Managing Diversity

I have been wrestling with issues surrounding diversity for a while now.  I long for diversity in my life because I can see the value of it, but it is lacking in my world.  Or so I thought.  What I am finding is that diversity is not about skin color, sex, or sexual orientation solely.  Diversity is all around me in the attitudes and opinions of the people I associate with every day.  Sometimes diversity is very subtle and can easily be missed and if I want to broaden my horizons, I need to broaden the way that I look at diversity.

Yes, I want colorful people in my child's life.  I want them in my life.  But if I am willing to dig a little past appearances, I can find what I am looking for.  The subtler forms of diversity can be difficult to manage because opinions and attitudes can be tricky.  We naturally gravitate toward people who share our beliefs, values and dreams right?  But I think that life can be so much richer when we have to think deeply, debate respectfully, and open our minds to the ideas of others.  How do we do this while still sticking strongly to our own values and attitudes?  I've decided that it does not go against my values to have conversations with people I don't agree with, in fact, I am evolving into the type of person who is beginning to value this.

I don't think that we have enough opportunity in daily life for critical thinking and that is what I am talking about.  I can remain true to myself while opening myself to the ideas of others.  Some of my best friends are people who I originally was afraid of, did not understand, or really did not like.  It is hard to forge a friendship with someone when you don't have strong feelings about them one way or the other, and how boring would my life be if I only associated with people who never challenged my ideas and attitudes.

I had a good conversation with a friend the other day about voter registration laws.  I would not call it a heated discussion per se, but we were definitely coming at it from different angles.  I like to think that we both came away from it with some new knowledge or ways of thinking about it.  The conclusion seemed to be that we did not know the answers, and decided that sometimes that has to be good enough.

So I am challenging myself, and whoever else may read this to open your mind and your circle a little bit.  Identify where diversity is lacking in your life, then seek to meet and associate with those people you don't understand or agree with.  I really think that it is a step toward peace that we don't often think about.

Living in a UU world

So, I do a lot of thinking, and I get lots of ideas about things and I do not always know what to do with them.  Instead of flooding my friends and family with all of this, and because I am not a disciplined journal writer, I decided that I would write a blog as a part of my spiritual practice and journey.

I cannot guarantee that everything I write about will be about my church or the faith tradition that I love, but I guess that I figure that I am beginning to define myself in certain ways and being a UU is a big one, so I imagine it will all be related.

UU stands for Unitarian Universalist, and is the faith I have found after years of searching that works best for me.  It is a covenantal faith tradition, meaning that we do not have a text like the Bible or the Koran that we follow, or a doctrine or creed that drives us in our worship and fellowship together.  We are guided instead by promises that we make to each other and by seven principles that we hold to be true.  Unitarian Universalist Principles can be found here.  Keep reading and I will link you to the children's version which in my opinion is cooler and easier to relate to.

I have grown up as a religious person for a good part of my life, and have been raised in a number of Protestant faiths as a child.  However, as an adult, I had a lot of questions that could not be answered, and were not really appreciated in many of those religions.  So I just stopped going.  A few years ago, my dear husband decided that we should go back to church and I was terrified.  I was not sure what I believed, but was sure I did not believe the way church people believed, and I dug in my heels.

I began to search online for a non-denominational religion that I felt I could at least sit through the service without feeling like a complete hypocrite.  Somehow, I ran across the UU church.  I had never heard of it, so I did not have many of the preconceived notions that are out there about what a UU church is.  There is a lot of misunderstanding, but I am sure that is true of any religion.  I will leave that for another blog post.

We went to the church a few times, and it was such a drastic change from what we were both used to that I think we got a little scared.  There was no Bible, many religions were discussed and honored, and it just felt a little loosey goosey to two people who grew up with much more religious structure.  So we went back to be unchurched for a couple of years, but I kept thinking about and researching the church, the faith and the organization.

Along came lil man, and then we started thinking about church again.  I kept thinking of the first principle of the worth and dignity of every person and the fact that all religious and spiritual beliefs are accepted (perhaps questioned and debated) and that he would learn about all of them and then be free to choose his own path when he was older.  So when he was old enough to participate in children's religious education we went back.  We have been going every since, and are so involved in the community now that I am not sure what I would do without it.

I enjoy the challenge of having to find my own spiritual path, and to be honest, I am not sure what it is.  I cannot define who I am or what I believe spiritually with the conviction of some of my fellow congregants.  I know that I believe in being kind, I believe in acceptance, and I believe that everyone has the right to believe or not believe however they wish.  And that's what I love about the fact that I have found this religious community to which I now proudly belong.

Oh yeah, the children's principles are here.