Junk mail

I really don’t like junk mail. I’ve done all I can to get off every mailing list that delivers unwanted mail to my mailbox. Just two weeks ago I contacted my bank to ask them to stop sending me new credit card announcements (I had gotten three for the same card in less than a month, even though I’m on the “do not mail” lists). 

The magazine The Christian Century seems to be one of the worst offenders when it comes to unsolicited solicitations. Several times a year I get mailings at my home from the “professional clergy department” urging me to subscribe, despite the fact that I receive the magazine at my office. Seriously, can they not clean out their rolls? I mean how many Rev. Aimee Moisos can there be in Santa Clara, California?

I got one of the Century’s subscription mailings again this week. But this time it didn’t come from my mailbox. It came from my neighbor, who’d gotten it in his box by mistake.

This is a neighbor I’ve met before. I know his name. His parking spot is next to mine, and we’ve exchanged pleasantries. I ran into him once at the gas station. He knows I work at the university.

What he didn’t know was that I was a pastor – until he got mail addressed to Rev. Aimee Moiso from The Christian Century professional clergy department.

So my neighbor knocked on my door and, with a slightly odd look on his face, handed me my junk mail saying, “I didn’t know you were a Reverend.”

Uh, oh. I thought. Where is this going?

“Yes, I am,” I responded warmly, but warily.

What followed was a lovely doorway conversation about being Christian. Turns out he and his wife, who are from the Philippines but have lived in California for a long time, are part of a local Assemblies of God church. His wife’s parents were both pastors. The man actually worked for several years at the Filipino church just down the block.

He was curious but not suspicious about me working at a Catholic university and being Protestant, and being a woman in ministry. He was interested in the work I do to bring Christians together to understand each other better. Both of his kids are in college, and he affirmed how important it is for young adults to have mentors to help deal with the big questions of life.

During our visit, his wife emerged from their apartment carrying a plate of noodles for me, hot from the frying pan. “They’re vegetarian,” she said. “Are you vegetarian? We knew you must be healthy because you ride your bike all the time.”

“She is a pastor,” the man said to his wife. Then he turned to me and said, “You never know about people. We see you, we say hello, but we didn’t know you were a pastor. It’s nice to know our neighbor is a Christian.”

I was in London this summer just before and just after the riots. While I was there I thought about what I would do if there was rioting in my neighborhood. Would I hunker down in my apartment and close the curtains? Would I try to organize people to resist, or respond? Would I take advantage of looting and justify “helping myself” to something suddenly available from a decimated shop?

More importantly, I wondered, would I know my neighbors enough to trust them in the midst of a riot? Would I trust them enough to open my door if they knocked when all hell was breaking loose?

The question gave me pause. In this small apartment complex where I’ve made my home for the past two years, I don’t know very many people at all. Most people keep to themselves. One time I ran into a woman in the complex who I knew from work, and discovered we had been living in the same building for several months without knowing it.

Whether or not my neighbors are Christian doesn’t affect my sense of responsibility to know and care about them, or my ability to trust them. As it happens, the woman I ran into from work was Muslim, and I knew her from collaboration on interfaith projects.

But somehow making a Christian connection with my Assemblies of God neighbors brought a special smile to my face. We swapped stories of the church and joked about favorite Bible verses. We shared a common language, even though we had different ways of understanding our faith. “Our churches are different,” I said to the couple at one point, “but we all like Jesus.”

As I closed my door holding a plate of hot noodles, I couldn’t stop smiling. The whole thing was just one of those unexpected gifts.

So thank you, Christian Century, for your irritating solicitations. And thank you, Mr. Letter Carrier, for putting my mail in the wrong box.

Because now I know two more neighbors, and they turned out to be family.