To build the Beloved Community, All Souls cultivates and celebrates . . . welcoming, diverse, and vibrant community where we love, respect, and care for one another.
All Souls Church is committed to strengthening our community’s diversity, especially along the lines of race and ethnicity. Reaching that goal requires the participation of every member in the congregation. That means YOU! How can you apply the lens of race and ethnicity to learn more about how they shape your spiritual life and commitment to justice? We warmly invite you to take on a personal learning project, to be completed by May 20, 2012, that expands and deepens your understanding of the dynamics of race and ethnicity in our world. Here’s the process:
- Identify a learning project that you find interesting and exciting.
- Complete the commitment form (pdf).
- Complete the project by May 2012.
- Share your reflections, observations, insights, and wonderings with others in the All Souls community.
- Report what you learned to the MRMC Transformation Team.
We offer a few ideas in below to spark ideas for learning.
- Join/create a book/movie club with diverse members. Focus not only on the content, but also on the motivations and challenges of your club mates. How does race/ethnicity color each person’s interpretation of the book/movie?
- Visit a museum that features a culture, history, or way of life different from yours. How has race/ethnicity shaped the way the exhibitions are presented?
- In a multi-generational group, view one or more of these films: Smoke Signals; Waste Land; Real Women Have Curves; Joy Luck Club; Akeelah and the Bee. How does a Hollywood director frame issues of race, class, gender, and age?
- Read People of the Dream: Multiracial Congregations in the United States by Michael O. Emerson, an award-winning sociologist who studies religion in America. He outlines the personal and group dynamics of a multiracial/multicultural faith community. What do you learn about the patterns and practices of All Souls?
- Spend a Wednesday (10am-2pm) in the All Souls Archives, learning about our rich history of “tearing down the walls that divide the human family.” Was Rev. Hardies right when he called All Souls a “house of dreams” around issues of race/ethnicity?
- Update your understanding of racism by reading Ed Morales’ Living in Spanglish: The Search for Latino Identity in America, Eugene Robinson’s Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America, or Bill Hing’s To Be An American: Cultural Pluralism and the Rhetoric of Assimilation. What do they say about being a UU of Color?
- Join an arts group or sports team (e.g., a pick-up soccer team in Columbia Heights, salsa classes, African drumming circle, etc.). What data emerges from your body as you move?
- Make a piece of art using an artistic or craft tradition from another culture. Does your creation reveal anything surprising about you?
- Walk with a friend through a community other than your own. What artifacts can you gather to tell the story of that community?
- Change a pattern of your everyday life by riding a different bus or Metro line, eating in a restaurant that features a different cuisine, attending a concert of different music. What makes you stop and say, “wow, that was unusual”?
- Walk through the environmental landscape of Greater Washington with someone from another generation. Venture out throughout our region, taking note of how environmental issues play out in various communities. Do you come across beauty in unsuspected places?
- Attend/organize an anti-racism course, such as the UUA’s Jubilee Antiracism Training. How can you translate your new awareness into action?
- Within a respectful relationship, invite a person different from you to a worship service or social event at All Souls. How do they react to experiences you take for granted?
- Intentionally view your spiritual/justice work at All Souls—such as covenant/affinity groups, church committees, choirs, giving, etc.—through the lens of anti-racism/anti-oppression. Do you find aspects of your work that need to change?
- Review your childhood faith tradition through the lens of race/ethnicity. Search your archives and memories for programs, celebrations, and rites of passage. How did those experiences shape your understanding of race/ethnicity?
- Go with a friend to a religious/spiritual worship service of another tradition, such as a sangha, synagogue, mosque, a Pentecostal or GLBT church. How does that congregation use music, liturgy, religious education, and fellowship to heal the wounds of racial/ethnic oppression?
- Engage in a type of joy, gratitude, or worship expression that is unfamiliar to you, such as meditation, praying aloud or in a kneeling position, doing sun salutations, etc. Does this physical practice help you understand why it is important to another culture/faith tradition?
- Listen to the story of one person who is different from you. How did that story change his/her life?
- Do direct service for someone underserved by education, employment, immigration, housing, etc. As you reach beyond “the act of kindness,” what does that person teach you about “being fully human”?
- Mentor a young person of a different race/ethnicity in our RE program, at your local school, or on your block. Join Big Brothers/Big Sisters. Do youth see race/ethnicity differently than your generation?
- Teach in our RE program, helping our young people consider how race shapes their lives. Are we unconsciously imposing our attitudes towards race/ethnicity on our children?
- Teach/tutor in All Souls’ ESL program on Sundays. How do language barriers contribute to discrimination?
- Join/create a group for White parents who adopt children of color. What do the experiences these families share say about society’s attitudes?
- Have an outing with a family from a different racial/ethnic group. How do your family dynamics differ from theirs?