On Being a Stranger

This morning I visited a church.  I was a stranger.

I can't tell you how freeing it is to be a stranger.  No one has any expectations of you at all.  I am the most free because I do not have to live up to my personal story, because no one knows it.  It is a great feeling. 

These are the few times that I am really starting out with a blank slate.  People's reactions to me will be based on their first impressions.  Isn't that great!   I am free to be the person I most want to be.  No history to encumber that process.

It was a wonderful morning.  Everyone in the congregation, and I mean each and every person, greeted me.  Now it was the early morning service, so there were fewer people, but still.   I was so impressed.   I was immediately invited to the adult bible study.  The person leading it was a warm and wonderful woman who just radiated this thing that I like to call "motherly affection."  She shone with it.   The Bible study was fun, uplifting, and the people just pleasant to be around.  I have rarely heard so much laughing in a Bible Study as I did this morning. 

When asked what I do, I replied that my main goal was my own spirituality.  Now I have said this before and gotten those looks.  You know.  That look like either I am from another planet or I am about to start preaching hellfire and brimstone.  This morning, what I said was taken at face value.  The man who asked it replied that he knew exactly what I meant and that for the last 9 years he too had as his first priority his spirituality.  

Now you might say that that is to be expected in a church.  Wouldn't you expect to have people for whom their first priority were their spirituality?  I have visited many churches, and there are very few people who actually come out and say it.  I am sure many more feel this to be true but, since getting those looks from friends and strangers, they no longer say it that readily in public.   Shame really.   Those are the people who usually end up being very interesting indeed.

But to get back to the point; being a stranger is such an experience in freedom that I would suggest to anyone to try it sometime.  Go somewhere where absolutely no one knows your name.  For that time, focus on being the person you most wish to be.  Divorce yourself from your past.   Do not be tied by other's expectations, or your past expectations of yourself.   It is a marvelous experience.