I love what Jennifer wrote in her post here a few weeks ago, “Service is yearning to understand the experience of others in the hope that we can all be made better by that understanding.” True to this, some of my most treasured memories from Chile are the times when people opened up to me with trust and honesty, telling stories about their fear, pain and losses living under the dictatorship in the 1970s and 80s. And the times I was invited into family gatherings around the fire where multiple generations played guitar and sang traditional folk songs and current pop hits. And the times we went to festivals with musicians and artists expressing a vision of a better world. These were all sacred opportunities to listen, witness and learn from the experiences of people with lives, histories and identities different from my own.
 |
| Me in front of Casa Ursulina, the women's community center where I served in Chillán, Chile. |
When I first came home to Canton, Ohio from Chile in 2010, I remember seeing my home community through new eyes. I remember the reverse culture shock: how hard it was to feel comfortable again in a place that had once seemed familiar but now seemed strange. I went looking for and found like-minded community in new pockets of my home town that I had not been connected to before: a Unitarian Universalist church, a yoga and dance studio, meditation groups, artists, gardeners, local food activists. I also had the chance to work for nonprofits and to continue to travel frequently for a few more years, and then to try out working in the public and for-profit sectors.
For the past two years I have been grappling with how to serve the wider world while caring for my daughter as a stay-at-home parent. In this chapter of life, I often feel frustrated with how to take meaningful action in response to the many justice and peace issues that I hear about every day in local and national news. Lately, my approach has been to return to listening and learning. One of the biggest influences in my journey lately has been a friend who is a fellow mom I met at an exercise class. She is a Black activist, social justice educator, and the founder of her own grassroots organization. Conversations with her and other friends who have different identities and lived experiences than I do have challenged me in new ways and pushed me to continue reflecting honestly and deeply when I am shocked, confused or made uncomfortable by someone else’s truth. I have also been seeking out podcasts, audiobooks, reputable news sources and scholarly articles. My own understanding has widened and deepened so much regarding the complexity of social justice issues, intersectionality, and the pervasiveness of racial injustice.
Like being a guest volunteer in Chile, being an ally to people who are marginalized in the U.S. requires me to be respectful, humble, and attentive to the experiences, stories, and leadership of the people with whom I wish to serve. By continuing to listen to and learn from diverse voices within my own home community and country, I am finally starting to understand what it means to be a member of the dominant culture as a white cis woman and how my own identity affects how I should become involved, when I should speak and when I should listen. More than anything, I have been reminded that I will always have more to learn about service, justice, and my role in our shared pursuit of a more equitable and peaceful world.
No comments:
Post a Comment