Several days ago, my brother and I played a round of golf at a course we favor. As usual, being a twosome, they paired us with another twosome. Usually, this makes for a sometimes gruesome day of golf as you have to play with someone you’d usually ignore. This time, however, we laughed, and joked, the man and woman played well, and it was a fun day all around. At the end, we even exchanged contact information with the thought that we might do it again.

Later that night, however, I was struck with a strange regret. Who were these strangers? What did we really know about them? Was it wise to give them our contact information? In a word, I was afraid and there was fear. As I grappled with it, I realized it was probably a fairly common response to the stranger. Surely, a small group of early humans on the savannahs of Africa viewed others with suspicion, a territorial thing. Who are these strangers? What do they want? It’s the same with any small town today. And it’s exactly what I encountered throughout my youth as we moved from town to town. I was the stranger. What did I want?

And now I imagine it’s the same response I see when people talk about immigration. Strangers. The other. Why are they here? What if they bring bad things? We need to keep them out. And it made me think perhaps my affinity for immigrants is three-fold. Both sides of my family were immigrants. I grew up as an immigrant, migrating across America with my dad. And what I read into my bible verses was a tolerance for strangers. Which is how I fought back against my autonomic response of fear of the other, and decided I should follow up with my golf partners and make the effort to see what they could bring to the table and how they might enrich my life.