Welcoming the Stranger
Author: Eleanor Cowan
Published in The Sunflower
October 2005

There is an ancient allegory about a traveler who happened upon a sick man lying on the road. The afflicted stranger, the story points out, is distinctly different from the traveler both religiously and politically. Typically, the two men would disdain one another’s company. They would avoid each other completely. Yet, the traveler got down from his high horse, carefully examined the sick man’s wounds and, more than simply attend to his immediate needs, arranged for prolonged, on-going care for him.

Even today, what I know about myself is, really, like the tip of an ice-berg. And, the submerged aspects of myself sometimes frighten me. There's sudden anxiety on my way home from work or at other transition times. And then it so easy to run away, to compensate myself - with an unnecessary snack or getting too busy. I still avoid the estranged characteristics – of myself.

 Earlier in my life, I labored under the mistaken and exhausting notion that until I "knew myself", I could not be happy. How could this ever be accomplished, though, when I am constantly changing? The notion that a certain principled tolerance I can have for others whose personalities I may not like, can also be applied in a compassionate way to myself, has quietly taught me that before healing can ever occur, I have to reassure myself.  I have to trust that I too will welcome the stranger of myself and without criticism, determine the nature of my own fragility. Like the thoughtful traveler did, I will also arrange for continued, on-going support for myself.

While self-identification and self-knowledge are helpful by-products of my growth, they are certainly not the central goals of it. Much more important is that I become, over time, a compassionate person. Only then will those frozen traits of myself - those survival techniques I no longer need - melt and surface to view. Only with gentle self-acceptance in place can I even begin to inspect those unwanted defenses, my wounds. Today, I no longer require a comprehensive list of identifying features to determine exactly who I am. Like the tender-hearted traveler, I can be kind to myself as I adventure along my own divinely mysterious path.  I too can lovingly stop to tend the stranger - who is me.