My driver this afternoon was a former refugee who's been in Canada for some years. He had a warm, generous face, even when I could only see half of it in the rear-view mirror, from which hung a plain cross that proclaimed that he was one of the 3% of Christians who formed the population of his homeland.
His sister had named her daughter "Michael," which he said was unusual where he was from. It was a nice opener, and our conversation flowed easily and pleasantly from there.
We touched on the peripatetic and often solitary lives of refugees, be they persons displaced by war, or natural disasters. We talked about the kind of courage it takes to lose everything and start again, alone, in a foreign country. Friends of his had encountered anti-immigrant and neo-nazi violence in Germany, and the terrible sense of dislocation that comes from being so clearly unwanted and resented.
He mentioned that early on in his refugee journey, he had tried to kill himself by slashing his wrists when the loneliness of the desolate interim town in which he found himself became too unbearable.
I suggested that Canada had always been a country of immigrants and refugees, and our history is one of people from somewhere else—wherever else—joining a human tributary that became a country, which became a nation, and that it made us stronger, and how happy he was to be here. Every non-Native is from a family that has come here from somewhere else.
I can't remember exactly how the conversation turned to religion, though it might have had something to do with our discussion of the imperative implicit in Christianity to welcome the homeless and the displaced, and how often that was a dismal failure, for very human reasons.
"I hope I am not offending you by saying this," he said tentatively, "but I cannot support the gays. The Bible tells me it is wrong. I respect them, and would help them, but I cannot support them. It is not in my heart."
It took me a moment to realize that he thought he was unburdening himself to another straight man—a straight man he assumed would share his views, or at least be sympathetic to them.
It felt like very familiar territory to me. I've had forty years of situations like this one in one way or another, and I've reacted in a variety of ways over those four decades. I'm proud of some of those ways less proud of others.
I let him continue for a few moments more, and then I interrupted and gently said, "Well, you know, I AM gay, but I'm grateful that you trusted me enough to share your feelings."
It might seem an odd response, but it had two aims.
First, first, to let him know the he'd just expressed his prejudices to an actual gay man without knowing it—which might not have been the most useful thing he'd ever done, especially in this particular climate—and to let him know it in a way that didn't shame him.
Secondly, to reassure him that he was safe, and that there wouldn't be any retaliation.
The first aim honoured my dignity as a queer person. The second aim honoured his vulnerability as a man who had very likely endured indignities and horrors of which I can barely conceive, and who still occasionally felt very far from home.
His stunned, mortified silence was like a electric shock inside the car.
Every time he apologized I came back with warmth and reassurance. I touched his arm and told him that, from everything he told me, he was a very good, sincere man, and that he probably hadn't met the right gay man yet.
He laughed a bit at that, and the conversation shifted to more neutral things as the ride came to an end. But In the rear-view mirror, I could still see a trace of concern in his eyes—grave concern that he'd inadvertently truly offended.
At the end of the ride, we shook hands. I told him how much I'd appreciated our conversation, and how much richer I felt for having known him, however briefly, and heard his story.
He told me that he was likewise grateful for our talk, and that no one ever talked to him on these rides. To most people, he was a back-of-a-head, getting them from one point to another.
No one is obligated to take another person under their wing for fifteen minutes, or to listen, or to care. In fact, doing so flies in the face of the urban ethos we think of as common sense. We're generally taught to avoid it, and no one would judge us for avoiding it.
But I had space this morning. His vulnerability was as visible as a spray of stars in a summer night sky. His need to connect was guileless and without any agenda other than connection. And he was a good man, his momentary misfire notwithstanding. I could see that as clearly as I could see the sun on the sidewalk outside the car window.
I didn't live with cancer for ten months without learning a thing or two about human frailty, or the miraculous healing power of kindness, compassion, and openness. There's always time to be a comforter and a conciliator, and to make space for the possibility of someone else's pain.
Maybe the next time he thinks about "the gays" he'll remember our warm conversation instead of whatever he's been taught. Maybe he'll recall our fifteen-minute friendship and realize he doesn't know enough yet about queer people to buttress his negative image of us.
Or, maybe not. In either case, it cost me nothing but good faith.
As for his clumsiness with the gay thing—people are sometimes clumsy. There are different types of activism. After forty years of roaming this earth I'm more convinced than ever that love and compassion are the most radical forms of activism of all.
