material.
The attractiveness of the stranger is perhaps common knowledge to all of us from personal courtship experience. After all, most of us are married to people who were at one time strangers. The friendly boy or girl next door is far less exciting than the new one who moves into the neighborhood. The new girls in school always attracted much more of my interest than my classmates from first grade (whom I fear I took for granted). Being married, I had forgotten the attractive dimension of strangers until I saw an article in Cosmopolitan called, "20 conversation pieces to get a (sexy) stranger talking[1]". Rather than brashly going up to the attractive stranger and demanding their telephone number, Cosmo recommended clever conversational snares like a jazzy colored T-shirt with non-English words on it, loud suspenders, saucy sunglasses perched on the head, buttons with a clever message, an intriguing book (leave your romance novels home) and a basketball (what man can resist a woman with a basketball!) or bicycle helmet.
The allure of the stranger goes beyond the romantic sphere. Corporations often call in consultants to try to bring a fresh outlook to entrenched unproductive, even damaging, practices and problems. Unknown auditors are relied on to check the books. Our judicial system relies on 12 strangers hearing the evidence in a trial and rendering a judgment. The very fact that the strangers are unknown to us, gives them the power to be more impartial.
The stranger can also be our savior. I remember my car stalling while driving to the Sierras in California and pulling over to the side of the road. As soon as I stopped, a car pulled over right in front of me. The driver had seen sparks coming out of my tail pipes and wanted to help. After I figured out that I had run out of gas, the kind fellow drove me to a gas station and back.
I'd wager all of us, like Blanche Dubois in "A Streetcar Named Desire" have stories about depending on the kindness of strangers. The salvific stranger is mythologized in superhero comics like Superman, Batman and Wonderwoman. In Westerns, figures like Zorro, Kung Fu and the Lone Ranger roam the desert plains avenging wrong, saving the innocent and punishing the guilty. In the East, the stranger hero is often the wise wandering sage who uses superhuman magical powers to vanquish evil forces.
Of course, not everyone is equally strange. A Saudi woman or an Eskimo man I will likely find more strange than a Unitarian Universalist minister whom I will be meeting for the first time. Having been a member of a U.U. congregation, having attended a seminary, having passed successfully the ministerial fellowshipping process, having served a U.U. congregation, I will have an enormous amount in common with the U.U. minister before we meet for the first time. This is one of the pleasurable delights of attending General Assembly, to be in the company of so many compatible strangers. I'm not so sure I would feel so at home in an Eskimo village preparing to go out on a seal hunt or conversing in hand signals through a veil worn by a Saudi woman. In fact, in Saudi Arabia, I might lose my hands if the woman becomes offended.
Because encountering strangers again and again is potentially anxiety- producing, we evolve complex ways to manage our response. By evaluating the tone and mode of speech, the appearance, the expression of the face, the manners and social grace, we try to separate the safe strangers from the dangerous. We rely on our prejudices, experience, and judgment to teach us who to approach and who to avoid.
Religions seem to be less careful in dealing with strangers than folkways might dictate. The Hebrew and Christian Scriptures outline a compassionate response to the unknown other. In Exodus, God commands of the Jews: Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt (22:21). Jesus makes clear his concern for all people in Matthew's gospel in these words, "For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me...Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me" (25:35-36,40).
What easily gets forgotten as we look at the strangers around us is that we are strangers too. This is a common experience (and one of the attractions) of traveling. When I was 19, I dropped out of school to do what many of my generation had been doing in the late 60's and early 70's, to find myself. A need for meaning and purpose in my life was quite strong at the time so I bought a rail pass and traveled west to seek inner knowledge. I voluntarily became a stranger, a drifter, a seeker.
As I rode the train across the country, I remember many chance meetings with other passengers. And even though I had never met these people before, I found many connections. One person I met had lived in Delaware. Another shared an interest in computers. Another the spirit of embarking on a new life. I remember the pleasure of meeting someone new who expanded my thinking and stimulated my interest in an aspect of life unknown before. Every person and experience was new and exciting. Chance meetings thrust me into new situations and relationships. And I was changed.
In one small African tribe, the stranger is viewed as a God. The stranger is cherished because the stranger brings new ways and new ideas. The stranger's very difference helps the tribe define itself and discover itself anew in contradistinction to the stranger. The tribe will invite the stranger to spend the night with one of their women, hoping to introduce new genes to the gene pool. The stranger may or may not be embraced, and often must be feared and fought. Some changes are destructive to the weakness encountered The stranger represents the male principle who brings important changes. The stranger brings new blood, new space, new language, new culture. The stranger is a source of creative energy that gives vitality to the tribe[2].
For the Western theist, God is the ultimate stranger, to be sought but never to be fully known. In the Hebrew scriptures, not even the name of God can be known or spoken. It is fabled that to have direct contact with God is to die, "No man can see me and live" (Exodus 33:20). The infinite cannot have direct contact with the finite or the finite will lose its individuality and be absorbed into the oneness. Yet paradoxically, God is always closer than our own skin surrounding us. It is the intuition of familiarity, unconfirmed by the senses, that inflames the desire for union with the divine, to go beyond the boundaries of space and time to know the source of creation, to live in harmony with the unfoldment of existence and to be united with the driving principles of life.
The stranger can never be removed from our lives. No matter how well we know our children, our spouse, our brothers and sisters, our parents, they still surprise us. I have found no one for whom I could predict all of their actions. One of my initial attractions to Philomena was the remarkable way we could read each other's minds. Yet after 5 years of marriage, I know now how much I don't know about her. The mystery of why she is who she is remains elusive.
And we are strangers to our own processes of mind. Habit wins out over conscious control. The will often yields to the power of the emotions. Desire and aversion inflame the passions, clouding the clarity of reason.
So perhaps because of the ultimate familiarity of strangers, having strangers in our midst is not so troubling after all. Instead of having to become travelers ourselves to encounter strangers, we can stay here, enjoy the comforts of home and still have the pleasure of meeting new people who come to visit Charlotte County. The opportunity for a chance meeting is one of the thrills of urban living. We can get the thrill without the risk and inconvenience.
And we are so fortunate that strangers are willing to come here on Sunday morning so we don't have to go out looking for them. Being part of an open religious congregation means a constant flow of strangers through our doors. Though they may be new to this area, new to our faith, if they stay, it is because they are far less strange than they first appear.
So I encourage you, if you see someone who you do not know on Sunday morning, to treat them as that African tribe does, as a God who has come to reinvigorate us, to help us to rediscover ourselves, to bring new blood, new space, new language, new culture. By welcoming the stranger without, we welcome the stranger within.
SO BE IT.
Go forth from this place today and greet a friendly stranger. Do this not as penance for hearing my sermon, but rather like the African tribe, as a search for God.
For in the stranger is a reflection of ourselves and the truths of which we are made. In the stranger is the difference which will bring us change. In the stranger is the energy which will bring us new life. Copyright (c) 1995 Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore, All Rights Reserved
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