Drawing Connections

It was a cold and blustery April Saturday morning when we gathered for our first Drawing Connections event.  A few stray snowflakes crept into the air, barely reaching the ground before evaporating.  As volunteers started to arrive at the Longfellow Earth Day cleanup along the Mississippi River, Anne and I positioned our table in the midst of the action.  A bit of trepidation and curiosity emerged for us in this first inauguration of a community building experiment.  We did not know what to expect!  Based on the work of Wendy Mac Naughton, Drawing Connections invites two perfect strangers to sit across from each other at a card table with only two rules.  1) Look into each other’s eyes for one minute and 2) Draw your partner’s face without looking at the paper.

Looking someone in the eyes who is a perfect stranger is a vulnerable and tender experience. Franciscan Richard Rohr distinguishes seeing from looking. He says that “The mystic sees the seer and the seen as equivalent, granting respect to that which is ‘over there.’ This second gaze expresses the difference between seeing and looking. Deep seeing with reverence and wonder is a kind of prayerful attention. This second gaze goes deeper to examining our deep connection with all that is – it’s called the mutuality of all things – in Franciscan theology the “univocity of all being.”  The intent is to truly see someone, across lines of political division, cultural identities, age, and personality.  What emerges is a shared experience on an equal playing field, an antidote for polarizing and contentious times.

As the project unfolded, we witnessed many giggles, watched many exchanges of names, and captured lots of smiles.  Later in the day we actually saw two of the perfect strangers picking up trash together like old time friends.  There was one person who indicated that eye contact was uncomfortable, and they cleverly adapted the practice for their comfort.

A spiritual connection happens when we truly take time to “see” another person.  The religious concept of imago Dei posits that we are created in the image of the Divine.  This means that from the very beginning, we embody blessedness- and we can step into that identity with confidence.  Much is projected about the brokenness of humanity, and we can lose sight of our true design of intentional beauty.  The notion of imago Dei tilts the trajectory toward hope.  It lets us assume the best of a stranger in our midst, and gives them a clean slate upon which to build a relationship.  

This practice reminded me that there is not much that separates a perfect stranger from a compassionate companion.  Across the divide of so many distinctions between us, “we are”, as the poet Maya Angelou liked to say “more alike than unalike.”  Much binds us together,  stranger or not.