Dispatch #29
Wednesday, October 3
Grinnell, Iowa

Rain all night long. It covered Iowa, 2 inches here, 4 somewhat north of town. A cool front, if not a cold one. It rains still today. Perhaps I may be permitted this small piece of gratitude for a broken hip: I am not today cycling in difficult weather.

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A stranger sent a full-out wave in my direction this morning. I had just finished a live interview on KGRN, had negotiated some 40 steps down a narrow stairs to street level, had tottered through the rain, had pulled into the van and shut the door, when a man in a suit exited a decorating shop on main street, directly in front of the van. My eyes were upon him, but absently. In fact, he wasn't registering in my mind until suddenly he smiled, gazing straight back at me. He raised his hand and waved it side-to-side, as if I were far away and might miss the greeting.

I waved back, though more tentatively in my demonstration than he was in his.

The man went walking on down the sidewalk.

And it occurred to me how seldom a stranger will offer so hearty a greeting as a full-out wave.

Farmers will raise one finger from their steering wheels as they pass by. Folks will raise a still hand; teenagers flap a hand up-and-down once; grandparents indicate their "Hello" with a slow nod of the head. Pastors will come forward and shake your hand--sometimes with such vigor as to bring you to your knees. A salesman might slap your back. But the full-out wave seems mostly to come from children, or else adults whose sensibilities have remained stuck in childhood.

And large cities are notorious for no greetings at all from the stranger, unless they communicate some kind of displeasure.

Oh the other hand, when I hitch-hiked through Europe years and years ago, I learned how the Germans would use "Gruss Gott" (an umlaut over the "u" in "Gruss") as a regular greeting, and so I ambled happily through their cities forcing, as it were, Deific greetings from their lips be saying first "Gruss Gott" in a bright, singing voice. I gathered a thousand such greetings in return and felt as if I'd found the door for belonging, a citizen of their cities. For a fraction of time, as we passed shoulder to shoulder, I was no stranger at all.

But here in Grinnell, a man with sheets of specifications under one arm, a suit and tie, a business man's dress and attitude, raised his whole arm and waved at me.

I blinked. I was smitten by kindness. I nearly lost the opportunity in my haze of wonderment; but before he looked away, I too raised my hand and waved--and for that instant, on the beams of two glances, I was granted citizenship in this place too.

Mostly we are strangers until proven a friend.

But what about this riskier and dearer proposition: that we be considered friends until facts prove us strangers? It is the principle of hospitality, you know, both in the ancient world and in the classical world and in Christian behaviors of welcome. (The Benedictines have refined this principle to a high piety; and once upon a time, hospitals were places of perfect hospital-ity (however cost effective they've chosen to be in this latter age of presumptive strangeness and suspicions).

As Abraham sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men stood in front of him. (See Genesis 18)

What did he then do to then? Nod? Raise one finger? Reach for a stick? It is likely that, at this early stage in their visitation, Abraham knew not the identities of these three: strangers, then. But strangers was not how he chose to deal with them. For, far beyond a full-out wave, this is what Abraham did immediately:

"When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them, and bowed himself to the earth, and said, 'My lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree, while I fetch a morsel of bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on--since you have come to your servant." Read farther in Genesis to see what that "Morsel" turned out to be: cakes, a calf tender and good, curds and milk--and they ate.

Here was and is the template for hospitality. This was and is how you do it. You do all as if it were the Lord God come into your own abode, to rest awhile, to be fed and kept, and all the while to be entertained. You do it because this is how the Lord Jesus enters your private life, seeking your service not by his command but by your spontaneous response.

Is it right then? Are we right to begin with suspicion and a well-protecting coolness? Do cities themselves drive us to that state where inhospitality is consider both normal and right? Read farther in Genesis. Read the 19th chapter, and see how Lot himself duplicates his uncle Abraham's behavior, though he does not know that the two "strangers" are angels of the Lord. And then, in verse 4, see how the city destroys hospitality and goodness and friendship in a stroke. And Lot himself might have died in the end, for that he loved the city too much. Only by compulsion he does escape the city and live.

So the Iowan strolling out of the decorating store turned right along the sidewalk and went about his business. But I can't (and I wouldn't if I could) erase that smiling, full-out wave from my memory, nor the significant effect it had upon me ... for no other reason than this: that it is so dearly and sadly unusual.

Walt