Atheist OA
On Wednesday evening my (atheist) husband Steve gave a stranger a ride home from Toronto to Chicago.
Steve and his boss were supposed to be flying home from Toronto. Bad weather canceled their flight. When they heard the next available flight wasn’t until Friday they decided to rent a car and drive home instead.
Steve had met another person from Chicago at the airport and been chatting with him. After Steve and his boss decided to drive home Steve offered the other person a ride home with them. He gratefully accepted.
June 29th, 2007 · 5 Comments
Categories: OA Stories
Elaine said
am June 29 2007 @ 8:56 am
Good job, Steve. Modeling kindness and connectedness. I wonder what will sprout from that seed. Will this person think to model kindness to a stranger the next time he has an opportunity? the ripple caused by the pebble…where does it end.
It seems like such a natural thing to have done and yet, I know it is not natural. How to make it more my nature to do this?
In these situations, it either flows out of me naturally OR I’m down the road and finally process the moment and think – pooh! I could have given that person a ride. Duh!
But, it is becoming more of who I am.
April Terry said
am June 29 2007 @ 2:20 pm
I just like that he wasn’t afraid to invite people. I am just tired of the fear factor–of being afraid that someone will hurt me or my family in some way just because I’ve seen it on TV so many times.
Does avoiding all contact with strangers make me any more safe? I don’t really think it does, and anyway, I don’t want to live a totally seemingly safe life and never meet anyone interesting.
Lisa said
am July 2 2007 @ 5:10 am
I think that’s great but I was a little confused about why you pointed out that your husband is an athiest…I have known many athiests who do very kind things (just not to the glory of God) and vice versa, I have known Christians who shame the name with their meanness. Not trying to focus on a negative here – just thinking about how we catagorize people. I’ve done that on more than one occassion.
Helen said
am July 2 2007 @ 6:35 pm
Hi Lisa,
Yes, I could have not mentioned he is an atheist. I mentioned it because I wanted to show that atheists can be as kind as Christians (in my experience).
I agree with you about the dangers of categorizing people.
Laura M. said
am July 4 2007 @ 4:18 pm
Elaine’s comment reminds me of an experience I had once.
On the 4th of July a few years ago, my oldest daughter and I caught the train downtown to attend a holiday celebration event there. Once there we couldn’t get in since they were at maximum capacity. After watching the fireworks from a downtown station, we got on the train and headed home.
On the train we happened to overhear a small group of young guys nearby talking about how they were hungry and didn’t have any money to get anything to eat.
So I took advantage of the opportunity and just reached over and handed them the money we were planning on spending downtown. At first they didn’t want to take it, but I managed to convince them, so it worked out.
When my daughter and I got off the train and got in our car, we noticed the same young guys taking off in the other direction. Then all I could think about was how badly I felt because I hadn’t offered them a ride to get something to eat, especially since that was exactly what my daughter and I were about to do.
But my daughter told me I should let it go. They were skaters, and they would probably make it to a nearby restaurant before us, since they didn’t have to wait for traffic (which was really bad around the station because of the dowtown event). I realized she was right.
But if my daughter hadn’t said this I would have really spent a lot of time fretting over it.
I do want to let it be a learning experience, to hopefully be a little more alert for ways to be useful. At the same time this helped me learn that I need to focus on being greatful for the opportunities to help others that I am able to take advantage of, and not spend too much time sweating the ones that I let get away from me.
At least when it’s already too late or not feasable to do anything about it.
.