The Fourth of July is Lander, Wyoming’s big holiday. The evening of July 3 features the rodeo and town fireworks. The fourth begins with road races and joining the crowds lining Main Street for the parade. Off to City Park for buffalo brats with whoever we meet at the Rotary barbeque followed by barbeque with friends in our backyard. Once the sun sets, Landerites light up the night with more fireworks than you can imagine.

The whole town — hardly a homogeneous place — celebrates America and liberty together.

A few days before the 2019 Wyoming School of Catholic Thought (June 9-14), one of our participants sent me an article by John L. Allen, Jr. about our divisions inside and outside the Church. Since the theme of the school was “No Greater Gift: Friendship from The Iliad to Facebook,” we used that article in our conversation about social media.

“We have become a nation of gated communities of both the physical and virtual sort,” wrote Allen. Sociological research, he went on, indicates that, “heterogeneous environments tend to moderate opinions, as people look for a modus vivendi amid diversity, while homogeneous atmospheres radicalize views.”

As I reflected on friendship, two sets of friends that we studied at the school stand out. They were the friendships between people so vastly different from each other that it’s hard to believe they would speak to each other let alone that one would became the salvation of the other.

Unlikely Friends: Ishmael and Queequeg

In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Ishmael, the depressed, somewhat suicidal narrator of the story is forced to share not only a room, but a bed with a harpooner named Queequeg. Ishmael tells us that he, “was a good Christian, born and bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church” while Queequeg was a pagan and a cannibal from the South Pacific, covered from head to toe with tattoos. Initially Ishmael was terrified.

Yet after only one day’s acquaintance, Ishmael writes, “I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed me. There he sat, his very indifference speaking a nature in which there lurked no civilized hypocrisy and bland deceits. Wild he was; a very sight of sights to see; yet I began to feel myself mysteriously drawn towards him. And those things that would have repelled most others, they were the very magnets that thus drew me. I’ll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy.”

Queequeg and Ishmael hire on to the same whaling ship. In the dangers and challenges of the cruise, Queequeg over and over shows himself to be a noble and true friend. In the end after the wreck of the ship Ishmael saves his life by floating on the coffin Queequeg made for himself. That is, Ishmael was redeemed and saved by his unlikely friend.

Sacrificial Love in Crime and Punishment

In his novel Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky shows us the friendship between a murderer and a harlot. Appalled and angry over the poverty, corruption, and evil of St. Petersburg, Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student, murders an old pawnbroker. She is, from his point of view, nothing but a parasite sucking the life out of the poor and needy — himself included. Killing her, he thinks, will be a public service.

Sonya Marmeladov also endures the poverty, corruption, and evils of St. Petersburg. Sonya’s father, a pathetic alcoholic, can’t keep a job to support Sonya, his young children, and his bitter second wife who is dying of tuberculosis. To keep the household from eviction and starvation, Sonya earns money in the only way she can: prostitution.

While Raskolnikov responds to evil with what can only be called terrorism, Sonya becomes a martyr. In spite of disgust with her livelihood, she sacrifices herself, her virginity, and her self-respect for others. As a result, Dostoyevsky gives Sonya a near monopoly on spiritual and moral authority in the novel.

In the end, Sonya even sacrifices herself for Raskolnikov, following him to Siberia after he confesses to murder. There she lives in a village near his prison camp, serving the prisoners in small ways and eventually becoming the means to Raskolnikov’s salvation.

Great Commonalities

Befriending those who are not like us is never comfortable or easy. There is suspicion on both sides. Yet walking across the street, walking across the aisle (ecclesiastically and politically), walking across ethnic and religious barriers, or chatting with the people next to you watching the Fourth of July Parade may be the most effective way to bring redemption to our broken, divided communities, Church, nation and world.

Most people are, in fact, less different than we think. Particularly on the Fourth of July. We love our country, we want our children to prosper, and we value our freedom. Surely we can start a conversation, and maybe a friendship, from there.

Dr. James Tonkowich, a Senior Contributor to The Stream, is a freelance writer, speaker and commentator on spirituality, religion and public life. He is the author of The Liberty Threat: The Attack on Religious Freedom in America Today and Pears, Grapes, and Dates: A Good Life After Mid-Life. Jim serves as Director of Distance Learning at Wyoming Catholic College and is host of the college’s weekly podcast, “The After Dinner Scholar.” Jim’s articles and essays can be found at JimTonkowich.com.