“Where ya from?” I find myself asking that whenever I talk with people I don’t know. On the opening day of the classes I teach, I naturally ask it as I take attendance for the first time, “Where ya from?” One student is from London, England, another from the Congo, another from Cincinnati. A few are Marion County, Kentucky, where I live. The question is a way of getting acquainted with students. They are real people with their own stories, just like me.
When I visit my daughter in New York City, she winces when I ask that question to a taxi or Uber driver or server at a restaurant. “Da-ed,” she will say, drawing out my name in a hushed tone, letting me you just don’t do that in NYC. But they still answer me—most of the time.
I’ve become acquainted with people from all over the world, from different cultures, religious backgrounds, and ethnicities, just by asking, “Where ya from?”
I think I learned to ask that question by listening to my dad. It was his way of opening a conversation with strangers. When I was a teenager, he asked a waiter at a restaurant in Oklahoma City that question. “India,” replied the young man, whose name I learned was Abraham. Mom and Dad made friends with Abraham and visited him whenever they dined at the restaurant where Abraham worked.
Years later, when Mom and Dad served as summer missionaries at Bangalore Baptist Hospital in Bangalore, India, Mom and I visited Abraham’s family in a remote area in the south of India. Abraham had urged us to visit his family when he learned we would be his country. But he failed to mention that neither of his parents spoke English. So, there sat Mom and I, in a hut with his parents, staring at each other while the villagers surrounded us, peering in the open windows, wondering what these strange people with light-colored complexions were doing in their neighborhood. It turned out to be one of my life’s most intriguing adventures. And it was all possible because my dad asked a waiter, “Where ya from?”
I’ve learned to suspend judgment after I’ve asked that question. It’s natural to either be intimidated or feel superior when someone tells you where they are from. It’s a mistake. In her book, Dakota, A Spiritual Geography, Kathleen Norris, poet, and writer, talks about how people with low self-esteem often look with raised eyebrows on people from other places: “Small-town people are often suspicious of the professionals who move to the Plains; ‘if they were any good, they’d be working in a bigger place,’ is how the reasoning goes.”
It’s best to let people tell their own story, rather than assuming negative things about them based on their origins, for in asking where someone is from, we’re seeking an entry into their identity, their unique story. And prejudging them limits how we hear their story. Everyone’s story is significant because it’s their own story.
When Philip, one of Jesus’ first disciples, found his friend, Nathanael, Philip told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph” (John 1:45). And Nathanael’s response was, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” He probably said that because Nazareth was 55 miles north of Jerusalem, and therefore closer to the region of Galilee. That meant the people of Nazareth had to mingle with Galileans, whom devout Jews considered “unclean.” But what Nathanael didn’t realize at that introduction was that reaching people beyond Israel would be part of Jesus’ mission. He almost missed the Messiah because of his prejudgment based on place.
When I ask, “Where ya from?” I am opening the door for someone else to share their spiritual biography. It introduces me to a part of their world. It so happens that we begin by talking geography before we enter into the more significant rooms in each other’s lives.
So, should we meet, you and I, let’s stop, let’s pause, and take the time to ask, “Where ya from?” And let’s wait long enough for the answer.
You never know where it may lead us.