Embracing my difference and celebrating yours

In the early 1990s, when I was 16, I participated in a youth leadership training to be a part of a “Multicultural Panel”. From what I can remember, the training was developed by Friends University and included a day or two long workshop that assisted youth to contemplate, describe, and learn about their own cultural experience. Say what?! Learn about your own culture first? Yep. Our job was to be able to ad-lib a 2-3 minute talk on our culture and respond to questions by the audience about the various cultural experiences of the panel. At each presentation, the panel would represent about 5-6 types of cultural diversity including race, gender, class, and physical abilities.

My expectation of the class was to learn about everybody else’s culture, because what did I, a white girl from Kansas, have to contribute? My culture was The Andy Griffith Show mixed with Full House sitcoms. I entered with the assumption that my culture was so overexposed to be non-existent. I felt guilt and shame for being part of the privileged masses. It took quite a while and some petulant teenage angst to acknowledge that my cultural experience had complexity and value. Instead of asking the privileged white kids how they are scared of or adapt to differences, the facilitators taught us how to name our own value in a way that did not de-value someone else. Not only did I learn positive and enriching language and conversation skills, I also learned listening and interrelational skills with those different than me. I discovered solidarity in a group not because of race, gender, class, but because of a common openness and ideal. I learned more about stereotypes and assumptions within myself, groups, and society than I had in any other context. I also shed much of the shame of my own differences, whether as a representative of the majority, of geeky science girls, or of children living with poverty. Before, I saw the community I grew up in as boring and my identity in it as a freckled Irish/German American Kansas girl with glasses as being a dime a dozen. I valued any difference from my normative experience as more valid, interesting, and meaningful. I felt invisible.

What I discovered is that my peers had never had bierocks and had no idea what a Volga German was. I learned that my family history mattered and that I knew very little of it. And as I worked on reforming my family and cultural narrative, I discovered my family history had experiences of marginalization and oppression, some not so long ago. I realized that I had embraced the caricatures created by St. Patrick’s Day and Oktoberfest without truly understanding my own heritage. My family was no longer an assimilated melting pot with no cultural identity but what the media promotes. I no longer fell for the biggest lie our society and media feeds us.

In 1881, Irish caricature:

from: http://irishmemory.blogspot.com/2013/01/irish-industries-cartoon-1881.html

 

2012, t-shirt:

from: http://irishamericanheritagemonth.com/why-we-need-irish-american-heritage-month-the-2012-winner-of-the-know-nothing-award/

 

 

 

found on: http://imgur.com/gallery/FXugjVI

 

The experience with that Multicultural Panel revealed I was connected to and a part of a universal, global, human story expressed in unique communities and individuals. By embracing my own difference, I realized that my neighbor’s difference was valuable as well. I cannot claim that I embraced my value as a female so young. In fact, I kind of ignored it as long as possible. However, a first step to understanding occurred there.

This reflection bubbled up while preparing for my re-entry into academia. As I read essays that repeatedly stereotype European American and Western thought, I felt the resurgence of guilt and shame for being lumped into such a category. There is more discomfort while reading these pages than I thought there would be. Who am I supposed to identify with if I am a complex unique individual who exists with both privilege and marginalization?  Perhaps if we even have one area we feel tossed aside, not important, or directly attacked, we should be able to recognize a similar struggle in someone else. Even if our struggles do not match in content or even degree of oppression, perhaps there is still a way for us to relate to, sympathize with, and value each other.  

I have many other thoughts related to this, including pre and post modernity and caricatures of scientific thought, gender value, and how can this white woman learn about her heritage and history of women and pastoral care in the church and society.

When female clergy get harassed, why is it not called discrimination?

Yesterday I attended a Hospice Foundation of America webinar on hospice/end of life care and diversity which another hospice hosted. It had some really great panelists who explored several areas where hospice is limited in terms of cultural diversity including the cultural barriers blocking access to Asian, Latino, and African Americans in particular. They also discussed the problem of patients and families being intolerant or even openly hostile towards other races, religions, etc. How does the hospice protect and respect their workers while also providing care to such patients... particularly for small hospices with limited staff.

The example was given of white supremicists with offensive material around the house, constantly spouting bigotry and refusing care from non-caucasians.... or Caucasians and African Americans refusing help from people of Latino or Middle Eastern origin. The list of intolerance goes on including sexual orientation and gender.

What is interesting, however, is that the intolerance that chaplains face was never brought up. Mainly, I think, because our services are optional and can be turned down for no stated reason. What I realized yesterday, however, is that there are people I see that I side-step the truth about my ordination to on a regular basis. There are people who interrogate me, my credentials, whether I'm a real preacher or not, who decline prayer or any talk about God, who tell me exactly what's wrong with female preachers, my home denomination, and lecture me on their version of "The True Faith", who seek me out as a last resort for funerals because they have no church ties but don't really care for the female preacher, who approach me with suspicion, distaste, and sometimes open hostility. But it's okay, because it's their right to believe whatever they want in terms of religion. It's okay for them to demean me, act as if my degrees and training mean nothing because I don't have a penis. It's okay to be turned down, degraded, and judged because it's part of their faith system. Funny, I remember slavery being a part of people's belief system too.

I'm not complaining just to be whine-y. I'm describing the undercurrent of negativity I encounter with my job. Discrimination by gender occurs in other fields in subversive ways, of course, but not in the openly hostile way that is allowed in ministry and religion. It's something I accepted when I chose ministry, especially hospice where people are from older generations and ideas. And I am really good at making friends with people who secretly believe I'm going to hell. I understand their faith system, having lived it as a child. I see the good in people, the common plight of loneliness and isolation, fear of the unknown, and I work with wherever they are. In fact, I have been trained first in seminary and then in CPE residency to set aside my own identity and make their life the primary concern when I'm with them. And I learn to love them (most of them, any way) and accept them for who and where they are. I don't expect or even want the same in return. Sure, the handful of people who are genuinely grateful feed my spirit. But it's not affection I really crave, it's respect.

I have dozens of stories where sometimes intentionally (and sometimes just because I'm genuine) I change the mind or heart of someone who believes my work is tainted by my vagina. And because I understand on a very personal level what most of their beliefs are, I'm pretty darn good at it... while being true to who I am, of course. One that stands out is a close family friend of a patient for whom I did a funeral. This man grilled me for 10 minutes before the funeral about my church background, training, etc. in an openly hostile and suspicious way... emphasizing his disbelief a "true church" would let a woman at the pulpit, let alone be ordained. After the service and my sermon, he came up to me and shook my hand and said "Boy, I'd love to have you preach at my church. blah blah blah..." While I didn't lie or say things I didn't believe in my sermon, I did talk in a language he understood one way and I know to be true in many different ways... in many different faiths, not just his own. It was gratifying on a certain level and completely offensive on the other (the list of offensive parts are WAY longer than the gratifying part).

Honestly, that stuff doesn't get me down as much as it makes me want to fight back even more. For instance, I keep thinking how good it would have felt to say to that man, in very direct terms, what I thought of his interpretation of scripture and christianity. There are days where I'm just plain tired of it all. And I'm reminded of the countless stories of women entering fields dominated by men and the repercussions of it. I'm also reminded of the constant barrage of hostility (subversive and overt) that people of any marginalized group experiences. For those attacking or making offhanded comments, it's usually not personal. But for those being attacked, it's personal down to their very identity as a human being.

As I was contemplating all this last night, I realized that one of the aspects of the hospital setting (vs. hospice) that I enjoy is that there is a greater variety of generations and belief systems. I was more likely to find people that are willing to pray with me. I had profound conversations with people who were everything from atheist to orthodox jew. I also had compatriots who journeyed with me and I could share my bad experiences with them and let it all go. Non-clergy often don't understand the same way clergy and esp. chaplains do.

Compared to who I was in seminary, I feel like a completely different person. I know who I am and I'm not ashamed or feel defensive. I know I have nothing to prove and so many things to offer and give to these patients and families who still receive me. That doesn't make any of the negative things go away, however. And it's something I choose to live with, for better or worse.