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I made an interesting discovery recently; more a realisation I suppose.

I was working in a conference centre in British Columbia. The group I led were looking at the music and faith of people from other continents.

So that everyone might participate from the start, I asked them to break into threes with no two folk in any group who knew each other well. They were then to tell each other two or three stories of what they had learned from people of a different race or culture. There were to be no conclusions drawn and no reporting back in plenary.

I left the room and came back 15 minutes later. The conversation was so intense that I felt it would be rude to interrupt. I came back after half an hour and felt awkward at having to end a time of very intentional listening.

There had been no shortage of story, no lack of insight. Indeed there was a sense of gratitude in remembering how encounters with people from different races or cultures had enriched them.

I then asked the group to consider encounters Jesus had with those who were not from his background, and to note whether he took or gave.

To our surprise, the Jesus who said 'It is better to give than to receive' usually did both, but sometimes simply received. The Wise Men from the East, those who gave him sanctuary in Egypt, and the Libyan who carried his cross were not immediate beneficiaries.

And then it dawned on me that perhaps in the absence of receiving anything from a person of a culture or nationality different to our own, we can more easily be seduced by racist stereotypes and xenophobic rhetoric. In a society like ours, living together should be a two-way street in which all give and receive.

When I consider the way in which my life has been enriched by my Moslem doctor and Sikh pharmacist, by the food in the Indian and Korean restaurants in my neighbourhood, by the experience of people who lived under apartheid in South Africa or under fear of death in El Salvador; and when I think of the enjoyment I have found in the novels of James Baldwin, the plays of Michel Tremblay, the music of Astor Piazzolla, the theology of Jon Sobrino….I realise how richly I am blessed from what they have offered.

When we only give or only spectate, we do not enter into the world of the other, our stereotypes go unchallenged, our lives are undernourished.

How impoverished are they who give but never receive.

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