Recently I traveled to Boston with my husband for business purposes. I had once been to Boston many years ago, but only for a few days and a long time ago. This would be a week and I would meet Bostonians. Upon my arrival I walked around and talked to people in coffee shops, on the streets, in shops and in churches about their City. Several differences between Cleveland and Boston were immediately evident; Boston is bigger, a little more sophisticated perhaps, the downtown is busier, there are lots of students (I later discovered the one-third of their population is students), and they talk funny. Perhaps because I was an outsider, a visitor, and had to ask my way around for a week I was reminded of other times when I was new, different, 'other'. 

    My most vivid memory of being the one who was different and new was when I was almost 16 years old. 

   I grew up in the same house, same neighborhood for as long as my memory stretched back. It was a little house on Mandale Street, in a suburb of Los Angeles where I walked the block to school with my very best friend, Donna Hamada. She was Japanese and spoke Japanese in her home and ate with chop sticks. From kindergarten on we were inseparable. Our moms even made us dresses alike. We were the same size and I remember the day we walked to school together in our new blue dresses. Her thick jet black hair cut straight across at her waist and my white blonde hair cut straight across at my waist. But with Donna I felt I belonged, because we did everything together. 

    One day when Donna and I were sophomores in high school my Dad bought an ice rink in Modesto, California. He quit his job and drove north to the Valley in central California and re-built this ice rink. During Spanish class one day, I left school, went home, packed, and moved to Modesto to live. I worked at my Dad's ice rink all during high school in a burgeoning farm town and eventually enrolled at the local high school. Now I was 'other'--afraid to even look up from my books to say 'hi' to the popular kids who all seemed to know one another. I didn't have a best friend, I didn't even have a friend and it didn't get easier.  I wanted to fit in. I tried to dress 'cool', tried the lastest hair style by cutting all my long hair off, tried going to parties and drinking to fit in. None of it worked--I remained 'other'. And it felt terrible. It was perhaps that experience that gave me a certain affinity for going to the edges of a group to find a new friend.  All of us want to belong, to be a part of a group--whatever our age, stage of life. Humans beings are highly dependent on one another, despite the idealized American concept of rugged individualism. 

     In Boston on the second day I walked by a church in the afternoon and decided to slip in and attend Mass. Of course I did not know anyone, but it was interesting to discover that most of the people there did not seem to know anyone either. Several unusual things happened before the Mass even began. First a man came in and sat across the pew from me, I could feel his eyes on me, so I turned and said 'hello'. He quickly got up and moved over next to me and loudly asked, "How have you been?" At first I thought perhaps I should know him from somewhere. Then he said, 'how about we go out for lunch and get to know one another.' Surprised by the comment I said I was meeting my husband for lunch. He said he was very sorry that I didn't date, and moved back across the pew. As I thought about the concept of dating at Mass, I realized he must be lonely and probably felt very much that he was 'other. Somehow  he saw church as an opportunity to be a part of something.

    Next a homeless person came in with a lot of 'stuff'. I noticed her because the 'unpacking' was noisy as she spread out on her things, and then herself, taking up most of the pew. A few minutes later she was either deeply in prayer or asleep. I again thought that perhaps she had also come here because she was lonely, different, ostracized . Without a home, a job, nice clothes, how do you fit in, where do you fit in? 

    And finally a tiny elderly lady entered the back of the church, walking slowly and leaning on her cane. I noticed her because her hair was nicely done, and had she had on a lovely button down coat. She walked in, but couldn't quite maneuver around a backpack hanging off the pew. Quite suddenly she began to beat the backpack with her cane and swear rather loudly. It was so unexpected that I almost began to laugh. I had to wonder if she was really that angry, or if she too was seeking attention because she felt alone in the world. Certainly in our culture, the elderly are seen as 'other'. 

    These people are 'us' --perhaps they had come to a church because they hoped this was a place where they would be accepted, would belong, or fit in for a little while. Certainly Christ built the church by befriending 'other'; whether the tax collector, the Samaritan woman, the prostitute, the leper, the skinny, shy high school girl who had just cut off all her beautiful hair, a guy who is so lonely he asks women for dates at Mass, a homeless person who is tired, or a cranky grandma with a cane. 

    The Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote about his experiences of 'other' throughout his best selling book, Seven Storey Mountain. Having spent a childhood moving constantly, losing both his parents at a young age, he tried desperately to belong, whether it was at the new school, in a new country, or with a new group of students, political activists or a religious order. But Merton never really felt he belonged until he walked into a Catholic Church. It was there that he felt a sense of communion and community as he kneeled and prayed with 'others', the body of Christ. He later joined the Trappist order of monks in Kentucky, where he had an entire community he belonged to. Here he belonged; the community all wore the same Trappist robes, ate the same food, sang the same prayers. Merton felt he belonged in this 'special' and 'holy' place. But eventually Merton became encased in this belonging and perceived himself once again with the myth of 'otherness'. He belonged to a religious order and he now felt uniquely special. 

    Joan Chittister writes a chapter in her book, Uncommon Gratitude about 'Otherness'. She states, "The myth of 'otherness' heresy that says that we, of all the world, are unique, Uniquely good, uniquely righteous, uniquely generous, uniquely kind, uniquely human...We as humans we look for difference and call them 'bad' rather than simply 'different'."*

Merton discovered the myth of his 'uniqueness' one day after decades inside a monastery. He went into Louisville and stood on the corner of 4th and Walnut looking at the throungs of people pushing, rushing through the streets. He writes:

" suddenly I realized that I loved all the people and that none of them were, or could be totally alien to me. As if waking from a dream--the dream of my separateness, of the 'special' vocation to be different. My vocation does not really make me different from the rest of men or put me in a special category except artificially, juridical. I am still a member of the human race and what more glorious destiny is there for man since the Word was made flesh and became, too, a member of the Human Race.!"  * 

    He had gone out from his perception of uniqueness to a place where God sees us, 'other' is really the glorious destiny of us all, as we become 'us'. Merton's experience infused him with the glory and love of God and he was able to see it in 'others' and was, for a moment, in concert with humanity and its beauty.

    Chittister describes this as, "a profusion of difference in concert. We do not sing all the part. We are not the stars of the show. We are simply part of the cast of extras called humanity. The 'other' is the one who teaches us that we are not the whole world. We are only a piece of it waiting for the 'other' to make us more than we were when we began." And then she repeats a question a friend of hers had once asked, "who would we not love, if we only knew their story?" *

Yes indeed, who would we not see as a glorious member of the human race, if we but knew their story?

Footnotes:

*Chittister, Joan and Rowan Williams. Uncommon Gratitude. (MN: Liturgical Press, 2010), p. 111-3.

*Cunningham, Lawrence S. Edited. A Search For Solitude: The Journals of Thomas Merton, Vol 3. (SF: Harper SanFrancisco), March 19. 1958. p. 34.