Expanding the Walls

Every human draws circles around himself or herself in order to determine how large his/her world will be.

Most of us prefer to live in a world made up of people who look like us, think like us, believe like us, and talk like us. So we wall in those who are "like us" and we wall out those who are unlike us. "Good fences make good neighbors," says the man on the other side of Robert Frost's wall (the previous blog post).

You don't have to look far in contemporary culture to know this truth. In fact, you likely see it in the world before you notice it in yourself. Examples abound, and are easy enough to see . . . men or women are all stereotyped because of the actions of a few . . . entire ethnic groups are stigmatized because of the behavior of a small portion of that population . . . all persons within any identity sub-set of life are all characterized in the same way.

I tend to "profile" all persons who drive a particular brand of automobile (these persons also tend to drive the same color of that make and model!) as "entitled" and "arrogant" . . . even as they cut me off and speed on down the freeway.

Most all of us do this kind of thing in one way or another, creating insiders and outsiders . . . whether we label those outside our circle as "liberal elites" or as "a basket of deplorables." We have one set of labels for those inside the circle with us, and another set of labels -- usually much more pejorative -- for those outside the circle.

Jesus spent little time cozying up to those who would have been inside his wall or circle . . . those who looked like him, talked like him, or shared a common background. Using the vocabulary I've suggested, Jesus was mostly focused on those on the outside of culture's norms, not those inside. As I've said before in this space, while Jesus gave most of his attention to those who were on the outside of society's wall, it is doubtful Jesus ever met anyone who he considered to be an outsider. He was spacious enough, generous enough, that he had no walls, no need to create divisions.

That kind of spaciousness and generosity -- perhaps we could call it "mercy" or "compassion" -- is fundamental to the nature of God.

Expanding your walls -- or eventually letting them crumble -- is not as easy as just wishing it so. It takes an ongoing, daily intention to see the actual truth of our lives . . . to be deliberate in our self-reflection . . . to be honest with ourselves about who we are and how we are in the world. We have to be willing to see ourselves as we are, not merely as we wish to be . . . to acknowledge the truth about the walls we live within (who is included, who is excluded) . . . and to take small steps which make wider the circles in which we live.

Engage someone who is "outside" your circle in conversation, not intending to change their mind, but simply to listen to them.

Be in settings made up of people who are not "like you" (whatever you take "not like you" to mean). Be there as an observer, as a compassionate presence.

Seek to understand as honestly as possible how someone who sees life differently could be the way they are. For example, try to see life from the perspective of that family member whose politics are 180 degrees different from yours. Or try to imagine life from the perspective of that neighbor who is from a different culture, a different part of the world. Your perspective, after all, is NOT the only perspective.

Small steps . . .

I do know this . . . it takes a lot of energy to go about this more expansive inner work. It is not easy.

But as Frost's poem, "Mending Wall" suggests (in the previous post), it also takes a lot of work to keep mending the same old walls, leaving them right where they have always been.