by Bruce Davis, Summer Minister

A sermon given July 18, 2004

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

Our First Unitarian pilgrimage to Romania and Transylvania begins. These our friends prepare for their leap across continent and ocean and a leap from our familiar culture to unfamiliar ones for a while. I am reminded this morning of my own leaps into the unknown.

There was a lake near our home when I was about ten. My brother, thirteen, was one of my heroes, and when he said, “jump” I usually did. We couldn’t wait for summer, and so we’d plan our first swim in the lake sometime in May. I remember standing there at the end of the dock in a chilly breeze, going, “One, two, three, NOW,” about a dozen times, shivering in our skinny little bodies. Finally, its, “Okay, let’s really do it this time,” grabbing wrists to make sure the other guy’s really going to do it. And we go!

No amount of thinking, no amount of planning, gets you ready for that first, cold, wet plunge of late spring. Unfortunately, the ladder is on the other side of the dock. All you can do is swim. First you have to pretend you like it. It’s what macho ten-year-olds are trained to do. Then you actually do like it for a while. Then it’s a race to the ladder (my brother always wins), and a return to the relatively warmer May sunshine. Through the summer the lake warmed, and a foreign medium became our second home, with diving contests, sponge tag, hide and seek….

When we leap into an unfamiliar culture, whatever that culture may be, we find ourselves amazed, confused, even befuddled. The cues we usually depend on, that say this is a safe and sane world, just aren’t there. In Koloshvar in Transylvania, you can’t drop in at Starbucks for a quick latte. In a small shop you ask a question in English, and the shopkeeper looks puzzled.

I took such a cultural leap a couple of years ago. My pilgrimage took me all the way from my home to a foreign land about a half-mile away. It is a land whose citizens are all under twenty, and they live on the streets of Seattle’s University District. The population numbers about 70, but there is constant turnover.

I’d taken a job at a drop-in center for homeless youth. Our goal was to have an open door, to invite people in to do art projects and to talk about whatever they might want to talk about. I remember my first day. Here I was, a relatively competent, middle-aged, professional male, hanging around with people whose language and behaviors I didn’t even understand. Ostensibly, I was the person whom our mainstream culture would call powerful. (Hear also the word “privilege.”) In this culture of street youth, I had no power. I didn’t even fit in. Even though we made sure to ask everyone to check their weapons at the door (it was quite an assortment of blades, pepper spray, and sometimes a gun) I felt powerless and a afraid. I felt as each of them must feel most of the time on the margins of our dominant American culture.

Our job was supposedly ministry. These were supposedly down-and-outers who would benefit from conversations with a minister about their lives and from a chance to do some creative arts like painting, pottery, and the like. I imagined that all I had to do was sit down, like Santa Claus in the department store, and they’d line up to have their chance for a conversation. I imagined that they’d go right over to the tables, covered with arts-and-crafts materials, and get started on their work. Of course, that’s not what happened.

What I learned quickly was that I had to dance in the context of their cultural norms, not that they must dance in mine. You see, it wasn’t enough to invite these young people into a morning in the art center. If we as staff did not take active steps to include them, on their own cultural terms, they’d just get up and leave. Which is what a lot of them did.

There are lots of ways we assert our dominant culture without meaning to. The first day at the center I dressed as I had dressed for three years in seminary: slacks and a sports shirt. What I learned quickly was that my gardening jeans and my flannel shirt with patched elbows spoke a much more inclusive language. I learned to leave people alone. To push someone into a conversation can itself be an aggressive act culturally. Giving them the space to be, comfortably, helped them feel included. Paradoxically, I found that the most inclusive thing I could do was to ignore them. I’d get involved in my own art project, the zanier the better, and people’s curiosity would get the best of them. Often I then I had no trouble including them in what I was doing.

Like the time I put drawing paper on the pottery wheel and dripped acrylic paint in rainbow colors on it. The patterns it made were remarkably intriguing as the colors flowed over and through one another. One young man, about seventeen, walked over with a couple of friends. “Dude!” he exclaimed. “Can I do that?”

What was so incredible about this experience for me is that once someone felt included, they started opening up. They’d talk about their challenges on the street, or their parents, or their philosophy of life. The intention of the drop in center was realized only when the guests felt included in a way that honored their cultural realities.

This is not a trivial example of multiculturalism. Cultural diversity abounds even when you don’t think there are any cultural differences. It’s remarkable how many times we are blinded by the patterns of the dominant culture, caught in the privilege of that culture, not even aware that we have a culture. Then we push our way and our culture into other people’s lives without being sensitive to their cultural realities.

When I was a family doctor, I practiced in a multi-cultural, multi-socioeconomic community in the Rainier District in Seattle. Always in a hurry, I would miss cues that a client was not understanding me—not only because of language differences but because of cultural differences. One elderly man from the Philippines would say at the end of the visit, “Yes. Yes, I understand,” and come back a month later without having done anything I’d suggested. I learned that his “yes” meant that he wanted to make me happy, that he wanted to tell me he valued our relationship. Not that he agreed to implement my recommendations.

Whenever people get together and hang out for a while, a culture forms. The longer they’re together, say a decade, or generations, or centuries, the richer the culture becomes. As the culture becomes defined for what it is, it also necessarily becomes defined for what it is not. Even if a culture thinks it is primarily defined by positive intentions, behaviors, and values, the reality is that it is equally defined by those intentions, behaviors, and values it excludes. The result is that any group that develops its own culture will consciously or unconsciously perpetrate cultural exclusion.

The fundamentalist and evangelical churches have developed a powerful culture in our country, and it is a culture that has become very popular. The political environment in our nation at this time is very strongly influenced by this culture. The question, then, is this: Who is excluded by these communities? Frankly, anyone who does not participate actively in that culture. I find it alarming that the word “infidel” is coming back into usage, particularly by the Christian right against people in non-Christian nations. One of the televangelists recently showed his ignorance of religious history. As you know, the three great monotheisms, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, come from the same Abrahamic tradition. The evangelist asserted that the God of Islam is not the same God that Christians worship. Islam doesn’t make this mistake, and is much more inclusive of its Abrahamic brothers and sisters. Their fundamental litany is La illaha il lala. (sp.). Literally, this says, “There is no God but the One God.”

It’s easy to point fingers. But we Unitarian Universalists are also a religious group. First as separate denominations, then as a consolidated association in 1961, the fact that we are a group means that we have a culture. Parts of this culture we see and are proud of, like our seven principles and our commitment to social justice. But if we at First Unitarian have a culture, then there must also be parts of who we are and what we do that we are blind to. If we embrace some values and some kinds of people, then without being aware of it we may be excluding others. We invite many into our church family. Of those who show up on our doorstep, who finds a home here and who does not? For whom does our culture feel welcoming and for whom does it not?

Mary and I were walking and talking over the 4^th and ended up down at the river where they were singing the Blues. Mary said, “I wonder what it would be like to have a church service with this music.” We laughed, which we like to do, but we also realized that there was some truth in what she said. In our UU Church in Seattle, for example, the musical offerings are mostly classical. It fits in beautifully with the culture of that church, and there is a strong tradition of professional music direction and musicianship. I like that music. I feel moved, personally and spiritually by it. That’s the positive side of a culture. But who’s excluded? Who doesn’t relate to that musical culture? My young-adult daughter, a singer-songwriter somewhere between rock and folk, joined us at the church recently. But once was enough for her. The music of that church culture simply did not include her. That is to say, the culture excluded her.

As UUs our principles and values attest to our desire for cultural plurality. Yet, we look around. We invite the participation in our congregation of people from diverse backgrounds, and that’s an important first step. Our challenge is that in order to really include we have to take into account cultural differences of those we’d like to include.

You may have heard the story about a UU church in New England. During the service, there was a woman in the third row, calling out “Amen” and “Halleluiah” during the sermon and clapping with the beat of the hymns. The head usher came forward and whispered, “You can’t do that in here. You’re bothering people.” “But I can’t help it. I’m filled with the Holy Spirit,” she said. The usher replied, “Well, you didn’t get it here!”

The fullness of Spirit is reflected in the diversity of the human family. The Spirit of Life embraces all people of all colors, all nations, all sizes, all creeds, all cultures, all ages, all abilities, all interests….all kinds. It is part of the beauty of the human family that we are not all the same. Like a wildflower meadow on a mountain trail in July, we are of all the colors. Our spiritual wholeness depends on our desire to experience differences, to invite those different from ourselves to join in, and in our actions to include others in ways that honor their cultural origins, whatever they may be.

We don’t end our spiritual journey with one pilgrimage. Each time we take the real, sometimes painful, often joyful, always disorienting step to immerse ourselves in new culture, we grow in Spirit. Each time we stretch, break old habits, and taste new cultural possibilities, others feel more included by us. Whether our journey takes us to Eastern Europe or a first-avenue soup kitchen, our leaps into otherness feed our soul, deepen our wholeness, and enrich our communities.

May it always be so.  Amen.

Prayer

Will you pray with me.

Spirit of the Whole,

In whom all kinds are welcome,

As much as we long to be included in the loving circle

Of all the dear ones of our lives,

So much do we also long to include others,

Who are in many ways different from ourselves,

To reach out toward them,

To learn their ways,

And to be forever changed

Help us to overcome our limitations of sight,

That we may learn to see others as they are,

That they also may become the dear ones of our lives.

Amen.

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Copyright 2004, Bruce Davis.  All rights reserved.