As Mary Katherine mentioned in her sermon this weekend, there was an intercultural competency training here at UUCF on Friday and Saturday, facilitated by consultant Beth Zemsky. We talked about what culture we came from and learned how that culture has shaped the way we experience our interactions with others.  

For example, if someone interjects a lot when you are talking, is that a sign that they are being rude or that they are greatly interested in what you have to say? Is it better to depend heavily on family or to be as independent as possible? Is it effective or useless to tell your employer or teacher what you need to be happier or to excel? Your answers to these questions probably depend a lot on what part of the world you grew up in and what racial, ethnic, class and language community you felt most at home in (not to mention gender, religion, education, etc).

Throughout the training, we explored how we might learn to become aware of these differences, to value the lived experiences and perspectives of other people while not necessarily agreeing or wishing to live the same way they do. If I want someone to change how they experience the world or express themselves, I may be holding myself up as the ideal and the norm that they are failing to live up to. Instead, I could acknowledge our differences and work to figure out how we, as culturally different people, will engage, learn from and enjoy each other's company best. Examining these questions is the spiritual inner and communal work we do as we continue our progress toward intercultural competency.

Our goal as a spiritual community is not to make everyone seem the same. We each have inherent worth and dignity and a unifying core humanity. Yet, how each of us expresses that humanity and experiences the world is different. The first layer of our spiritual practice then, as a religious community, is to become more aware of how we respond to difference. I am looking forward to the spiritual and communal work of continuing to develop our intercultural competency here at UUCF, within our larger denomination and within our society.