Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes about growing up in Canada, where he lived in a very sheltered and safe environment. He notes that his childhood was lived inside of a virtual cocoon. “In the remote, rural, first-generation immigrant community I grew up in, we all knew each other, all went to the same church, all belonged to the same political party, all were white, all came from the same ethnic background, all shared the same accent when we spoke English, all had a similar slant on how we understood morality, all shared similar hopes and fears about the outside world, and all worshipped God quite confidently from inside that cocoon. But this also had a pejorative underside. When there are no real strangers in your life, when everyone looks like you do, believes what you do, and speaks like you do, when your world is made up of only your own kind, it’s going to take some painful subsequent stretching, at some very deep parts of your soul, to accept, existentially accept, and be comfortable with the fact, that people who are very different from you, who have different skin colors, speak other languages, live in different countries, have different religions, and have a different way of understanding things are just as real and precious to God as you are. It is hard for us to believe that we, and our own kind, are not specially blessed and are not of more value than others. But we must also be aware that the God whom Jesus revealed and incarnated may never be turned into a God of our own, a God who considers us more precious and gifted than other peoples, a God who blesses us specially above others. Sadly, we are perennially prone to turn God into our own tribal deity in the name of family, blood, church, and country. God too easily becomes our God. But true faith doesn’t allow for that. Instead, a healthy and orthodox Christian theology teaches that God is especially present in the other, the poor, and the stranger. God’s revelation comes to us most clearly through the outsider, through what’s foreign to us, through what stretches us beyond our comfort zone and our expectations, particularly our expectations regarding God. God is everyone’s God equally, not especially ours and God is too great to be reduced to serving the interests of our own family, ethnicity, church, and patriotism.”