Kitchen Table Wisdom

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Yesterday, I sat in a circle with a group of pastors.

We were given a frame for conversation shaped by a question. One person was invited to respond while the rest of us listened. When that person finished, we could ask questions, but each question had to begin with the same words:

“I’d be curious to know…”

Listening was important in that circle.

Giving another person the chance to be heard was important.

We weren’t there to compare stories or decide whose experience mattered most. We weren’t waiting for an opening to tell our own. For a few minutes, the story belonged to the person speaking, and our responsibility was simply to listen.

One of those conversations took us back twenty-five years.

September 11, 2001.

Those of us who lived through that day all have our stories.

One pastor shared that she was on her way to work at the World Trade Center when the first plane struck. She froze. She wanted to go home and let her family know she was safe, but she was afraid to move from the place where, for that moment, she felt safe.

What did she carry forward from that terrible day?

Tell the people you love that you love them—every day.

Another pastor had been serving in the military in Germany. He was separated from his family, and each of them experienced the events of that day differently. But one of the things he remembered most clearly was the response of the foreign soldiers training alongside him.

They gathered around him in solidarity and support.
The whole world wasn’t against us, he reminded us.

An act of terrorism intended to create fear and division also revealed how quickly people could come together.

As I listened to their stories, I began remembering one of my own.

I remember the shock of September 11. I remember worrying about people I loved who were in the path of danger and not knowing for weeks whether some had survived. I remember opening the church so people could come inside and pray.

And I remember what came afterward.
Fear.
Anger.
Hatred.

Our world became one in which we wondered whether the stranger living among us might be a part of a terrorist cell. Suspicion fell heavily upon people who looked Middle Eastern or who were Muslim.

I remember my brother-in-law, who was of Italian descent, worrying that he might be stopped and questioned simply because he had black hair and an olive complexion.

Fear had taught us to look at one another differently.

I didn’t know how much of that fear lingered in me until a few years later, when I was making my Saturday evening rounds as the Chaplain in the Park.

My job was simple: introduce myself to the campers and invite them to worship the following morning.

As I walked, I noticed something peculiar.
People seemed to be making a wide berth around one campsite.

As I drew closer, I heard a language I didn’t recognize. Around the campsite were several young men who appeared to be Middle Eastern. And I hesitated.

I was the chaplain. I knew what I was supposed to do.

But I was afraid.

Should I simply pass them by?

Then another question popped into my head:
If I avoided them, what did that say about me?

And another:
If I didn’t treat them as beloved children of God, how would they ever know that not all Americans feared or hated them?

So, I took a deep breath, walked toward their campsite and said, “Hello, I’m the Chaplain in the Park.”

One of the young men spoke English. He invited me to sit with them around the campfire.

They didn’t know what a chaplain was, so I explained. But before long, who I was and my position in the park became far less important than who they were.

I listened.

They were students from Kazakhstan attending university in the United States. They were traveling because they wanted to see the country and get a feel for the American people before they started classes.

But people were avoiding them.

Had I walked past their campsite, I never would have known their story.

Before I left, one of the young men told me that I reminded him of his mother.
I took that as a compliment.

I invited them to worship the next morning. Two of them came. They stood at the edge of the amphitheater, curious enough to watch but not quite ready to come closer.

And I need to tell you something else.

As I walked away from their campsite that evening, I whispered a prayer:

“Lord, thank you for this encounter. Let them see that not all Americans hate them—and please, let them be exactly who they said they were, foreign exchange students traveling to see America.”

I wish I could tell you that sitting around that campfire had erased all my fear.

It hadn’t.

I had walked toward them while I was afraid.

I listened while I was afraid.

And I left still carrying some of that fear with me.

Maybe that is why yesterday’s circle has stayed with me.

Twenty-five years after September 11, remembering still matters. We remember those who died. We remember those who survived. We remember the families who waited for phone calls that never came. We remember the first responders who ran toward danger. We remember the grief and the terrible cost of hatred.

But what do we do with those memories now?

Perhaps wisdom is learning what our stories ask us to carry forward—and what they are finally asking us to lay down.

Yesterday, one pastor carried forward the determination to say, “I love you” every day.

Another carried the memory that when America was attacked, people from other nations stood beside him.

And I carry the memory of a campfire where several young men who initially frightened me became students far from home, sons whose mothers were somewhere on the other side of the world.

I also carry the memory of my whispered prayer because it reminds me how slowly fear sometimes loosens its grip.

Maybe peace begins there.

Not by pretending we were never afraid.
Not by forgetting what happened.
Not even by waiting until all our fear is gone.

Maybe it begins when we become willing to listen to other people.

To lead courageously, we need to listen even when we fear their stories—perhaps especially when we fear their stories.

Because listening may challenge the stories we have been telling ourselves.

Listening may reveal prejudices we didn’t know we were carrying.
Listening may require us to reconsider who we thought the stranger was.

But listening can also remind us that the whole world is not against us.
That love should never be left unsaid.
That the person we fear may be someone’s child missing his mother.

Yesterday, it began with four simple words:

“I’d be curious to know…”

Maybe those are words we need to use more often.

I’d be curious to know what you have lived through.
I’d be curious to know what you fear.
I’d be curious to know what you have learned.
I’d be curious to know your story.

And then, perhaps the most courageous thing we can do is stop talking—
and listen.

Cathy D.