Recently I had a 34-day-long stay at Loyola Hospital where I was being treated for the double whammy of a fractured femur and sciatica. 

I received a great deal of love and affection — to complement what the medical profession contributed to my healing process — from friends and family, but what has remained one of my strongest memories of that difficult time is how much of that love and affection came from people with black or brown skin, who grew up in Asia or Africa, and were living and working with documentation in this area.

That gift of love sometimes came in the form of food. Ugandan chapati, rice and beans, Thai mango and sticky rice, Thai noodle and rice dishes, iced coffee. One woman bought my wife and me dinner at Yum Thai — sesame tofu.

More important than the food, of course, was that it was not only hand-delivered by my immigrant friends but they hung out with me in my hospital room or at home after I was discharged, wanting to hear the whole story of what I had gone through. They were truly interested and it was therapeutic for me.

It’s a blessing having a loving community supporting you when you’re going through a hard time, but for me what made these gifts of love so meaningful is that they confirmed the importance of part of my life’s work.

I hadn’t set out to be a bridge-builder across cultural chasms, but looking back after 78 years, that vocation has claimed a good portion of my time and energy:

  • Exchange student at Tuskegee Institute, 1968
  • Teacher at Colegio San Antonio Abad, Puerto Rico, 1972-1974
  • Pastor of St. Paul’s, a multiracial congregation in a changing neighborhood, 1982-2010
  • Leading eight mission groups to Thailand for the purpose of seeing themselves differently from the perspective of a different culture
  • Columnist and sometimes reporter for the Review and Wednesday Journal. That job has exposed me to a Black gay pastor, an Orthodox Jewish wedding, a one-on-one interview with a drag queen, a secular humanist group, and a Black Catholic sister who worked to build bridges across Austin Boulevard
  • Member of St. Paul Thai Lutheran Church and occasional preacher whose sermons are translated into Thai as I give them.
  • Author of a volume on the diversity of religious experience in Oak Park titled, The Soul of a Liberal Village.

In other words, I didn’t choose the vocation of bridge-builder; the vocation chose me. And I imagine that the same is true for many of you.

Forest Park is a lifestyle enclave with a culture that attracts people with a certain set of values, one of which is valuing diversity, and the longer you live here, the more the culture that attracted you can have its impact on you.

Here’s what happened to me: When I came to town in 1982, the village was mainly white, but I sensed that it was beginning to change. Some members of the congregation I pastored resisted the changes, but most had the sensibility that characterizes the village to this day — a common-sense, down-to-earth, non-ideological approach to change which believed, “I don’t care if you are green. If you keep your property up and treat me with respect, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”

It was as if God wrote the script (which I believe is what happened). One Sunday Gladys and Deji Otegbeye walked into our little church, came to the coffee hour after worship and explained to the members that they were from Nigeria, were both doctors and were renting an apartment just down the street.

Some of our members were won over by Deji’s outgoing, winsome personality; some were hooked by the couple’s story; some viewed the visitors through the eyes of the Bible stories they heard every Sunday.

The Otegbeyes would build way more than half of the cultural bridge between our village with small-town charm and Africa, but our members were able to relate to Deji and Gladys as real people, not the subject of a piece on violence on the West Side they saw on WGN.

On the day Tunji, their first born, was baptized, the church was packed, including 40 African (immigrant) friends of the proud parents.

The joyful experience was made possible less by a civil-rights, ideological/political point of view and more by what I would call a healthy, biblically-centered, humble approach to new and different people that thinks, “You look and seem to think differently than I do but, nothing ventured …”

The Ugandan man, the one who brought me rice and beans, I got to know while he was in my men’s group. He told me about a nonprofit he is in which tries to help girls in poor parts of Uganda go to school. I’ve been a member for about six years. The members tease me by calling me an albino Ugandan, a term of affection I treasure.

“All real living is meeting,” declared Martin Buber. 

Amen and amen.