Irrational labels limit relationships

Southwest Airlines was my favorite airline until it recently ended its A, B and C boarding passes and adopted the traditional preassigned seats. So it was in a different time, years ago, that I stood in a boarding line clinching their coveted A-lister pass. The pass granted me privileged first-choice seating while B and C listers scrambled for significance. Inside the plane, a flight attendant cheerfully suggested a front seat. "Wonderful. Looks like I'll be flying first class." Not to be out-wisecracked, he offered me a coloring book, wings and Oreos. Kind of surly, I thought. Didn't he realize he was talking to an A-lister? I took the aisle seat and soon a woman scooted past into the window seat. After several minutes, the plane took off with no one between us. We engaged in the routine seatmate-stranger conversation. She proudly announced she raced cars with her boyfriend, and they'd just won first place in three races. Race car drivers! Impressive! Definitely an A-list person. Eventually, she put her racing monologue in idle long enough to ask what I did. "I'm a healthcare chaplain." "Oh," she said, apparently doubting my qualifications as an A-lister. After a pause, she added 11 words demoting me to her F list. "My ex-husband is a hospital chaplain. He left me for God." I offered condolences, mentioning I'd been happily married for more than four decades. "Well, we were married 32 years, so …" She left me twisting in a 650-knot headwind and then offered, "He's Southern Baptist. What are you?" May Day. May Day. I tried to tell her I'm a "Recovering Baptist," but my ego was rapidly depressurizing. Fortunately for me, I found some relevant chaplain questions. "Where has all this left you spiritually?" I asked. "Nowhere. I have nothing to do with church." "Church is only a vehicle for spirituality. I hope you've not given your ex the power to dismiss your spirituality." She returned a pained look suggesting she'd cordoned off her life from anything remotely reminding her of the person who brought her so much pain. I didn't say so then, but I too isolated from a group that caused me pain. Several years previous, I had an incident with a Lutheran colleague that spun me into a major depressive episode. Despite the fact God showed me a U-turn out of my depression, I still found it hard to appreciate Lutherans. However, when one works as an interfaith chaplain, meeting Lutherans is a fairly common experience. In addition to my patients, I had a Lutheran supervisor. Furthermore, my daughter did the unthinkable and graduated from a Lutheran university. I relearned the truth that people can't be grouped or cloned. Attempting to judge people by A, B or C lists is a futile way of building our own private biosphere of quarantined living. Life needn't be a set of hostile, rerunning tapes that doom us to poor relationships. Upon landing, we reengaged in our conversation and the woman's expressions exhibited a new friendliness. Perhaps she considered I might not resemble the hurtful person she knew. As we stood to deplane, the woman asked, "Do you have a card? I'd like to stay in touch." "Sure," I said. Our seats had given her the perfect opportunity to target a Southern Baptist hospital chaplain, but in the end, she chose a different path. Her opinion of chaplains, like the luggage in the overhead, had perhaps shifted during flight. PS, Southwest: You remain my favorite airline to take me nonstop to see my grandkids in St Louis. Sunday, Oct 5, my congregation will "celebrate" three years with their perfectly imperfect pastor. If you are looking for a community of faith, come join us at 10:30 a.m., Community Church, 300 Main St., Nevada City. If you let me know you're coming, I'll save you a pizza slice at our after-church fellowship. All of my books can be ordered on Amazon. Autographed copies can be obtained on my website www.thechaplain.net or by sending a check for $20 for each book to 10566 Combie Road, Suite 6643, Auburn, CA 95602. Buy them off the rack at Combie Mail Services.