Love the Stranger

December 21st, 2007

Once, a while back, I was talking with a Jewish friend of mine and jokingly said—“Hey, you have it easier than I.  I have to love my enemy; you only have to love your neighbor.” 

She immediately replied—“No, I have to love the stranger.  And the stranger is often your enemy.”

This is the time of year that we watch the message of “This season is about Love!” go through the marketing meat grinder.   Businesses have wreaths and politically correct “Happy Holiday” signs posted for us to check the holiday hours.  Commercials extol us with great gift giving ideas (it’s Chia Pet time!) or assure us that the expensive gifts are really about the love behind them.   Movies pretend that we care more about the love in the air than the gift we will receive.   One T.V. channel even has a daily “Falalala” movie of Christmas cheer (with an occasional Hanukkah movie thrown in for balance).   We are reminded of the troops, far from home and encouraged to buy them cards and presents, too.

Here at the Center we have done some of our own Holiday activities.  Greeting cards have been signed and sent.  A holiday party was given for some local supporters.  Messages of support and love from churches and Friends Meetings have been forwarded to COs.

Are we spending so much time on Holiday “Love” that we are forgetting to love the stranger?  Love our enemy?
This time of year brings out one more story annually: The story of Christmas Eve during World War I, when the Germans and the British troops shared drinks and music.  This is brought our and polished off about once a year as a sign that we could, if we only let the troops do it, get along and set aside our weapons permanently. 
Somehow the story brushes off the fact that the day after Christmas these same men were willing to shoot and bomb each other. 

After all they were still strangers.   Sharing a drink doesn’t change that.

If this is the season of Love, can we take a moment to love the stranger?  Can we take a minute to love the men and women in Congress and on Capitol Hill and in the Pentagon and in Fort Benning and in Iraq and in Camp David who we think we know, but who we really don’t? 

Can we love the people who shoot the weapons, the people who order the weapons to be shot, the people who order them all to be where the weapons will inevitably be shot, the people who don’t stop the funding for the weapons as well as the people who stand up and refuse to shoot, refuse to pay for the weapons, and refuse to order the weapons shot?

Can we truly love the stranger?