Swimming and the Congo

The postings on this site ares my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

A Fellow Swimmer's Brave Daughter

"Sarah, hey, Sarah," my swimming-friend Rita called as I reached the end of the lane, where she and another woman were stretching. "Where were you for six months again?"

"India," I said, treading water, not wanting to stop moving.

"This is Carolyn. Her daughter's in the Congo."

"Wow! What's she doing there?"

"She's with the the International Rescue Committee."

"Rescuing who?"

"It's a humanitarian aid organization. She was in Darfur and the Sudan prior to the Congo. She's been working with them since graduating college seven years ago."

I felt ashamed. I assumed she was a missionary...but more on that in a bit. "Wow, what a hero your daughter is."

"It's hard."

Rita said, "I know you've gotta go to work and I didn't want to interrupt your swimming; just wanted you to meet each other."

"Thanks. Good to meet you," I said, swimming off sheepishly.

In the lockerroom, she heard me exhale in the shower and exclaimed from another shower-stall, "Wasn't it [the swimming] wonderful?"

"Yeah."

We were drying off and she happened to have picked a locker near mine.

"I was thinking of how worried my mom was about me, and I was working in an *office* building. As her mother, you must be so scared. I'm sorry I was snotty about your daughter in the pool. Are you Jewish?"

"No. I'm a pastor."

"Well, I'm sorry. It's just that I haven't been around other Jews in six months and I thought your daughter might be a missionary, and since being in India, where I learned that there really are religions beyond Christianity, Judaism and Islam, I don't favor the idea of people being missionaries and converting people from their faiths."

"I know what you mean. I don't believe it's good either. The aid is conditional, that is, they have to accept Christianity to get it, and also, it's the whole package; they try to westernize them on top of getting them to convert."

I meant no disrespect to missionaries, except that I had a completely different orientation to religion, which amounted to zero promotion of mine to people who were not Jewish; as a Jew, it was against my tradition to proselytize, and so it was foreign to me.

Driving to work afterwards, I really did see an older Toyota Corolla, sporting the following bumper-stickers: "Follow your heart;" "We are one;" "It's not our differences that divide us. It's our refusal to accept and celebrate our differences."