Respect the Differences

While preparing my materials for the coming year of youth ministry, I did some internet searches for discussion topics and stumbled across a list of suggested writing topics for teen penpals over at YouthOnline.ca.


Click to enlarge image.

The AmenAbility Lady in me just has to ask. Why is "spirituality" the only thing on here for which the compiler(s) thought it necessary to add a friendly reminder that penpals "respect the differences" between them?

I understand that spirituality is an intensely personal thing, but color me amused that there seems to be no general guidance offered at the get-go for people to be, say, generally respectful of one another.

Other suggested topics range from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Reality TV" to "Government change" and "War." Are they implying that they don't anticipate any political friction, no differences in opinion about Giles or the United Nations or Wherever's-Got-Talent?

Let's keep it real here, OK?


Now that's more like it.

On a related note... Hit it, Aretha!



I think if everyone belted this out upon waking each morning, the world just might be a better place...

The Male Stewardess Anomaly

About a month ago, I was with a great group of young adults at a swanky shake shop (and when I say swanky, I really just mean that there were shakes with Reese's peanut butter cups). Those on my end of the long pieced-together table were among the silliest, funniest people I'd had the pleasure of meeting for some time. I'd have suspected it was the sugar if it hadn't already started before they ordered.

I can't even recall most of what came up in the course of our conversation, but I'm sure we invented a few words of our own. The bizarre factor escalated enough that my boyfriend and the man across from him (who together bridged the Bizarre Table and the Fun But Far Less Troublesome Table) began a secret experiment, interjecting random once-off statements just to see where we would fly with them.

Come to think of it, that's where the jet-propelled cows came from.


Camo Cow is ace at hiding a jetpack.

In any case, at some point the chat came 'round to flight attendants. (No segue implied; trust me, there was none.) And in the midst of the tangent, someone dropped the phrase "male stewardess."

"There's a word for that," someone else interrupted: "Steward."

All perfectly true. While many people opt for a gender-neutral term like "flight attendant," both "steward" and "stewardess" are valid. For some occupations, I've noticed a potential increase in referring to women in the position by the traditionally masculine title, such as "actor" rather than "actress," what I take to be an intended neutralizer.

Such gender-specific nouns are their own breed of beast, but what I find no less debatable is the use of a modifier, as in a "male nurse." As long as we see this as necessary, there can never be understanding of neutrality.

I used to be (...am?) a word snob. I loved words - loved discovering them and learning how to use them. I loved definitions and connotations and semantics, and sometimes it seemed like spelling was the only test that didn't strike fear into my heart.

But as I've gotten older (and as my spelling skills have increasingly come into question), I've grown into a new sort of linguistic love.

I love the power of words: a phenomenal extension of definitions, connotations, and semantics. I love the power that they hold and the power that we are able to bestow upon them.

But people often assume that a word can have only a certain meaning, and sometimes they're afraid to bend it. It may be a way of honoring the tradition and background of the word, but it may also cheat it of a little bit of modern meaning. While we can't weaken all of our language with linguistic anarchy, we need to remember that we have power over how we use it. We shape our language as much as our language shapes us.

We limit people. We limit ourselves.

When we discussed this at the table, one person furrowed her brow in uncertainty. "'Nurse' for a male still sounds weird."

"It won't," I said, "if people use the word that way."

'N Syncretism: The Boy Band of Religion

I'm increasingly interested in interfaith work, improving relations between groups of differing beliefs and traditions, and encouraging peace and collaborative efforts. (The environmental justice movement is a prime example of people seeking and discovering "common ground." Check out GreenFaith, Interfaith Partners for the Environment, based in New Jersey.)

But from discussion of interfaith collaboration often sprouts mention of syncretism.

Religious syncretism is the blending of different beliefs and practices into one new Assimilation Beast. The Melting Pot Model, if you will, rather than the Salad Bowl Model, which is my ideal edible analogy for religious peace - as well as for America, the context in which this imagery is more commonly used.



Syncretism has occurred countless times throughout history between all different traditions. It can be an element of exploration or inclusion of new ideas. It can be a result of cultural conquest - not necessarily even a reflection of strength in numbers and "majority rules," but of otherwise dominant, more "persuasive" culture.

Sometimes peace-seekers commend blending, perhaps the way that Boyzone wants the world to "turn out coffee-colored people by the score." Some appreciate the diversity and long for less nominal, homogeneous unity.

Sometimes people are "accused" of syncretism as an offense. In Shalom, Salaam, Peace, a great interfaith book for dialogue between the Abrahamic religions, Allison Stokes speaks of a minister who was thus accused and nearly lost his position in the church.

Judgment of that particular case is beyond the scope of my own ability and authority.

But here is what I think about syncretism:

It's the boy band of religion.

It seems like a good idea (at least to somebody), so they mastermind a group. Someone coaches them until they not only sound eerily harmonious but nearly indistinguishable from one another. Most of their music is in a major key and their lyrics never develop far beyond trite declarations of love. Cue cultic following and media attention.

Then the member bios come out, and you wonder who drew the short stick to get stuck with a favorite color that none of them actually like. Unable to morph into one cohesive entity, they have no choice but to exploit the individuality of the members. They follow unwritten laws like the Power Ranger Principle - that if they're a team whose members just happen to be differently empowered, brightly colored beasts, they will drum up a lot of interest. The Army Wives series and the Barbie company are similarly adept at this strategy.


(I had this realization thanks to an image on Tickets For Two.)


(Meanwhile - Mattel, can we talk?)

Anyway, after they've used their combined powers to defeat Lord Zedd, they suffer a schism. They annul their collaborative union and go their separate ways, and somebody works through rehab and somebody comes out of the closet and somebody goes on to make a solo album and somebody marries a fan-girl and even though no one remembers the last one's name they seem to recall that his favorite color was yellow and he liked liturgical dance.

In light of all that, or in spite of it, I have a theory.

I believe that every human alive or having lived has something to teach someone else - something significant, and often intensely personal for either teacher or taught. Or both.

I believe that interfaith and intercultural peace rest not in syncretism, but rather in learning itself. Learning just one thing from every other person one encounters. Learning one fact, one practice, one habit, one truth, one hope, one idea, one question that either transforms or informs one's perspective, if even just to fortify a view already held. Not necessarily taking up what is learned. Just learning it; respecting the person who taught it.

We need not all practice alike, believe alike, live alike. Some amount of influence and assimilation may happen, but it need not be forced.

In the film Chocolat, Père Henri preaches: "I think we can't go around measuring our goodness by what we don't do - by what we deny ourselves, what we resist and who we exclude. I think we've got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create and who we include."

But I don't think that entails syncretism: I think that would mean denying authenticity, denying ourselves the ability to believe in a way that Père Henri's message does not encourage. I think it is not about creating a single world religion that denies, resists, and excludes different expressions of spirituality. Rather, it is embracing, creating, and including others however we can, knowing that we may not understand them or agree with them perfectly well, and still accepting that as a foundation on which to build peace.

This is my personal interfaith creed: I believe I will learn something transformative or informative from every person with whom I share a conversation, and from many more with whom I may never speak.

Perhaps someone someday will prove it wrong.

But if that becomes the case, then I imagine that I will have much more to mull over than the basic idea that I had been wrong about this philosophy.

Do I Look Illegal?

Before taking Religion and the Social Process (i.e. fantastic mandatory course about diversity and social justice, and how the church both helps and hinders in different contexts), I confess I knew little about immigration.



Thanks to J. for sharing this video with our class!

As one who never knew before quite what to say in discussions about immigration, I particularly appreciated a document from the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service debunking common myths. View a copy of it here.

Among the debunked myths are the alleged "illegality" of the majority of immigrants (63% of 31 million foreign-born residents are documented), correlations between immigration and crime rates (U.S. born are incarcerated four times more than the foreign-born), and the supposed drain on the economy (most immigrants arrive after age 18, at which point the U.S. receives "the benefit of their labor without the cost of their education"). Other facts focus upon education, employment, taxes, difficulties in obtaining citizenship, and the struggles particular to families.

It's accessibly written and very much to the point, but it's easy to get lost in the statistics. If just for that, I found one of the other sources we read to be particularly compelling. The American Friends Service Committee provides personal testimonies from an affected population with relatively little self-sovereignty: youth and children.

From the mouths of babes, we hear difficult truths.

To thirteen-year-old Kadiatou, one's worth depends on "having papers," and she believes that her older brother "does not have a chance to be something good in life like the other kids who have papers."

In caring for five younger siblings, including an infant, Jocelyn learns that being a "mother" is much more difficult than she imagined.

In one testimony, a family's lack of new clothing is only exacerbated when the clothing that the children do have is the cause for much of their victimization at school; what could be an insignificant opinion about fashion becomes a vehicle for bullying and aggravated trauma.

Vineta longs not only to fulfill her parents' wishes for her to "have a better future than they had," but also to pass such aid along to others in need, having dreamed of education and career not only for the sake of having them but also to help those without homes or parents. She acknowledges the difficulties that her family faces as well as those that challenge families who may lack even what little she herself has.

Voicing a similar understanding of the prevalence of these problems, Bassidi likewise hopes that his own story has an impact and that Congress will take action.

I have since found audio for many of these testimonies. Hear them and read more about the kids at this link.

I knew little before I read the words of Kadi, Jocelyn, Vineta, and Bassidi; before I saw their photographs and their drawings; before I read the statistics from the LIRS and thought of these families' faces. And I may still never know just what it is to be an immigrant, perhaps to be not only "undocumented" but also labeled "illegal," as though my very being were a crime.

But here is what I do know.

I recently worked full-time as a porter for a cleaning company.

I worked with many immigrants and first-generation Americans. My first supervisor was a competent, respectable man from Egypt. My usual cohorts were the Latina ladies who helped me practice Spanish, lent me hair-ties when we swept 31 hot staircases or weeded the sun-exposed rooftop, and taught me how to function in a uniform intended for a man's body - apparently one without pores that require air.



There, I was in the minority in almost every sense: one of the few females, the youngest, one of few Caucasians, a fourth-generation American, and decidedly not bilingual despite having studied four other languages. And, whereas most either were regular employees or hoped for longer-term work, I knew at the time that it was a temporary position; I was already preparing to attend graduate school this fall. Yet the limited time that I was there and the differences between us did not hinder our ability to forge friendships and work cooperatively and efficiently.

In another building placement, I generally had to work independently and did not get to know many of the other employees, who often arrived en masse for an evening shift. Of those whom I did meet, many had emigrated from Latin America and Eastern Europe.

Before they heard me speak, however, they had little way of knowing where I had been raised, and one evening as they arrived and I packed up to go home, they speculated to one another: "Maybe she's German. Maybe she's Irish. Look at her hair," until one person finally approached me directly.

It was bizarre to be in a position of "defying expectation" – to be a U.S.-born student working toward graduate school in an entry-level job involving restrooms and dumpsters.

However, most intriguing to me in retrospect is that overhearing the group's conversation influenced how I then identified myself. I automatically responded with my ancestral heritages when I really should have just replied, "I'm American. I'm from New York."

12 Angry Seminarians: On Diversity

"Diversity is a gift to be celebrated!!!

...but it also sucks."

-Dr. Chris Boesel

One part of our orientation to Drew was a discussion on diversity. Looking around at the theological school's student body, it is clear that the only group of people who could rival our diversity is a jury.

So I'm seeking a co-producer for a new play called 12 Angry Seminarians. Anyone interested?



Our ages range about 40 years. Maybe more.

We are of different races, ethnicities, nationalities, and heritages. We have many students from all over the world, from South Korea to Côte d'Ivoire.

We have different native tongues and in fact speak many more languages between us. A friend from South Korea taught me to say hello - 안녕, "ahn nyeong" (or formally 안녕하세요, "ahn nyeong ha say yo"). I've taught another Korean friend the phrase "study party," words I've taken for granted on a daily basis throughout college. For a friend from the Congo, English is his fifth language. Fifth.

We have students who have lived months or years in a country foreign to their own, and many who are now doing so for the first time. Students bring with them their "temporary resident" experiences of other countries from England to Honduras. We also have representation from all across the United States.

We are of different socioeconomic backgrounds and, despite at least one common expense, find ourselves in varying financial situations.

We are of different sexes, orientations, and gender identities. The school not only encourages gender neutral discussion of humans ("humankind" vs. "mankind") but also of God. But more on the Inclusive Language Policy another time.

We are single, married, separated, divorced, remarried, widowed, and in a range of relationships. Some have spouses in other states or other countries. Some are raising their families in campus apartments.

We are of different abilities, with unique strengths and weaknesses that have only just begun to shape us into a community with complementary parts.

We are of different political persuasions with a range of priorities and ideas in government, voting, and public policy.

We are of different faiths, denominations, and perspectives, sharing in belief and disbelief, curiosity and doubt. Even within our populous Christian contingent, differences can be striking.

This incredible diversity can create for us amazing growth, enlightenment, and interdependence - opportunities just waiting to be seized!

But easier said than seized.

Because diversity asks a lot of us. It asks us to see ourselves differently. It constantly presents us with the realization that there is yet another perspective that we have not considered or another life's worth of experiences that we may never come to understand fully, even if we genuinely try.

When asked to describe themselves, people in a majority infrequently list that dominant trait as part of what identifies them. At the same time, somehow many of our rarities do not earn the value of rarities, and instead they are often pointed out unfavorably by others or are used as the basis of self-deprecating humor.

Our default setting seems to be somewhere between the urge to set ourselves apart and blend in with a safely homogenous group. Sometimes we're willing to follow the social script even when it does not properly - even kindly - define us. It may be easier or safer or less intimidating than (inter-)acting off-book.

But we cannot allow our discussions on promoting diversity and respect to assume their own sort of social script: to become stale, inauthentic, incomprehensive, or roundaboutly offensive. We must be vigilant of this in even our noblest efforts -

That is, don't let something like this happen to you or someone you love:





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Interested in reading about diverse forms of diversity? Check out Readings for Diversity and Social Justice, Second Edition (2010), edited by Maurianne Adams, et. al., particularly Section 1 on Conceptual Frameworks. Other sections are by topic, such as ableism, sexism, and classism, and include excellent primary and secondary sources in various formats and writing styles.

Mutually Bound

Recently we have talked and read at length about inter-religious connections and ecumenism. This has long been an interest of mine and I wish to explore it much more during my time at Drew.

What follows is an excerpt from something I wrote earlier this year. I share it now as a background as to where I'm coming from - part of why I am here and some of the questions I have brought with me. Perhaps it will be something to refer back to as I learn more over the next few years.

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How do religions interconnect, and how do we rectify their intellectual aspects? Is it possible for people of different backgrounds to maintain their spiritual strength without breaking down that of their counterparts? This is the theological dilemma which I find most pertinent both spiritually and academically, particularly in the past four years while I studied at Sarah Lawrence, a religiously diverse college. In the final year, I conducted an oral history project on students’ beliefs, faith, and experience. I hoped to encourage both academic and personal dialogue between students and provide a relaxed and respectful atmosphere in which they can explore and express their beliefs. Diverse in every possible way, no two interviewees professed precisely the same faith, yet all shared much in common.

Such is true, I find, of Christian denominations. Can Christians be both spiritually catholic and protestant, if not nominally, socially, or politically? Catholic: broad or wide-ranging; having sympathies with all; universal. Protestant: protesting injustice and corruption; striving for improvement, reform, and objectivity; from the word meaning "to bear public witness." Did Christ not represent all of these qualities?

A Roman Catholic priest once told me that "God does not check your denomination like an I.D. card." In the past decade, the Vatican, the Lutheran World Federation, and the World Methodist Council came together in the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, stating that "by grace alone, in faith in Christ's saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works." In our doctrine and our divides, how do we differentiate the human from the divine? How does Christ bring unity and peace to a world in which Christianity creates further divisions and categories? Most significantly, must we erase these categories – must we be a reconciled Catholic church, or a Unitarian Universalist church, or a nondenominational church – or is it possible to respect human individuality while honoring the universality of the Divine?

As my project progressed I found inspiration and assurance that, though the journey for peace may be a long one, it is possible. It requires a willingness to speak and to be silent, a willingness to listen. With each interview, I learned not only to listen better but to listen to what cannot be heard.

Lilla Watson said, "If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together." Her words transformed my entire perspective of outreach; although I had not reduced it to charity or good deeds, I had not fully comprehended the interconnectedness of humanity, our sufferings and our hopes. And not only has it affected my approach to serving the poor, the hungry, and the outcast, but it has convinced me that peace in every sense is a matter in which our liberation is mutually bound.