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In my college days, I stretched my dollars by buying everything I needed at garage sales. Champagne County was rife with sales that started early on Saturday mornings and were well and truly picked over by 3PM. About that time, the people selling things were pulling their tables back into the garage and would give me what remained for a fraction of the price they were worth at 8AM. So, I usually headed out about noon and drove around neighborhoods…
Until the time it backfired on me. I was in a lovely subdivision and saw the people pulling their tables into their garage. The tables still looked pretty full of things spread out and standing up… it looked promising. I pulled up, sauntered in and was warmly welcomed.
“What is your name?” Odd question. I told them and they gave me a name-tag. I looked over the tables. They were mostly photographs of people and stapled piles of records obviously downloaded from 23&Me. And there were coolers with soda and beer, and out back they were making burgers…
Yup, I had walked into a family reunion.
But it was far and away the best one I had ever been to because zero people in that yard were my family. All the stories they told were new to me and none of them were about me in my awkward middle school days. Everyone presumed I was with some other part of the family and no one thought I should not be there. While it started out a little scary and unfamiliar … It turned into a day I will always remember fondly (except when I finally confessed that I was not family and they tried to set me up with one of their sons).
This weekend, I am away at the annual Niobrara Convocation. This is a gathering of members of the indigenous communities in North and South Dakota. It was described to me as an “all y’all.” I confess that I am a little intimidated. It will be almost all new people and a completely new experience. I am taking a camp chair and bug spray and all the other things on the "recommended" list. But by the time Sunday morning rolls around, I will be preaching to people I have spent time with and hopefully most of them will feel like a new-found family.
This is what it means to “welcome the stranger” I think. Not just the formalities, not just what politeness demands… but actually making the new person feel like the gathering was not complete until they arrived.
I hope you find a place to feel that way sometime soon, and that you find a way to make the gatecrasher at your family gathering feel like an old friend.
You remain in my prayers,
+Shay
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