Book cover of Hello, Stranger: How we find connection in a disconnected world, by Will Buckingham
Hello, Stranger, by Will Buckingham
Author: Will Buckingham. Review by Kathleen Bell
I was only a few pages into Hello, Stranger when I realised I wished to commend this book to fellow Quakers. Its subjects, which include the experience of being a stranger and the welcome we offer others, challenged me to consider what our current concern with inclusion requires.
As Quakers, we are so familiar with the word ‘welcome’ that it’s easy to forget what it means, and the obligations it implies. On arrival at Meeting we’re often greeted with the words ‘Welcome, Friend’. ‘Welcome’ is the first word on the home page of the Quakers in Britain website. But while we try to welcome others, it’s tempting to brush aside or deny our mistrust of those who don’t obviously fit neatly into our community.
Will Buckingham’s book points out that xenophobia – fear of strangers – is entirely reasonable: ‘We don’t know what they are capable of… they might harbour violence or strange disease…’ Reasons for xenophobia include ‘the fear that our hands are already full… that our fragile circles of belonging will be broken’ and ‘the fear of change’. Acknowledging these genuine fears can help us commit to xenophobia’s opposite, philoxenia, which includes our wish for friendship with strangers and our desire to make new connections beyond our safe community.
Many anecdotes in Hello, Stranger are drawn from the author’s travels. Teenage Will, alone in Pakistan, is afraid when offered tea by a stranger. Years later, in the Tanimbar Islands, he is an imperfect guest since he has been accepted as a temporary adoptive son and it is therefore his host’s duty to find him a wife. The book also explores the complex rules that different societies have laid down for hosts and guests. If you arrive in a Mongolian village on horseback you should first call out ‘Mind the dog!’ then dismount, clear your throat, disarm and step over the threshold right foot first while wearing your hat. The host should greet you with the question, ‘What is there that is strange and beautiful – what is the news?’
Quakers often say ‘we don’t have rituals’ but this book reminds us that ritual is largely unspoken. ‘It is there in the studied casualness with which we treat close friends, and in the formality with which we treat strangers. It is there when we offer tea to drink or food to eat, knowing our guest is neither thirsty nor hungry.’ At least there are guidebooks to Mongolia which explain the hospitality code. A newcomer among Friends, faced with the after-Meeting ritual of tea and biscuits, has no guidebook to consult. The visitor’s confidence, and the warmth of the welcome they perceive, may depend on shared social and cultural knowledge.
Hello, Stranger links a personal story with a wider consideration of how humans and other primates make connection beyond their home communities. It explores loneliness and loss, and why welcome matters. It also offers an ideal: the porous space, where connections with strangers and the outside world lessen fear of the unknown. I was gripped; I wished Quaker spaces could be like this. But I remembered the spiked gates that guard Friends House, and the locked doors of many Meeting houses. I wonder how welcoming – or fearful – Friends are today.
