Who among us has not felt at times like a stranger in a strange land, sometimes, and more recently, even among family and friends? Even the king-poet - the ultimate insider of this text - admits that he often feels like a stranger in his own skin and home.
Increasingly, social divides and polarized politics nurture a culture of conflict and many of us feel like others among our brothers, suspected by siblings, aliens in once familiar settings.
What are the words we use to self-describe our feeling our otherness or that of others in our world?
My mother, British born, still uses the term ‘queer’ to designate whatever or whoever feels peculiar to her, or a bit unusual.
I’ve long given up on changing her mind about this quaint use of the term, It’s quite charming, really, even as ‘Queer’ has become a non-heterosexual label that I prefer to use myself. I like that she uses it to indicate all that defies her sense of the familiar, as it is likely the origin of the term, with a history quite queer in itself and fascinating.
In today’s psalm of painful pleas for help from beyond, a Hebrew word that indicates being queer - as in a stranger - shows up for the first and only time in the Hebrew Bible. Yet it’s a word that has become quite known in modern Hebrew.
The poet, maybe David, to whom this chapter is ascribed, laments how badly the social animosity has become, including within his own familial and familiar surroundings:
מ֭וּזָר הָיִ֣יתִי לְאֶחָ֑י וְ֝נכְרִ֗י לִבְנֵ֥י אִמִּֽי׃
“I am a stranger to my kin,
an alien to my own siblings.”
Ps. 69:9
The Hebrew ‘Muzar’ is translated here as ‘stranger’ is the unique term that likely stems from the Hebrew for ‘Zar’ - ‘foreigner’.
What does it mean for someone to feel like a foreigner within their family? This is not only the tragic plight of many of the LGBTQ+ community -- and I have my own story to tell here, thankfully less tragic and more hopeful than many other realities that are still hurting so many people today. Political stands and other ways of expressing our individuality lead to feeling like foreigners, strangers, queer, other, even in our own homes. And that really hurts, literally in the body.
In another verse within this chapter the poet complains that “More numerous than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without reason” - what’s more intimate than one’s hair that has become the symbol for the systemic sense of alienation?
We are all strangers in a strange land, seeking solidarity and safety in a world turned upside down with dogmas and digital toxicity.
It is increasingly a confusing and queer world, as my mother says. The price tag of isolation leads to harsh harm, self doubt, socio-economic gaps and brutal warfare.
What can we each do to lessen the hurt and mind these gaps?
Today’s painful psalm reminds us that we are not alone even in our strange sense of self - that we all carry these feelings, fears and pains of isolation - and that our empathy will help us endure, so that we hurt less, heal more, and embrace each other’s strangeness, with courage, love and a hug as wide as hope.
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