Graciousness 1: Putting A Stranger At Ease

A friend suggested that I write a few words about graciousness, and I will try to oblige. It is one of my favorite virtues. When I see somebody being gracious I feel like Salieri listening to the music of Mozart, because I think, "Oh, that's good, very good - I wish I could do that!"

One thing I have seen gracious people do is put guests and strangers at ease. Jerks of course do the opposite - they make them uncomfortable. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader C. S. Lewis writes that the bully Eustace Scrubb was glad to hear that his cousins were coming, because "he knew that there are dozens of ways to give people a bad time if you are in your own home and they are only visitors." This is true. When you are on your own turf - home, school, church, basketball court - you get to set all the terms and guests can't do anything about it, which makes it easy to be mean to them. Like at the University of Iowa stadium, where school officials painted everything in the visitors' locker room - walls, carpet, shower stalls, urinals, everything - an unmanly shade of pink just to annoy visiting teams.

But ungracious people find that they do not need to be actively hostile when simple negligence will do the job. Some churches are masters of this. I like to tell the story of the time I visited a church in North Dakota 25 years ago. I arrived early, went to Sunday School and the worship service, stayed afterwards, and literally not one person said hello to me. Shortly before I left, a man greeted me and we spoke briefly - and he turned out to be a first-time visitor like myself! So I never went back. By contrast, I recall the thoughtful practice of a gracious pastor I knew in college. He said that at church events he always went to the bulletin board to see if anyone was hanging out there. He explained that when new people couldn't find anyone to talk to, they tended to go read notices and missionary letters on the bulletin board because it was so awkward to stand around doing nothing when everyone else was talking to people they already knew.

A new friend helped me like that once. Shortly before my wedding in 1985 I was taken out to dinner by friends of my wife who had all known each other for years. At the restaurant they spoke, at length, and exclusively to each other, about friends of theirs from high school. I sat silently of course with nothing to contribute. But when Clark Hawley arrived he started talking to me and deliberately turned the conversation toward mutual interests. (Afterward he mentioned how displeased he was that his friends would invite me to dinner and do nothing but talk about people I had never heard of!) Clark's technique was flawless, and I have tried to imitate it and teach it to my sons. A gracious man at dinner tailors his conversation to include everyone - especially the guest who lacks the common experience of old friends.

In The Last Battle C. S. Lewis illustrates the graciousness of Jewel the Unicorn by the way the kind creature treats Puzzle, a slow-witted donkey: "Jewel, being a Unicorn and therefore one of the noblest and most delicate of beasts, had been very kind to [Puzzle], talking to him about things of the sort they could both understand like grass and sugar and the care of one's hoofs."

God grant us all that graciousness of spirit that welcomes the stranger, seeks common ground with him, and does everything possible to put him at ease.