More on the stranger

 More on the "stranger", again from Thomas Merton.

It is my belief that we should not be too sure of having found Christ in ourselves until we have found him also in the part of humanity that is most remote from our own” and “God speaks, and God is to be heard, not only on Sinai, not only in my own heart, by in the voice of the stranger

A Proverb from the Bible (18:13) says that "those who answer a thing before they hear it, it is a shame and a folly unto them".

Who is not guilty of such shame and folly? Each day we "answer" strangers by projecting ourselves upon them, only hearing their words through the mesh of our own settled opinions and beliefs. Waiting for them to shut up so that we can put in our own 2cents worth. People talking at each other, not with each other.

Merton also said:-

And the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. it is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. My dear brothers and sisters, we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.

That may be so, yet to truly listen is a first step, and to seek to use our own words to heal and bless.

There is a Jewish story of a guy who goes to see his rabbi concerning his marriage problems. The rabbi told him to go home and truly listen to all that his wife said to him. He came back later and said that things had not improved much. "Well" said the rabbi, "now go home and listen to everything she doesn't say."