I was checking the links and noted this comment by Hearthie, from the now dormant traditional Christianity. It is an example of what hospitality means, and plain common sense.

You know, when the banger with the pitbull chases his dog over to me, it’s not like I don’t feel that fear moment. But I wasn’t targetable at 15 when I went to HS with them, at 40? Puhleeze. Invisibility cloak? I have one. Now, I do choose not to open the ball of wax that starts with “wearing a bandanna to cover my hair” because we have Bloods and Crips wandering around occasionally, and … why take the chance? That’s just dumb. Although they seem to have changed over to wearing sports clothing. -shakes head- I never can keep up with the winds of fashion.

I look like a young Mrs. Santa Claus, the only trouble I’ve had was a guy a couple doors down who tried to stare me down. Really. You’re 8 inches taller than I am, male, have tats on your neck, are dressed in gang clothing and in your early 20s? Really? You’re staring ME down? Doesn’t that make you feel like five inches high? Are you going to kick puppies next?

Fortunately the nice SWAT team took care of my problem about a month later.

Really, I’m not advocating that we talk to the scary guys. And some guys ARE scary. I don’t talk to the crazy homeless guy – but I DO talk to the nice homeless man. (I don’t talk to the scary homeless lady either, let’s do be fair).

We *can* take the chance and be nicer than we have been – it’s a cold cruel world out there, and a smile is a cheap commodity.

Well, I grew up in an area where the Mongrel Mob drank at one pub and Black Power in the pub next door. When I was a skinny geek wearing coke bottle glasses. And I learned to scan streets… carefully, and dress like the locals. It’s called being discreet. But that does not mean that I don’t smile and talk.

And it means that I have listened to the Photog and daughter and sister and let my hair grow out of a crew cut. Because then I look like an aging gangbanger. Which is a different kind of invisibility cloak.

One of the difficult things you have to do with kids ie sxpose them to this stuff under control: to explain — did I say that I’m a geek and the kids have not that different a group of personalities? — exactly why this Maori guy is OK and that one is not. To have some caution and also some wariness.

It’s good practice. For the kind of trolls who live in the senior common room can do more damage to you than the patched men drinking in their refuge.

And it is our duty to be hospitable. To give the daily courtesy of being graceful. With discretion: but to not close off from those within our society. For if we do not let love drive our fear, we become as one with the Anabaptists, sitting in what we think is a small, holy community, fearing the outside, and trying not to remember that evil lives in the heart of all.