I can feel it already. You’re going to roll your eyes when I say it. You’re going to think I got it from that movie about tall blue people who live in the rainforest. But it’s true–I think one of the most powerful things we can do for people is to SEE them, to render them visible when the rest of the world ignores, or as the expression goes, “turns a blind eye” to their story, their experience, their troubles.

I spent this weekend talking about the power of telling our stories and listening to one another’s stories without judgment. I have a little experience with people assuming they know who I am before meeting me and then being shocked when we come face to face. And I have a little experience with my community being rendered invisible (or sometimes seeking to make ourselves invisible so we don’t draw undue attention.) It can be rough stuff.

One of my favorite stories of my father’s is about a time when he was flying from Germany back home to India after living and working in Germany for two years (and loving the country deeply). He was sitting in the airport, and the German young adults sitting opposite him probably just saw another Indian and assumed he wouldn’t know what they were saying. One of them started to expound on how dirty India was, and loud, and how unhygenic the people were. My father turned to him, and in impeccable German, said, “Excuse me; I’ve lived in your land for two years and I was never disrespectful. It would make me very happy if you likewise weren’t disrespectful towards my country.”

A really remarkable man who had served in the military for over 20 years shared with me yesterday how hurtful it had been not to be able to talk about his relationship, and even the basic fact that he was gay. He said, “It’s not just inconvenient…it does something to you INSIDE.” Not being able to tell our whole story, or not having someone willing to really hear our story actually misshapes us.

Today in my closing sermon at the retreat, I talked about people our society renders invisible because we profit due to their suffering–undocumented workers, sexually exploited minors, and child slaves. (I also mentioned the people at the Apple manufacturing plant in China whose lives are so bad that they try to commit suicide only to be stopped by the nets that have been installed because jumping is so common.)

We don’t know we’ve silenced an 8-year-old boy in Ivory Coast who was kidnapped and forced to work on a cacao plantation and live on a couple of bananas per day. All we know is we don’t want to pay much more than 50 cents for a hershey bar. And so we participate in silencing him, because his story wouldn’t sell candy bars, and it might eventually make candy bars more expensive.

I don’t know how we create space for the silent stories when we don’t even know those stories are out there…but I think we could start listening a little harder to whispers and a little less carefully to the roar of advertising and banter and objects. If we did, maybe we’d hear more from people like Mary Moreno Richardson, a clergy colleague of mine in San Diego who works with the Guadalupe Art Program, where victims of human trafficking reconnect with their dignity through creating images of themselves as the Virgin of Guadalupe. (For another piece on this, read http://spmcrector.blogspot.com/2010/08/our-lady-of-guadalupe-and-healing.html)

I wrote a few days ago about the Castlewood Workers who the management sought to render invisible but who claim their existence and their power on the picket line every day.

I also think of my friends at the Green Youth Arts and Media Center, who create multiple venues for public expression by gifted youth in our community who are often rendered invisible but whose visual and audio arts as well as dance are inspiring.

Those of us who are a little more visible, how can we make sure that the stories of the invisible (and the disappeared, and those rendered invisible) are heard, and that the people themselves tell the stories? I’m eager for input on both the individual level (listening to people whose stories we assume we already know) and the systemic level, too. And what might be the impact if we really did see one another?

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Last night I had dinner with a high-ranking naval officer and her wife who works in an optometrist’s office–a mixed race couple–and heard about the challenges of working at Guantanamo Bay from a woman’s perspective. This morning I had breakfast with a teacher and her wife who’s a drummer–also a mixed race couple–who discussed Paulo Freire and liberation theology with me. Later in the morning I had a conversation with a 20-year veteran of the military about the challenges of not being allowed to be honest about his relationship with the man in his life. This afternoon, I sat on the porch with a man whose mixed-race daughter works for poor workers’ rights and got arrested during the protests of Disney hotel workers’ mistreatment. (As an aside, when he and his wife first met, he spoke no Spanish and she spoke no English–it was “Love, Actually,” but for real.) And this evening I talked with a half-marathon runner as another mixed race couple chatted with each other about vacation plans in England.

This weekend, I was at a church retreat.

But if I started out by saying “This weekend, I was at a church retreat,” most people (including people in church) wouldn’t assume I’d be interacting with the people I just mentioned (or getting to have such deep conversations with relative strangers). Honestly, once in a while, I was surprised, too.

University Church in San Diego is a gem. It’s inclusive without being oppressive in its commitment to inclusivity. It has membership that loves and respects other religions while really loving Jesus. It has members who really help to carry one another’s burdens. It’s a church that’s willing to have complex conversations about hard issues, but it’s also a church that loves to have fun. It’s a church that really is striving to be exactly the kind of community Jesus described. While I love that FCC Oakland (my church) is a little more political, that’s really born of the fact that we need to be in order to be the community Jesus would create in Oakland. (We call that context-driven ministry.)

I do a lot of work on congregational transformation, and I was talking technical jargon with another pastor friend of mine down here, when she kind of called me on my formulas and statistics and structures that make for healthy church. She threw up her hands and said, “But Sandhya, I really think if they’d just BE CHURCH, the other things would fall into place.” (In my defense, some of the unhealthy churches I work with need those formulas and statistics because they’ve strayed so far from just “being church” that they couldn’t get there on their own.)

By her definition and mine, UCC San Diego is “being church.” But for so many of my friends, the church is a place of exclusion, of judgment, of gossip and political machinations.

Which is why those of us who love our progressive, inclusive churches full of interesting and beautiful and compassionate people don’t say “You should come to my church–we really ARE church.” We say, “I know church can be awful–but we’re not THAT kind of church.” As if churches that preach love and justice are exceptions to the rule.

And sometimes it feels like we are. Sometimes it feels like most churches fall into the category of either biblical literalist or “try-not-to-offend-anyone-and-end-up-inspiring-no-one.” When my friend says “being church,” I think she means a church that is courageous, that responds actively to the needs of its community, that is rooted in radical hospitality. But that’s definitely not what many people mean by “being church,” those inside or outside.

So how do those of us in the radical inclusivity churches change the paradigm from describing ourselves as “not THAT kind of church” to creating a culture where OUR kind of church IS THAT kind of church? Answers gratefully accepted.

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I can’t believe it was two years ago that I went, a little nervous about what my role was, to support a few kitchen crew members who had been locked out of the Castlewood Country Club for holding on to their right to health benefits. I didn’t yet know that in the previous year, management had boasted record earnings in their annual report. I didn’t yet know that the newly hired manager had expressed a commitment to eliminated the union from the country club (in writing, in a document that showed up in the recycling–really? If you’re going to antagonize the cleaning crew, you don’t think you should shred the evidence?). I knew that times were tough, jobs were hard to come by, and some of these workers might not have papers. It felt a little like they were pushing the envelope.

Fortunately they understood their own worth far better than I did.

Sarah from local 2850 invited me and a layperson from a nearby Unitarian church to sit down with one of the workers to hear her story. It was the story of a hard worker who had no problems in the eight years she had worked there, who was appreciated by the members and the rest of the staff. I would later learn it was also the story of a woman who had just three weeks before agreed to adopt several children in need, not realizing that she would be losing her income and her health care. During a record-breaking earnings year.

Her story and the stories of other workers have inspired me over the past two years. (Here’s one of those amazing stories: http://ireneflorez.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/castlewood/) What inspires me more is their willingness to meet verbal abuse with human decency, even when club members have spat at them for “tearing up families” (because some won’t cross the picket line while others will). They’re willing to point out that their families are being torn apart because they are asking for basic human decency, and things like health care which all the club members who pay over $20,000 just to join (plus monthly dues) take for granted. Over these past two years, they have been a Christlike presence for the movement in two different ways: like Christ, they have endured and stayed committed to the struggle for justice. And also like Jesus they have not backed down, but they have stood strong while retaining their inner dignity by not stooping to the level of the management (or some of the club members). It’s worth noting some of the members have stood in support of the workers, and they have been blackballed from the decision-making process.

Every worker deserves to know that when they work hard, they and their children will not have to worry about health care. These workers, despite mistreatment and sheer malice by people who could easily have afforded them this basic right, have stood strong. I hope to learn from their courage.

On Saturday morning, make time to stand with these courageous workers:

http://endthelockout.org/

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I attended my very first Occupy the Hood meeting tonight.

It’s not like I was unaware of the movement–my co-pastor and I expressed enthusiasm and concern about Occupy Oakland almost simultaneously almost from the beginning, and when we read this article http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/10/occupy_the_hood.php in October, we were pretty sure this was where we belonged.

But then we (or at least I) got caught up in the ups and downs of the Occupy Oakland ocean–joy at the experience of thousands of people filling the streets for the November action, horror at the mistreatment of protesters, disappointment as the movement became more about a particular space than about people in this community who barely have a passing connection to City Hall, dismay at the disregard by organizers for the stated needs of laborers prior to the port shutdown in December, rage at the outright illegal actions of the Oakland Police Department on January 28 followed by almost equal rage at the remarkable number of arrestees who did not place their single experience of police brutality in the context of decades of a broken police system that misuses great cops and perpetuates a longtime gap between cops and community.

And then I went to an event hosted by the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy on the Black Church and Occupy. And people who lived in my community, who are in the justice movement for the same reasons I am, stood at the mike and over and over said, “You have to show up and look–there’s an Occupy for you.” They mentioned different committees–Occupy Food Justice, Occupy Education, Occupy the Hood.

There it was. I had been saying for over a month, almost as an apology to my friends who were so active in Occupy Oakland, “I just think Occupy the Hood is where I should be placing my energies.”

Now it’s interesting…I’m not 100% sure that I think keeping all our schools open is a good solution to the apartheid system of education in Oakland. But I have been heartsick about its brokenness for at least a decade, and in that group I am among other people equally heartsick, who are willing to do something (and more than just one thing–many of them are engaged in direct service and in advocacy around the issue and around the kids already). I’m not 100% sure what even an amazing group like this can do to end the “New Jim Crow” of our prison industrial complex that almost relies on a pipeline of children from our neighborhoods ending up in our prisons. But tonight I was in a room of people who know our children are capable of more and deserve more, and they also want to create a movement that is relevant to the majority of people in this city who are affected by so many of our brothers and sisters either in prison or carrying the burdens of having been in the system. I’m frankly a little scared about occupying foreclosed homes. But this community challenges my fear by reminding me of the injustice of so many of the foreclosures in our community.

In addition, there was a refrain throughout the evening that I bet the regulars didn’t even notice but which made my heart sing. They kept pointing out in relation to different events that particular ones would be family-friendly, with a priority on safety and security. Because these organizers know what it means for certain communities to be more severely impacted by police violence than others–the previously incarcerated, youth of color, all children who would be traumatized by the experience of violence. It made my heart sing because, in November, one of my favorite congregants said to me after the November protest, “It’s not that I disagree with Occupy, but I’m not going to those marches. I’m a young woman of color, and it is not safe.” In my own privileged (and still high from the November event) space, I thought, “She’s living out of fear instead of courage.” And then I saw what happened to hundreds of innocent protesters in the days and weeks that followed and realized my own arrogance.

What it comes down to, I think, is what it always comes down to: I stopped holding out for the perfect movement but didn’t give up on searching for the movement with integrity. I think I found home tonight, and I hope that this amazing family welcomes me, and that I am able to bring my own integrity to the process.

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It’s probably no surprise that I’m starting out this series of blog posts with a reflection by Malcolm Gladwell, on whom I have a semi-secret crush. (As an aside, this crush really irritated my ex-boyfriend, who bore a striking resemblance to Gladwell when his hair grew out.)

Gladwell wrote a piece over 15 years ago about the success of Jamaican immigrants in his family and how they contrasted themselves from African Americans. [Here's the link: http://www.gladwell.com/1996/1996_04_29_a_black.htm]

At the end of the article, he notes that just a few hundreds miles north of his New Jersey family, Jamaicans in Toronto are looked upon as crime-prone instead of as model business owners. The reason, he suggests, is that Jamaicans were the first significant contact Torontonians had with Black people, so there was no African American group with whom to contrast them.

For many of us who are neither White nor African American in this country, there is a complicated dance in which we engage, usually without even realizing it. We claim our territory–our social location–because it is a little fluid. And very often, because we’ve believed the stereotypes about both groups, we work at locating ourselves as “not there with them.” We do it because we want to fly under the radar. We do it because we don’t know the whole story about how race was formed in this country and think that we stand outside that narrative instead of being coopted by it. We do it because that ignorance means we really do think we’re different.

Malcolm Gladwell’s story challenges all of our social location “choices,” though, by reminding us that the exact same group of people can have one social location (upwardly mobile small business owners) in New Jersey and have a completely different one 500 miles north (“crime and dissipation”). It is not our exceptionalism that sets us apart; it is where we’ve been placed in the narrative before we even arrived on these shores.

I remember sitting in an anti-racism training a couple of years ago with a young Asian American man, and when we started talking about stereotypes, he said, “Yeah, but what’s wrong with being stereotyped as being good at math and being hard working and disciplined?”

I think Malcolm Gladwell might have said that what’s wrong with it is that it comes at the expense of other marginalized communities. After a few years of doing anti-racism work specifically in the church, I might add that it robs everyone of being who they really are. Many of my White friends don’t believe they have a culture. They’ve been robbed of that identity because the one thing they are is White. Many of my Asian American friends remain stuck in mid-level positions because no matter how gifted they are, their society has deemed that they do not have gifts for higher level leadership. All of our identities are misshaped by the narrative we’re placed in. And it sometimes feels like we have no control over that narrative.

Gladwell pushes us by reminding us that our comfort with the social location chosen for us can come at the expense of others. And it comes at a cost to us, because it limits us from being our whole, full selves. So instead, we can choose–we can choose intentional solidarity, and redefining that social location. It’s hard, and we have to do it over and over because every person we meet will unintentionally impose the old narrative on us.

But I think of an amazing activist friend of mine. He’s active in the Asian American community in the Bay Area, and the first time we met, we found out we were both “hapa,” or biracial. He’s half Japanese and half Black. I said to him I thought it was really unusual that he identified as Asian American. And he explained that his mother had survived the Japanese internment camps in the US during World War II and realized her solidarity lay with the Black community that understood her experience of always being “other.” His Asian American identity was a strong, militant identity borne of solidarity with oppressed peoples. And he has to redefine that social location and that distinct way of being Asian American every day for people who think they already know what Asian American is.

But every day he chooses that location. He chooses that identity. He chooses that solidarity. And every one of us, Jamaican, Asian, White and Black, can choose to do the same. May it be so.

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