Welcoming the Other
In my last post on experience and words an interesting conversation arose in the comments on what it means to welcome others. The question centered on whether or not emergent is welcoming of all if disagreements exist or if “us verses them” divisions exist.
On one level the discussion asks the question if a person can feel welcome in a non-homogeneous group or if they are the minority. I’ve personally talked about how hard that can be for me when I feel like I am not even allowed to be myself in groups. I don’t like being the odd one out, and I know there are some that would rather not make concessions to welcome the other either. I recall a very awkward interracial experience I had a number of years ago in this regard. It was Christmastime, and this good Texas girl wanted her traditional tamales for Christmas Eve. So I headed over to a Mexican market in West Chicago to buy some. I was walking out of the store with my tamales when an elderly Hispanic woman stopped me at the door, gestured emphatically at me, and asked “what’s a gringo doing in my store? What do you want with us?” I replied something lame about the tamales and made a quick exit, but I had impressed on me the difficulty of crossing boundaries – especially the ones you barely knew existed. It is hard to feel welcome or to welcome the other when you really don’t know how to interact with each other.
Same thing with welcoming others into our homes. Sure we lay out the welcome mat and (at least here in Texas) hand ceramic signs that say “Bienvenidos. Mi Casa Es Su Casa!” on our doors, but do we really mean it? Do we really say “come on in, everything I have is yours” to just anyone or is that sentiment only reserved for those who are already our friends and family, or who are at least entering our house on our terms? I admit, I have good reason not to open my door to the creepy stoned guy who comes by selling seafood (like really, who buys from a door to door FISH salesman?). But I also am feeling very selfish with my home having not really done any entertaining since moving here nearly a year ago (a far cry from when we hosted a church out of our house in Illinois).
It’s that church element that theoretically should make all the difference. While cultural communities and our homes can be places of refuge from the world (for good or ill) where others aren’t indiscriminately welcomed, many churches on the other hand do attempt to in theory welcome the other. Of course, we all know that that offer of welcome is all too often accompanied with the assumption that resistance truly is futile, they will be assimilated. But other groups have strived to be truly welcoming – not just allowing, but celebrating differences.
This has been the way I at least have always seen Emergent as functioning. But for some it is that very existence of differences that becomes an insurmountable hurdle. In the rest of our lives, it is rare to associate ourselves with the other. From our cliques in high school, to the stores where we shop, to who we invite into our homes, to even the churches we attend we generally surround ourselves with others who think, look, act, and vote just like us. So Emergent with it’s “all are welcome” stance is a bit unsettling. It doesn’t fit our experiences to willingly associate ourselves with others who think differently than we do, much less truly welcome them. Yet that’s what we are trying to do. Beyond that, we talk about those differences, especially when those difference involve not just abstract ideas, but how we fulfill the call to love real people.
And yes, some have rejected that and us because we don’t reject others in our midst. In other words, that tension of difference is too much for some. What gets amusing then is when those that can’t deal with agreeing to disagree call us unwelcoming because all of us don’t completely agree with them. Or when I hear on the same day people complaining that they have no place in emergent because everyone there is either too liberal or too conservative for their voice to be heard. What I think they are often really saying is that they wish theirs was the exclusive voice that was heard and that all the other others wouldn’t be quite as welcome. You know, a “all emergents are equal, some are just more equal than others” sort of thing.
What is harder is welcoming all when the us verses them dichotomies are painful and real. In other words, it’s hard to be welcoming and honest at the same time. For many, beyond just disagreeing with evangelical theology, they have experienced real wounds within the evangelical church. That is part of their journey, and it would be dishonest and inauthentic to deny it. It might be easier to have relationships and welcome the evangelical if we all just pretended stuff like that never happened, but it wouldn’t be healthy to hide it. And for some people, in order to heal, they do need to establish healthy boundaries. But brushing up against those boundaries especially when they weren’t expected (like with my experience in West Chicago), can make it difficult for a person to feel welcomed. But I don’t think it is impossible. Having boundaries and disagreement with others doesn’t mean one is bitter and unwelcoming. As long as the other is given a voice and respected, then they are welcomed.
But it comes down to the question of whether or not the experiment of agreeing to disagree will really work. Of course we will always share our opinions, learn from and critique each other, and have to do our best to avoid hurting each other in the process, but to welcome each other will require living in tension instead of forcefully assimilating those not like us. And it is, of course, the far more painful path to follow. But there are those of us who believe it to be the better way and so attempt to follow that path.
julieclawson(at)gmail(dot)com 
Good post! BTW – I shop in that store in West Chicago often, and I feel awkward going there,(my perception that I’m out of place) but have always been welcomed and not even looked at curiously. Interesting.
Thanks for this–it’s important for all of us, but it struck a chord with me since I serve as the pastor of an international church (mostly US expats in London). I posted a small story and comment back in 2007 that became part of our church’s strategy for drawing people into community here.
http://ministryintheuk.blogspot.com/2007/09/home-cooking.html
This girl from New Mexico is always hunting for good tamales for Christmas Eve in Michigan, so I completely relate to that story!
Thanks for a thoughtful post. It reminds me of a great diversity workshop I attended that emphasized how we must acknowledge our own prejudices before we can make progress. Similarly, it’s hard to welcome everyone if we don’t recognize where the hurdles are and work to overcome them. Anything less could be simply denial, and relationships stay superficial rather than getting to the heart of true community.
The more I read, the more I realize that I am very “emergent.” But I still attend an evangelical church, and often it chafes. Perhaps that is because I think there is MORE THAN ONE right answer… Maybe I can broaden perspectives by blooming where I am planted…
Being welcoming I think is always tricky. A woman came to our church for a few months, and then at an all church retreat said she almost hadn’t come to the retreat that she had felt so unwelcome by most of us because she had been going through a difficult time and we would ask her how things were and we’d accept her smile and saying she was good. We spent a good time at the retreat exploring what her perspective meant for us as a congregation. she stayed around for about a month more and then attended a church she felt was more welcoming (a larger more established church with contemporary worship, and an established outreach ministry to teenagers in the neighborhood). We had not met her expectations, and yes we admitted that we could follow up better on how we were all doing, but in the end seemed we were being judged by a certain set of expectations and we had to meet them for us to be a welcoming and hospitable church.
It seems to me that welcome and hospitality work in a form of mutual flow between the two parties. Welcome is never something I simply give or receive, both parties must be willing to give and receive. Derrida makes a good deal of this in his work Hospitality, and that in French and some other languages guest and host are indicated by the same word. I wonder if truly being able to avoid the logic of assimilation is to recognize that welcome and hospitality are always about relationship where one ostensibly has all the power and another has none but in fact the logic of hospitality is that both must give up and turn on its head the expectations each has of the other and the power differential.
To Larry’s point, I think we can only welcome people to the extent they want to be welcomed. If we ask someone how they’re doing and their response is FINE, are we to assume they are lying?
I think authenticity is crucial. In my 20’s I did a pretty good job of acting like I knew what was going on. Getting close to my 40’s I have realized how much energy it takes to seem polished and enlightened. I have found great comfort in acknowledging my ignorance. It’s liberating to say things like: I don’t know what you mean. Could you explain that?
Using Julie’s house illustration: Not everyone keeps their garbage can under their sink in the kitchen. What feels more awkward? Asking where the garbage can is? Or opening each cupboard just a little bit, trying to see the can but trying not to appear nosy like you’re just going through their stuff. I ask.
In my church, and in my home, I try to create an atmosphere where people feel welcome to ask. We don’t print all the words to the hymns in the bulletin. We trust that they can find #339 in the blue book in front of them. But we also try really hard to create an environment in which people don’t feel that they have to know everything. And they will hopefully feel comfortable asking for help. It doesn’t always work, but what does?
Larry – thanks for bringing that up. Yes, welcome does require both parties to give a little. If someone enters a group or a conversation expecting to be rejected or disagreed with, then they are certainly going to find that.
Patrick – but in all truth for some of us, asking is really really hard. For me its the worst at times when asking is impossible that I would love someone being willing to notice that and just explain already. Like in churches with 4-5 prayerbooks/hymnals that makes finding a number way more difficult, a heads up or a footnote in the bulletin would be nice. And communion is always hard – not knowing the proper method. I think it is during communion time that I feel the most unwelcome, or like an outsider, in churches. All it would take is a few words of direction to ease that barrier, but that rarely happens. Maybe the leaders don’t think its important, or maybe they just don’t have a clue. But just saying that sometimes what is meant to be conveyed doesn’t always translate to those it is meant to reach.
Patrick:
I suppose you could conclude from what I wrote that people can be welcomed only if they want to but that is not quite what I was meaning to get at. The story illustrates that expectations play a role both on the side of the one welcoming and on the side of those who are welcomed. For Welcome to work it seems to me a spirit of generosity is needed on both sides.
Being willing to ask is I think important and finding ways to communicate that its okay to ask and not get it all is crucial, but I think a very difficult thing to achieve. Reconciler, and myself could improve some on being welcoming.
Julie, I think your bringing up that for some people it is difficult to ask is good. Being other is scary. I think it’s why we as human being often chose a demanded assimilation over welcome. But what if welcome doesn’t erase otherness (which I think is something that the discussions here and elsewhere may be slowly seeking to address) or even make it comfortable sometimes welcome can bring out difference in stark contrast. Sometimes difference and otherness can be dangerous or destructive to the vulnerable in our midst, to bring up extreme examples.
I think this is why I brought up a fairly mild example of desire for welcome and desire to welcome and failing to do so from both sides, but being welcomed and feeling welcomed in another environment that was in the end actually more comfortable and fit the persons expectations. To point out what i think you are getting at is one something that is an always on going process and is a negotiation of otherness between two parties where each acknowledge the reality of otherness, and that sometimes being other and different isn’t necessarily good, but this doesn’t mean we should shut ourselves up in a fortress.
I’m rambling so I’ll stop now.
Back pedal. Back pedal. Back pedal.
The first church I served in Chicago had organized social groups, with a published calendar of events. I asked how a new person might get involved and was told that they just needed to call and ask if they could come along. I remember thinking I might sooner ask if the church could cover my utilities than if I could go to the movies with a bunch of strangers.
I also served in a place where the bulletin (in an attempt to be welcoming) was filled more with stage directions than liturgy. It felt contrived and frankly, not as clear as a few simple words of instruction (as you, Julie, suggest).
We do try to explain what’s going in our worship. Communion is done so many different ways, even in our own denomination, that explanation is needed even for the life-long Presbyterian.
I guess what I really strive for is authenticity. If anything I write smacks of “Like it or leave,” please chalk it up to poor writing skills. The spirit I try to engender in any environment where I might have some influence is one of genuineness. The congregations I have served have not been the most diverse. As a result, I have witnessed a couple of occasions when a person of color would come to worship and almost be mugged with hospitality. Though very well-intentioned, the spirit was more of punching our diversity ticket than welcoming a new comer.
I think we need to strive to be who Christ has called us to be, and do it in a way that is true to who we are.
My thoughts are getting so muddled, even I am having a tough time following them. But I appreciate this conversation.
I think the question your post raised for me is how do you cross boundaries. I remembered an experience at seminary where a young Hispanic girl became very angry in class over an what she thought was racism. I saw the same event as a cultural misunderstanding, and said while I can see we she saw racism, I could not. I was quickly attacked as racist myself, not understanding the pain of being Hispanic. The irony was that the young girl was born in Los Angeles, never been to Mexico, and could not speak Spanish. I was born and lived in Mexico to Mexican parents and raised on the border. I was told that I assimilated and she had not. Assimilated because I spoke English without an accent, and did not fit within the other students stereotype of being Hispanic. I can express how profoundly sad it made me to realize my culture was reduced to stereotypes. I was not welcomed, neither was my rich family history of ranch life in Mexico. The young girl had reasons to see racism, and they are not wrong. I think welcoming is allowing the other their own story and then creating the space to transcend their story.