What do you call it

Ok.
This morning I had a crazy dream of something I want to do someday. Someday I want to have a women's ensemble of 20 voices or so. No more than that no less than 12. I want them to be college aged women from all different departments. During our concerts we would sing a huge variety of music from many eras. Our focus would be that all of these women from different walks of life who have different aspirations and dreams can come together and make beautiful music with great abandonment. They would be a group who would seek refuge within each other, our music, and most importantly our faith.

Our main message our first year of performing would be to treat every person as a people person.

Last Sunday the new associate pastor at our church spoke about how a Polish social scientist came to America and did a study of how Americans treat people. She said that there are three types of people.

The people people are the people who we deal with every day who we have meaningful conversations with. These are the people who are our friends and family and those we work with who we care about.

The Machine People are the people who are laborers. They are the McDonald's workers, the Bank Tellers, and the Dillon's cashiers. These are the people with whom we have non meaningful interactions. We talk about the weather. We talk around them while looking right at them.

The scenery people are the people who we pass and pretend that they are not people at all. This is what happens when two people walk past each other on the sidewalk and neither party acknowledges the other's existence.

Jesus wanted us to treat each person as a people person. He wants us to see everyone we come in contact with as a real person with feelings, life, spirit, and depth. He does not want us to have machine people or landscape people in our lives.

This morning I was dreaming about how my singing group would have the mission of singing songs with themes that would demand Christians to see people as REAL PEOPLE.

Then I packed my bag and went out to scrape my car. There was a woman outside scraping her car with her kindergarten aged son. They scraped their car right along side me scraping. Neither of us acted like the other one was there. It was only while both of us were pulling out of the parking lot that I realized that I had just made her into scenery... as she had done the same to me.

I did it without thinking. I did it as a habit. I de-humanized this woman and her adorable son all the while dreaming of the days when I would lead groups against this very attitude.