|
Honouring Diversity
Rev. Brian J. Kiely, Unitarian Church of Edmonton,
October 10, 2006
Most people aren’t born into diversity. I look at my daughters
as example. They began life in one house with a very narrow circle
of family and acquaintances. They learn one language at home, although
thanks to Dora the Explorer they now know Hola! Gracias and ‘Yum,
yum, yum delicioso! Branching out they come to church where they
see a lot of older people who are, in most ways, pretty much like
them.
And now Lily has begun playschool where, for the first time, she
will spend time with children from other religious backgrounds,
though I doubt that at age 3, theology will figure much into their
classroom conversation.
My point is that I think our girls first years are pretty typical.
Most children in this country begin their lives in settings marked
by uniformity rather than diversity. They start out learning that
the world operates just one way. Their family structure is the way
things are. The family environment – good or bad – defines
the way things ought to be. The foods they eat are the foods everyone
eats. Their bedtime is the same as every other child’s and
so on. It’s natural enough. First they have to climb the steep
learning curve of how to live at all. There is no time to consider
how other people might do it differently…or even that there
might be such a thing as ‘differently’. True, there
are some children who get a sense that they are ‘different’
from an early age, but I suggest that in their first years their
sense of difference becomes normal for them.
And the uniformity becomes comfortable and safe. It’s what
they know and what they understand. And looking at the girls, it
seems that they can only broaden their horizons very slowly. Between
them they have a library of perhaps a hundred books, but most nights
the bedtime stories come from the same half dozen read in rotation
for weeks or months with new titles coming into the mix very slowly.
As I look at myself, well it’s not so different. I tend to
read the same kinds of books and watch the same kinds of movies
for pleasure. Ask me to change the pattern and I have to work at
it a bit. I have to make a conscious decision to read a book that
falls into a higher classification of literature than do my typical
action adventure and lawyer novels. When I do, I usually enjoy the
exercise a great deal, but the fact is, such a read is slightly
out of my comfort zone. I don’t really ‘relax’
with a good book. I enjoy it, am stimulated by it, am uplifted by
it. But I ‘relax’ with trashy books.
The new, the different and the challenging is, at best, accepted
slowly and cautiously. And systems theory suggests that my children
will try to recreate that comfortable environment at least to a
degree when they grow up. Even if they appear to rebel, there is
a good chance some of those familiar habits and values will stay
with them. How many of us have become moms and dads and found ourselves
speaking with our parent’s voices, usually when disciplining
our offspring? How many repeat inherited patterns of neatness or
career paths or partnering choices? Occasionally I stop and look
and am flabbergasted by the number of parallels I see between my
life and my father’s. I can only think that I made some life
choices based on the imprints of my family system. It is that system
and those early years that define comfortable and familiar for us.
They are what we know.
Every one of us lays down patterns and routines. It’s a little
like setting up house and placing this chair here and that picture
there. There is nothing wrong with that. In an uncertain world we
try to create at least a degree of stability to helps us define,
understand and feel safe in the big old world around us. It gives
us a measure of control over our world…or at least an illusion
of control.
And when I say comfortable patterns and routines, that doesn’t
just mean same old same old every day. I have friends, for example
who have made it a habit to change jobs or apartments every two
to three years. I have known people who move across the country
or across the world every few years. I know people who choose not
to commit to long term relationships. Some people find their comfort
zone in frequent change. But they do find their comfort zone. Each
one of us defines the boundaries of our world. Nothing is wrong
with that.
Furthermore, we tend to associate with people who match our patterns,
who can understand our boundaries, the ones marked only on the map
of the mind. In other words we tend to feel most comfortable with
people who are at least a little like us. People who share our interests
and views tend to be the members of our communities. Not that there
aren’t differences among us, but the more things we have in
common with a particular community, the more likely we are to be
near the center of that group. Differences are the spice of life,
but there must also be a common core of values for there to be comfort.
Take this church for example. We profess to be open to all people
and we try to extend a genuine welcome. But to look around the room,
it’s pretty clear that we are more likely to draw from a white
middle class community. Read some sermons and you’ll find
that we are theologically liberal, but still born of a Christian
worldview. Look at our newsletter and you’ll sense that we’re
pretty socially liberal and in many cases politically left leaning.
And of course we identify as a ‘church’ which carries
some implications around participation, volunteering and so forth.
The more of those points that feel comfortable to you, the more
likely you are to want to swim to the center of our particular pond.
Come on in, the water is fine. And because it’s comfortable
and we know the unwritten boundaries of this community, we work
to preserve the parts we like best. And yes, like any other system
on the planet, we are resistant to change. We don’t want to
be resistant to change. We want to be open and welcoming. We want
to embrace diversity, as long as diversity lets us come to services
where we feel comfortable. Believe me, I am not finger pointing
here. I have pretty much been describing my own feelings. Embracing
true diversity takes a lot of effort and hard work.
Even managing our diversity within these narrow confines is a challenge.
How well do we include our children and give ourselves to their
spiritual needs is a fair question. So is how do we serve the needs
of our youth and young adults?
I had an object lesson about the challenges of diversity last fall
when I travelled as a Canadian delegate to the International Council
of Unitarians and Universalists in Spain. At those meetings it became
evident that the North Americans and the British Unitarians had
one way of running business meetings, all rules of order and motions
and brief speeches to make a point. But our co-religionists in Eastern
Europe and from the south Pacific were more comfortable with less
direct ways of doing business. It was up to our South African President
to find a way to conduct the meeting so that all voices could be
heard in a way that left them feeling comfortable. I admire his
skill, but it ended up being a challenge for everyone. Happily,
it was a challenge met with determination and good will and there
were good outcomes.
We are all challenged when something or someone new and different
bumps up against our boundaries. It used to be that Canadians lived
in fairly closed worlds. We had enough space, even in our cities,
so that smaller communities could congregate around a particular
neighbourhood, a particular church, even a particular set of businesses.
Certainly Montreal, where I grew up had clearly defined neighbourhoods
that were predominately English or French with subset areas for
Jews, Italians, the Irish, the Greeks, the wealthy Protestants Anglos,
wealthy French and of course, Chinatown. By the time the Trudeau
government of the late sixties defined these identifiable communities
as The Canadian Mosaic of multiculturalism, they were already breaking
down. Grown children were moving out of the old neighbourhood and
in many cases the old neighbourhood was starting to undergo urban
renewal. The reasonably clear physical boundaries that once kept
diverse communities more or less separate have dissolved. There
is no longer the ‘wrong side of the tracks’. Heck, in
most places even tracks are gone.
And as the last waves of immigrants have become ‘Canadianized’,
new people have been arriving with even more marked differences
than before in look, language, culture and religion.
The net result is a tension between the habits and comforts and,
yes the prejudices that members of each community learn growing
up, and the world in which we all now have to function…together.
There has always been racism, classism and all the other isms in
Canada. Just look at the situation of the first Canadians struggling
to make a place in their home and native land. It’s just now
they are becoming more a part of our consciousness.
One good thing is that people who feel they are oppressed are a
lot less likely to take it lying down these days. The Charter of
Rights and Freedoms tries to protect minority rights, but you can’t
legislate comfort zones. As we learn how to live together in this
new world where people will stick up for themselves, we must expect
growing pains. In a way this is nothing new.
My father’s side of the family arrived from Ireland in the
1830’s and settled in Griffintown, Montreal’s poor Irish
neighbourhood. There is a famous family story, not always told with
pride, about a black sheep great uncle. It seems that in the late
1800’s he and his pals would get liquored up on Saturday nights
and go through the tunnel to the French neighbourhood looking for
French policemen to beat up. I have never had to wonder where the
term ‘paddy wagon’ originated.
Each new wave of immigrants arrives with the imprint of their homeland.
Some reactionary Canadians of longer standing argue that if they
come to this country, they have to learn our ways. To a degree that’s
correct, newcomers are expected to live under Canadian law. But
mostly that comment is intolerant code for, “learn to live
like me and don’t challenge my comfort zone. You newcomers
have no right to expect me to change.”
That’s not only rude, it’s short sighted. And if we
really believed that those already here have all the rights, then
we would be burning sage and offering tobacco to the Great Creator
because, folks, none of your ancestors were here first.
The fact is that Canada has always been a nation of immigrants.
Even the first peoples came from somewhere else. It is in the very
rocks and trees and rivers of this nation to welcome, to accommodate
and to make ourselves over as times change. Canada is diversity,
no matter how uncomfortable some may find it. The pristine land
gave way to the native peoples. They gave way to the French and
later the English, who have since had to make room for every other
race and nation on the face of the earth. While our record of accepting
diversity is far from perfect and contains a number of very bad
moments, overall this is a nation that has made peace with diversity,
even if that peace has sometimes been grudging.
I am a proud Canadian because of it. I am ridiculously proud of
our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I am proud that we are one of
the few nations legalizing gay marriage. I am proud that there are
more colours of faces in our city every month. I am proud that each
year at the Leg the Canada Day pancake breakfast is made and served
by the Ismaili Muslims. I consider it a small sacrifice to not miss
my beloved pork sausages out of respect for their faith. I am proud
that I got to participate in a Dene nation wedding ceremony this
summer for Caroline and Matthew. Frankly, when it comes to cultural
diversity, I like being pushed out of my comfort zones. I feel those
gentle prods call me to be the better person I want to be.
And I like being a Unitarian in Canada, because what is best about
our religion is also what I like best about our nation. The Charter
of Rights and Freedoms uses the language of law, but at its core
expresses the same sentiment as our Principles that affirm the inherent
worth and dignity of every person and that call for justice, equity
and compassion in human relations.
The intent of these documents is good. Where our nation sometimes
stumbles, where our church sometimes stumbles and where we as individuals
sometimes stumble is in the quality of welcome. Diversity, true
diversity challenges the boundaries of our worlds and comfort zones.
It tests our safe feelings. Welcoming the new and the different
requires rethinking the way we do things, the way we think about
things and the way we define feel our way through the limits of
comfortable.
But if our history as a faith and as a Canadian nation gives a
lesson, it is that given time, we get used to the change and even
come to celebrate and honour it. May it always be so.
Back to Sermon Archive
|
