Daily Archives: February 16, 2009

It is interesting when you have traveled a fair amount and lived in quite a few places you get to know a lot of people from across the social, political, racial and religious spectrum.  I was looking on my facebook page a couple of weeks back and noticing the diversity of my friends and realizing that in some cases it would not be a good thing to have some of them in the same room as each other. Despite this somehow I stand in the intersection of all of them.   I guess one thing I’ve learned, often the hard way, is that you can have friendships and care about people even when you have disagreements with them, even serious disagreements.  My friends include conservatives and liberals, Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians and Independents; Christians from across the spectrum, Catholic and Protestant, Orthodox and Evangelical, Social Gospel and Fundamental, Charismatic and anti-Charismatic, Latter Day Saints, Seventh Day Adventists, Oneness Pentecostals, Particular Baptists, Calvinists, Wesleyans, Premillenial Dispensationalists, Amillenialists, Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, Hindus, Pagans and Wiccans.  Heterosexuals, Homosexuals, anti-Homosexual activist and Pro-Homosexual activists, pro-Lifers and pro-Choicers, militarists and pacifists, capitalists, socialists, environmentalists, industrialists; progressives, traditionalists, white, black, Asian and Hispanic, people from Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Korea, Japan and China, India, and Central America, Mississippi and Manhattan, California and Carolina, Dallas and Detroit.   Doctors, lawyers, priests, rabbis and imams; Protestant ministers, labor leaders, teachers, preachers, pundits, poets, politicians, professors and prosecutors; bureaucrats, technocrats, kleptocrats; geeks, freaks, sailors, jailers, whalers, runners, gunners, fighters, riders, sky divers, scuba divers, truck drivers; guitar players, ball players, naysayers; free thinkers, beer drinkers,  thrill seekers and Methodists.

In all of this, each in their own way are my friend, some closer than others, but friends none the less. We shared good times and bad, encouraged each other prayed for each other, laughed together, cried together and even shared some good beer with each other.   We’ve agreed and disagreed, and agreed to disagree.  Yet we are all friends and each has added something to my life.  I think Jesus said it well, when he said, “I no longer call you strangers but friends.”