Loving your neighbor at 15,000 feet

I experience flying the same way I experience a restless night's sleep. Every step of the process rushes through my mind like a surreal sequence of dreams. My senses take in, but are not allowed to react to sounds, sights, smells and temperatures that occur so little in my day-to-day life that they are unnatural and intrusive.

Yet, I really like travel. I love airports. Anyone who has seen Love Actually will remember how it opens and closes at Heathrow airport, a collage of people who love each other, people of all different shapes and flavors, saying hello or good bye in the profound little intimacies that only occur at these moments. I love that part.

My 8-hour layover in Heathrow saw little of that. I was in the "passengers only" area, which has been separated from those Love Actually moments since 9-11. However, there is an unspoken camaraderie among the passengers. No matter where we're going, we're all on the same boat. It's a place where different cultures, races, ethnicities and religions go through so many of the same rituals. We take off our shoes, take out our lap-tops, empty our pockets, pray that we won't be picked to have strangers rummage through our belongings, pray harder that we won't be picked out to be frisked, we wait in lines, we find caffeine or alcohol or simply something to read, we watch each other and observe what country we're from, discerning accents and languages (is that Russian? It's definitely something Eastern European), check our tickets, read signs, watch these amazing machines that will transport us to Istanbul, New York, Johannesburg, Barcelona, Stuttgart. I find I like all the people I'm waiting in line with. I look knowingly at all of the impatient expressions. I wonder if the long cue will cause me to miss the 17:30 take-off as well.

On my flight back to DC, however, I found myself sitting next to someone I found difficult to like. My father always tells me stories of the interesting people he meets on flights. He has these great conversations with fantastic world travelers. I'm usually sitting next to some tired business man has his headphones on and his gin and tonic out before the flight attendants are finished with their safety speech, twisting his entire body to communicate that communication is the last thing he wants for the next eight hours. This time, however, I had the opposite problem. I sat next to an elderly lady. She also drank gin and tonic, but she talked more as more drinks came. She also smelled. It was difficult to face her. She was the sort of old woman who would ramble about nothing in particular. She seemed very rich. She had just come back from a northern cruise and she had a huge pearl ring on her left hand. Her constant talking was intruding on the reason we introverts love flying: where else can you read with so little of life distracting you? I wanted to hide in my own headphones.

My attitude reminded me, though, of how far from Christ I often am. He seemed to like the unlikable. He even liked the tax-collectors. He made it a point to like them. I don't think we're required to like everybody, but we are required, and hopefully with time and growth, enabled to love as he does. I looked up from my book and listened. I think (ok, I'm sure) Christ would have listened better, would have loved her better and would have sewed seeds of Gospel into the heart of this drunk, smelly, rich old woman. I fell short on all accounts, to my shame. Yet, I believe that was his working that pulled me from myself so I could make the attempt, and in that I have hope that I am growing in the right direction. Even in the middle of this strange sequence of dreams.