Imagining a Community of Encounters
The folks that work at my credit union know my name when I walk in the door and ask if I like the new home I’m renting. As I’m checking out at the small grocer down the road from my house, I know to ask the cashier how his daughter is doing, and he asks how my tomato plants are faring after the heat. These are pleasantries exchanged which make our lives exceedingly pleasant indeed. But there is more to these encounters than polite chitchat.
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I’m a theologian by training and Christian minister by trade, and have come to appreciate the idea of an encounter between people—an event in which two people interact in a way which upholds the dignity intended by the Creator God. In spiritual terms, undergirding the encounter event is the firm belief that all people are created in the image of God, and because of that all people have infinite dignity—no one person more or less dignity than any other. Each person is a living, breathing fingerprint of the Creator carving out our unrepeatable lives in time and space. On a spiritual level, an encounter is a moment in which two souls bump into each other and reverence the specialness of each other.
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With an encounter the dignity of each person is celebrated, while at the same time an event in which the Creator of those people is also active in the mix. When we encounter each other, indeed, we also encounter the One who created us. As each person lives with the inherent likeness of God, to encounter another person is to encounter a unique iteration of the Creator-God who through the simple act of living is proclaiming God’s wild diversity. A Christian understanding of prayer is certainly to encounter God directly and to be lovingly encountered by God’s own self.
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With all that in mind, it should be noted that an encounter is a possibility, not a given. Our society is very often structured in a way which impedes encounter. The marketplace generally removes human interaction in favor of profit. Ponder for instance the impossibility (not to mention aggravation) of encounter checking your groceries out through the self-check. Counter that with the heartening encounters possible with a clerk who knows you personally and cares about you. Consider too the manner in which online shopping stymies the possibility of encounter not only with people employed to attend to shoppers but even fellow shoppers themselves. An encounter is a human-to-human event which occurs and leaves each more assured of their God-given dignity.
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Spirituality aside, the notion of encounter also carries with it an ethical level. Large corporations, especially multinational ones, are very good not only at maximizing profits at the expense of their workers but also hiding the workers altogether. For instance, when you buy a t-shirt at any trendy store at the mall, you need not consider the people who farmed the cotton, the others who spun the thread, and the other people who stitched together the garment often working under deplorable conditions for paltry pay. To buy an apple at a grocery store conglomerate never requires the shopper to ponder the farmer who cultivates an orchard or the migrant worker who picked the fruit. An encounter is an impossibility; upholding the dignity of all involved in an economic interaction is unfeasible when most of the people involved are hidden, often intentionally.
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All this brings me to the hopeful assertion that encounters are not only possible but plentiful. It is entirely possible that our economic endeavors be personal and ethical when the way we spend our money and interact with those who attend to us in our shopping upholds—even enhances—the dignity of all involved. Structuring your life in a way that facilitates encounters with other people takes discipline, but the benefits are living our lives in the way that the Creator intended humans to live them, for to encounter another person is to encounter God and to be encountered by another is to be loved by the living God.
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by Thomas Eggleston