Flight Delays and Communitas

Several friends have followed recent posts about my travel troubles between Birmingham and Ithaca, NY.  Many of you are aware that we were stuck in Detroit when our connection was canceled.  The momentary afflictions came with lasting graces, however.

While we were at the gate in Detroit waiting to board our flight to Ithaca, we met a very nice lady who was traveling with an 8-year-old Ukranian orphan.  The girl had never been outside her country and knew no English.  The lady who was traveling with her knew almost no Ukranian.  The had just met that day and had been at the airport much longer than we.  

We discovered that the Ukranian girl was in our country with a program that provides four week stays in the US with American families.  The program helps identify which children are good candidates for adoption and which families are good candidates to adopt kids from Ukraine.  The lady (Melissa is her name) was happy to meet a pastor and to tell us about the program.

The true grace in the situation, though, was that the girl (Liza--sp?) was highly energetic and completely out of her context and had been confined to a small area for many hours.  Melissa was near meltdown.  A Cornell Ph.D. student named Evan befriended them first, and eventually he and I took turns entertaining Liza.  She wanted to climb all over everyone and everything.  She wanted us to pick her up and carry her around.  Maggie Grace couldn’t understand why her daddy was rough housing with another little girl, so every time I put Liza down, I had to pick Maggie Grace up and ride her around on my shoulders for awhile.  We all played catch, played with puzzles, played with an ipad, played on the moving sidewalk.

We reconnected with Melissa and Liza the next day.  When our flight was delayed, we nearly left the airport and rented a car together to drive from Detroit to Ithaca.  There were no flights from Detroit to Ithaca, so we all had to take a flight to nearby Elmira.  We had planned to hire a cab to get to Ithaca, but Melissa’s husband came and picked her up in a big mini-van and she insisted on giving us a ride, even though it was out of her way.  We exchanged contact info in the car and she prayed for us.

Traveling, especially by airplane, is an activity that provides lots and lots of human interaction with no meaningful connection.  We are crammed close to strangers, but we almost never actually learn the names of any of our fellow passengers.  We have to speak with airline staff, but these conversations are almost entirely perfunctory and have nothing to do with connecting as people.

Though our travel problems were in no way enjoyable, they did provide an opportunity for strangers to connect in a very real way, to provide real and meaningful help to one another, and to create a short-lived but very real community.    All of us found our challenges more easy to bear and our time more enjoyable because we connected with each and helped each other out.  The world tends to be isolated and people tend to go it alone. But the reality is that we need each other.  Being available to lend a hand is often the way that our own deliverance comes.