March 10, 2011

I attended one sermon, given by Stephen Williams. It was to remind us that Jesus told us to love our enemies.

I remember that I was deeply moved, and now I don’t remember why. I remember that I had been listening from the middle of the central aisle because the notch that has been carved out of the last row of pews is a few inches too short for me to fit into.

I remember that I started to go up to Stephen after the service. Because I go out a different door I came up from behind him, and not being able to get his attention that way, I came around a different way. The second approach was more like swimming upstream because I was then moving back up the sidewalk as the departing crowd was coming down the path.

By this time several minutes had passed and Stephen was ready to move on. Not being able to catch more than a fleeting greeting from him, I shouted from a distance that I would write him a letter. This will be in that letter.

Mainly I remember how it seems that our different life circumstances virtually turn Stephen and I into each other’s enemies – not in an overtly hostile way – but in the sense that we physically and socially cannot share space except in the most truncated way. Good intention does not prevail against the long time present barriers between us.

In the model of Inclusion I have created (the BMX Model presented earlier in this blog) my sojourn in Imlay House was B – Basic Level inclusion. Mike and I were welcome, treated in a very warm way, freely given comforts and shelter, occasionally gifted with food, interacted with politely but briefly, and otherwise left alone, accountable for nothing more than returning the keys when we left. Other interactions were imagined before we arrived – there was speculation that we would meet with the youth group or speak at Wonderful Wednesday’s dinner, but when we actually arrived there was no space in people’s calendars.

Now, I don’t experience that I am an enemy or am viewed as an enemy of members of First Pres – quite the opposite. Just the same, if I WERE experienced as an enemy, and especially if I behaved like one, would the time at Imlay House have led to greater inclusion for Mike and I?

The scriptures admonishing Christians to love their enemies are all about “turn the other cheek” and “carry the load an extra mile”. They suggest that love is expressed as tolerating pain, standing present in the face of stress, generating more effort beyond an already overwhelming strain – all in the context of hostility and disrespect.

An enemy is not invisible. Mike and I were mainly invisible.

What would Christ have said about loving the invisible? Does this reality lay on me the responsibility to become an enemy when I am invisible, so that there will be an opportunity to be loved? Is that why Rosa Parks had to sit at the front of the bus?
(to be cont’d)