Welcoming the Stranger

Through powerful conversations on CAC’s podcasts, guests challenge us to move beyond labels and pity, discovering instead that the stranger often arrives as a teacher, mirror, and gift.

How do we welcome the stranger? The Center for Action and Contemplation has explored this theme with guests on its Learning How to See and The Cosmic We podcasts — conversations worth revisiting in a culture of “othering” where there is a temptation to reduce to a label those who are different from us or define others by their plights.

Dr. Peter Gathje, founder and codirector of Manna House in Memphis, joined Rev. Dr. Barbara Holmes and Rev. Donny Bryant on The Cosmic We in April 2022 and invited listeners to see strangers as teachers placed on our path to learn from — companions on the journey — rather than people to “save.” Manna House, a place of hospitality in the Catholic Worker Tradition, offers basic services to those experiencing homelessness or poverty. Gathje shares that the tendency in social work is to sometimes view those who are being helped, perhaps unconsciously, as somehow lesser or as problems to be solved.

One Manna House guest shared with Gathje that the gospel was always being shared with him when he received services at surrounding ministries. If getting baptized was the cost to receive basic necessities, he was willing. In fact, he had been baptized eight times.

At Manna House, Gathje aims to “shorten the distance between us and those who are suffering.” He received a stark reminder of this one day when he sat down next to a man named Moses — a frequent Manna House guest who was often seen poring over his Bible. Gathje asked what he was reading. The Exodus story, he learned. This seminal story of triumphant liberation leads most readers to identify with the Israelites, but Moses pointed out to Gathje that his social standing — white, middle class, privileged — was actually closer to Pharaoh than the Israelites.

“Moses reminded me that I can’t read the Bible without learning from those who are closest to people who wrote it,” Gathje reflects. At Manna House, the goal is not to evangelize the guests but rather remain so open that the stranger evangelizes them. A central conviction at Manna House is a line from Chapter 53 of the Rule of St. Benedict: “All guests are to be welcomed as Christ.”

Living School faculty member and CAC Dean of Core Faculty Carmen Acevedo Butcher echoes this notion in a May 2025 episode of Learning How to See. Before airing her and Brian McLaren’s interview with Fr. Rafael García, a Jesuit priest serving immigrants on the U.S.-México border, Acevedo Butcher shares a personal story. She was 19 and applied to be a summer missionary with hopes of escaping her rural Georgia home and serving in Central or South America — a summer experience she hoped would align with her goal of becoming a lawyer. She couldn’t have been more disappointed when she was assigned to a maximum-security correctional institute for women in, of all places, South Georgia.

“I came with the notion that the women there were different from me,” Acevedo Butcher admits. “And I didn’t know it at first, but on some level, at 19, I felt myself superior to them… What surprised me once I got there was that so many of these women had experienced childhood or spousal abuse and had also been dealt an impoverished hand in life. One had written bad checks to feed her children, as she told me. I began to see the women there as humans. Humbled, I realized we had much in common.”

Fr. Rafael García puts it this way as he reflects on ministering to immigrant communities: “Sometimes we in the U.S. think these folks are taking stuff from us…. But we don’t see how much they’re giving to us — to the life of faith, to the church, to the culture, to values — how these people have risked everything to protect their children.”

García invites listeners to dare to “see through the eyes of love” in our encounters with the “other” and continually open ourselves to a gradual change in our vision, like an optometrist adjusting our prescription so we can see as clearly as possible. Acevedo Butcher summarizes García’s invitation with these words: “Seeing the humanity in others increases our own humanity, and not seeing it decreases our own.”

These stories remind us that welcoming the stranger is not ultimately about what we offer the stranger but about the quiet transformation that happens within us when we dare to draw near. Whether at Manna House in Memphis, at a female correctional institute in South Georgia, or along the U.S.-México border, the practice of shortening the distance between “us” and “them” reveals a profound truth: Seeing and experiencing the full humanity in others enlarges our own.

Reflect with Us  
The stories in these conversations remind us that hospitality is not only about welcoming others; it is also about allowing ourselves to be changed by them. Who in your life might you be tempted to see through a label rather than their humanity? This week, consider one small way to shorten the distance between you — through listening, conversation, or simple presence — and notice what begins to change in your own heart. Share your reflection with us. 

We Conspire is a series from the Center for Action and Contemplation featuring wisdom and stories from the growing Christian contemplative movement. Sign up for the monthly email series and receive a free invitation to practice each month.