Twenty-seven years ago, in late October, I loaded up my little yellow Toyota in Chicago , piled it high with most of my belongings, and drove south.  I drove South through the Great Smokey Mountains that were bright red with the leaves of autumn, South until I reached Augusta, Georgia , where I began my first call to the ministry.  I moved with my eyes open, knowing that I was facing a new life and a new culture.  Although every part of the country has its own culture, nowhere has as identifiably a culture of its own as the South — although there are many, many differences within the South.  So not only was I going to have to start learning how to be a minister for the first time, but I was going to have to learn it in an unfamiliar cultural context.

One of the first things I learned was about conversation.  When I first got there a conversation might go something like this: "Hello, Sally?  This is Kate.  I'm just calling to let you know that the membership meeting is next Wednesday.  Will you be able to make it then?  You will?  Great!  See you there, then.  'Bye."

I quickly came to understand that such a call was considered unfriendly bordering on rude by those native to the area.  Even in a business setting, you were supposed to pass the time of day, enquire about a person's health and about any relative you may be acquainted with before even tentatively bringing up any matter of business.  I learned that when I called, I ought to talk for at least ten minutes before stating the objective of my call: "Hey there, Betty!  It's Kate.  I've been thinking about y'all.  How are you doing?  How's Don?  Have you heard from Peggy lately?  Oh how wonderful!  Your first grandbaby due in March!!  How is Don going to like being a grandpa?  Are you going to be able to take time off to see her?  You are!  I imagine the azaleas will just be coming out when you get there." and so on, and on until "Oh, by the way, Bob changed the membership meeting to next Wednesday.  Yes, Betty Jo's mother is sick and they have to drive down to see her over the weekend so he wasn't sure they could make it back for a Monday meeting.  Can you make it on Wednesday?  Wonderful!  I know Bob will be glad to hear that.  See y'all then!  'Bye." 

I admit I never completely got the knack.  After all, I had not too recently moved from Chicago — where the polite thing to do was to state your business and not waste people’s time in idle chit-chat.  It was obvious that the rules were different down in Augusta , Georgia , in 1980, but no one could have told me precisely what the rules were — how much was required to be polite and how long was too long.  We Yankees knew the rules were different, but didn't really know what the new rules were.  The native Southerners could not necessarily have told us either, because they just did what came naturally. 

I was fortunate in that, as far as I know, my ignorance didn't have too many serious results.  Half my congregation consisted of transplanted Yankees while the other half had learned to put up with a certain amount of ignorance on our part.  Not everyone was so lucky.  Part of it was an attitude on my part, the kind of attitude one tries to take with them when travelling in a new culture: a sense of curiosity, an interest in local customs, an open-mindedness that did not always assume that my culture was a superior one.  In other words I tried not to be a Damn Yankee in the South; in the same way I would try not to be an ugly American in Mexico , Italy , or Japan .  I didn't always succeed, but my efforts were appreciated.  One minister I know made no effort, however, to conceal her disappointment that the Southern town she had just moved to was not New York City .  At every turn, she made comments on her perception that the local area was backward, uncultured, ignorant, conservative and a whole lot of other things she had no hesitation in mentioning.  Not surprisingly, she was soon back in New York City . 

There were all kinds of things to learn.  “Y’all come see us!” isn’t a literal expression but rather a friendly good bye — as some new Yankee members of the congregation found out when they showed up for lunch at a surprised Southern matron’s home.  You are expected to be friendly to strangers and pass the time of day while waiting in line.   Children are expected to use “sir” and “ma’am” and honorifics when speaking with adults.   There were different dress codes:  more elaborate makeup and hair for women — men often had longer sideburns and more poof to the hair on top.  Clothing was brighter and dressier.  For someone brought up in a region of the country where getting dressed up meant wearing clean blue jeans and combing your hair, a beauty parlor culture was a bit intimidating.  Fortunately, the Unitarian Church contained a lot of Yankees and a lot of Southerners understanding of our foibles.

While I was in Georgia , I began using some of my summer vacation to go to Mexico with a program that placed us in family homes down there while we studied Spanish.  In the packet of materials I was sent was a one-page description of the symptoms of “culture shock.”  As I read of the symptoms: anger, depression, the tendency to downgrade the intelligence and abilities of those in the new culture in which you are living, constant conversation about one's own country and ways of doing things, the fact that those who are brought to the new culture rather than those who choose the move are more likely to suffer from culture shock, I began to recognize symptoms of a number of women in my local congregation.  These women all had husbands who had, over their objections, accepted jobs in Georgia .  They were pleasant, intelligent people who gradually became tiresome with their constant dissatisfaction with everything about Augusta .  Conversation was filled with their stories about the ignorance of the local people, with complaints about the lack of the basic necessities of life — from avocadoes to bike paths.  Now none of these people was by nature a complainer, nor were they passive.  But the shock of being in a place so culturally different than what they were used to, was, for a time, overwhelming, unbearable.  Eventually, most learned to live with it, and even, when given an opportunity to move, chose to stay.  In fact two of the women who were most unhappy 27 years ago, still live there today.

Culture is made up of many things: codes of manners, dress, language, religion, customs, rituals, and norms of behavior.  Verbally, even when we are all ostensibly speaking the same language, words have different meanings, shades of meanings, or connotations for people of different lands and of different regions in this land.  Behaviorally, we all learn patterns — what to do in this or that situation and the meaning of different behaviors in different contexts.

I remember when I was in college and began dating young men from a background different from my own, there was a bit of culture shock.  My first love was a Jewish boy whose parents had emigrated to Washington State from Austria .   His family was much louder than mine with lots of tussles and disputes between siblings, but the father was definitely the head of the household and no one disputed him.  They were outdoorsy and enjoyed the skiing and mountain climbing that their Dad had learned in his native country.  While I liked the energy of his family, I often wanted to retreat for peace and quiet.  And I realized that as much as I loved this boy, I probably shouldn’t marry someone with such a strong, patriarchal model.

My second boyfriend was Irish-American Catholic.  His home seemed quiet as a tomb compared with the first guy’s or even with my Protestant Scandinavian relatives’.  Although his Dad looked like the head of the household, Mom usually got her way by nagging — quietly.  I would have felt depressed living in that home for long. 

Over the years doing counseling, I found that often couple differences are actually cultural differences that two people have not learned how to overcome.  If you think about it, each family is affected by its ethnicity, the region in which they were brought up, and their family of origin.  Each family has certain customs it has learned and developed.  There are small things such as foods that we eat or how we celebrate holidays and larger things such as how we express love, anger, hurt.  Ric and Billie Masten talk about how it took them years to figure out that they had learned very different ways to say I love you: one with gifts, the other with hugs and they were both disappointed until they figured out that they were saying the same thing in different ways.

A culture clash I remember occurred in a women’s group I belonged to many years ago in Ohio .  The group was mostly WASPY Protestant and from the Midwest .  I brought a good friend to join the group who hailed from New York .  From her arrival she dominated the group and the other women were pretty upset, so a few of us were appointed to sit down and talk to her.  The upshot of our conversation was that we learned that we had different conversational styles.  In her family she had learned that the way you got to talk was to interrupt and talk louder and keep on talking until someone interrupted you.  We had learned that you wait until someone has paused for a few moments and was clearly done before beginning.  We had been waiting for her to pause.  She had been waiting for us to interrupt and take the floor.  Fortunately, once everyone was aware of this difference, we were able to modify our styles well enough that we could enjoy being in the group together.  

We all know people who can’t adjust to differences:  Americans who find any country without a McDonald’s primitive, the Mom who scolds her daughter because the daughter doesn’t arrange the kitchen just the way she does, the grandparent who is sure that the only way to raise children is the way he was raised.  For some people, anything different from what they are used to is threatening — maybe even wrong or immoral.  Change isn’t easy for any of us.  Still it can be interesting and exciting.  While my sojourn in Georgia was sometimes a challenge, I decided to approach it as if I were a visiting anthropologist interested in customs I hadn’t observed before.  There were many things I came to appreciate and missed when I left.  I remember shortly after I left Georgia for British Columbia , Canada , I was in the elevator in my apartment building and began to chat with the two elderly ladies there.  The ladies’ discomforted expressions and the way they moved to the back of the elevator as if I were a dangerous lunatic off her meds — reminded me I wasn’t in Georgia anymore!  Evidently, unlike the South, in BC you weren’t supposed to have friendly conversations with strangers!

I had long recognized provincialism as a problem.  In college in Oregon , I soon realized that provincialism has nothing to do with living in the provinces.  Our college drew heavily from the East Coast with large contingents from New York City .  Many of these kids were unable to adjust to living in Portland, Oregon — where almost nothing was open all night, there were no delis within 10 miles of school, jazz clubs and folk clubs were almost unknown, there were no major ball clubs, and ethnic restaurants were mostly Asian.  For them there was "nothing to do."  Of course many of the folks who complained loudly about nothing to do never considered hiking the Columbia Gorge, sailing the lakes and rivers, spending the weekend at our ski cabin on Mount Hood or joining in the all-campus annual retreat at the beach — much less joining in the lively political campaigns centered on the Vietnam war.  They didn't consider a Sunday night potluck "something to do."  We Westerners were slightly in awe of the worldliness of the New Yorkers — who were far more likely to smoke, use drugs, and have extensive sexual experience than we were, and who had an air of worldly cynicism that might have been learned at the private schools so many of them had gone to — we were in awe but we weren't altogether sure we approved.  Many of us were into our junior year before the geographical boundaries broke down enough that Easterners and Westerners could be seen socializing together and even forming couples.  

Being provincial is believing, as most cultures do, that one lives at the center of the world.  In fact, throughout time, cultures all over the world often had shrines in places that were known, locally, as the earth’s navel.

As Unitarian Universalists we try in our theology to be affirming of the diversity within the human condition.  In the 1500’s Francis David, Unitarian preacher in Transylvania , said, “You don’t have to think alike to love alike.”  The Universalists were among the first to say that religious diversity was acceptable to a loving God.  Our faith has always tried to help us appreciate the breadth of humanity. So learning how to appreciate other cultures and customs certainly has to be a part of it.  Moreover, it is often rubbing up against other cultures that we learn from each other what keeps a culture from becoming stultifying and stagnant.   People often attribute the vibrancy and creativity in America to the fact that we are such a diverse nation, ethnically and culturally.

However, I believe that there are some cultures and customs that should not be accepted and tolerated.  In our ethnically diverse country, there are customs we have outlawed:  female castration, a custom in some African countries, is illegal here.  The ritual sacrifice of animals is illegal in most parts of the country.  The Mafia subculture is an entire culture of morally unacceptable behavior.  The particular military subculture I saw in El Salvador , which, like the Mafia, was about power and feathering one’s own nest at the expense of everyone outside the culture, was an abhorrent culture that led to death squads.  At one time the culture in America included slavery.  L ater it included segregation and keeping black men and women as second-class citizens — often through violence.  Racism was a part of our culture.  Not long ago, sexism was so rampant that if a woman was raped, she went on trial rather than her attacker.  It was part of our culture.  Being Gay or L esbian was seen as a shameful secret.  It was a part of our culture.  Sexual harassment was a part of the price of the job for a great many women.  It was a part of our culture.  While some cultural differences are only differences — I am not a moral relativist — I believe that there are a few entire cultures or aspects of many cultures which are immoral, wrong.  Cultures that do unnecessary harm are inferior to those that do not.  On the other hand, while I might prefer a culture where people are friendly on the elevator,  social distance is not usually a moral issue.

This is, I think, an important distinction.  Historically, most cultures made many, if not most, of their customs and social norms matters of morality, and but a fraction of what makes up culture really touches morality.  The rest of our discomfort is culture clash.

A problem is, that in a global society, in an incredibly diverse nation, at a time when the difference of life experience between the generations is growing larger, culture clash is something we run into constantly: at work, at home, in civic groups, in congregations, — even on the highways. 

And when we are in groups, while we can maintain some pieces of our culture, we have to negotiate the differences.  We can’t stay quiet and let my New York friend have a weekly monologue in the women’s group, but we don’t need to assume that there is something bad or wrong about her.  We have to have a dialogue about how we can understand one another’s customs and then figure out how we can work together.  The differences can be fun, with the right attitude.  

On the other hand, we can’t bend to a thousand different cultures.  There is an element of when in Rome , do as the Romans do.  Customs can’t be customized to the quirks of each individual — we can try to leave some room but sometimes we have to adjust.  When the British come to America , they have to drive on the right side of the road, and when we go to Britain , we have to drive on the left.

It is a tough one.  You shouldn’t and can’t give up who you are in order to be inclusive, but others shouldn’t have to become just like you in order for you to include them.  We need to have a sense of self, an identity, but we grow and gain vitality through new ways of looking at the world.

It isn’t an easy balance.  My cultural roots are with the Scandinavian L utherans from the Midwest that are depicted on Garrison Keillor.  My husband grew up in the Bronx and the L ower East Side of New York in a Jewish family.  We have had more than a few culture clashes.  When we first got together, the volume at which I made a complaint didn’t even register.  I had to learn to be much more vociferous.  Likewise, when I heard a complaint at a volume that in my family might have indicated someone’s near demise, I had to learn it was mere expressiveness, not an emergency.  But we’ve learned.  We are still learning.  And I am having a lot more fun than I would if I had married a more Woebegonish swain. 

That is what I think our UU churches are really supposed to be about — creating a cultural and spiritual identity and yet allowing it to evolve as a congregation changes and brings new diversity into the mix.  And this is what I think our individual spiritual lives are about:  learning who we are and what we are meant to do and yet being open to the continual transformation that experiencing the other can offer to us.

We UU’s, though, can be plenty provincial ourselves.  We often assume that we will all share certain interests, preferences, styles of dress, expectations, child-rearing philosophy, political inclinations, and theologies, with everyone else in the pews or folding chairs at our churches and Fellowships.  We are not as diverse as our philosophy suggests we should be.  During my various job searches around the country over the years, I often found that I could pick the Unitarian coming to meet me at the airport out of the crowd, even without a photo.  There is a “look” we are associated with.  L ots of the Republicans and Independents will tell you that they get tired of the assumption that to be a UU you must be a Democrat or a member of the Green Party.  We assume that Our People listen to NPR rather than the country western station.  We assume that Our People will send every child to college or would rather go to Greece than L as Vegas on vacation or don’t hunt.  Theologically, some of our churches have developed cultures where it is not OK to be a Christian UU or even a theistic UU.  Many of our congregational cultures make it difficult to admit to praying or having a sense of the mystical.  To live out our principles, we UU’s should be doing better at accepting a wide variety of cultural and philosophical differences.  Our more vibrant congregations tend, in my opinion, to be ones with active and civil exchange around differences in theology and life experience rather than unspoken norms of similarity.

The Universalists of our heritage believed that each of us was equally beloved in the sight of God, and the Unitarians mandated a tolerance for diverse belief.  We don't always practice these things.  We are human enough to forget how often differences are only differences.  But as a religion, we are committed to the notion that everything human is not altogether strange.  We are committed to looking for things we can value in cultures that are different from our own.  We are committed to understanding that each of us sees the world through different eyes and to try to comprehend those different visions.  That is not to say that each vision is equally valuable — though I know some believe that — but it is true that too often we mistakenly dismiss others and their ways because we cannot see through their eyes.  It is to say we must exercise great caution in any judgment that our eyesight is sharper or surer than theirs.  I am also suggesting to you that the tolerance and acceptance of diversity may be a commitment not just to an attitude or a philosophy but rather to a process.  If, as often seems the case, we may suffer from a sense of culture shock and repulsion when we have to live with customs strange to us, our UU commitment is to live out the strangeness and learn to comprehend it.

We are travelers in life's journey.  We will visit strange lands, unfamiliar ways, strange beings.  And we must remember that it is we who are strangers here.  But the strangeness of this journey is not only our trial, but our joy.

Benediction:

You may have only a small light,
but uncover it, let it shine,
use it in order to bring more light and understanding
to the hearts and minds of men and women.
Give them not hell, but hope and courage.

Updated Jan 01, 2008 wfr