Crossing Cultures, Cultivating Connections

A lot of my most lasting lessons from college weren't from the classroom but from my participation in an on-campus Christian group.  For example, I'm thankful for numerous cross-cultural ministry trainings we received from our strong leaders, which helped those of us who spent summers or semesters abroad but were also relevance for navigating the very diverse student body at Penn. 

The nuances we learned through talks, discussions, and role-plays are not lost on me 25+ years later.  Connecting with someone around religion, spirituality, and truth is a delicate action even before considering how to do so with someone whose cultural upbringing and life perspective differs from yours.  It was formative for me to have modeled for me constructive ways of doing this, especially when there are so many unconstructive ways.




I call this to mind as more and more non-Black people seek to better understand the Black experience in America and be better allies to their Black friends and colleagues.  In particular I'm reminded of all of those unconstructive approaches to crossing cultures, such as:

1. Not knowing that crossing cultures does in fact mean acknowledging differences in perspectives, such that saying and doing what makes sense to you is assumed to make sense to others.

2. Being so afraid of offense or awkwardness that you don't engage at all, or do so in very bland ways.

3. Thinking that because your heart is in the right place, you can act like a bull in a china shop, cavalierly saying or doing things to force the action, feeling that grace will be extended to you because at least you're trying and not realizing that by your sloppiness you can cause deep hurt.

Despite how effective and deeply engrained these lessons were, I'm still guilty of all of those things many years later.  Although, more often than not, I recognize this and am trying to do better.

But what is a constructive way of engaging across cultures?  That's a more complex question to answer, but I can start by saying that it rises and falls on the authenticity by which you are willing to engage.  This was important for trainings way back when that were focused on helping those of us doing short-term missions trips in cross-cultural settings, that given the short amount of time we had to form meaningful relationships we had to convey real value in those relationships in order to demonstrate the sort of authenticity that allowed for true engagement across cultures.

How much more so, then, are we able to cultivate that sort of connection when we are talking about people who can be more permanently in our lives, rather than just for a week or a season.  People who we have the ability to have lasting relationships with - family members, friends, neighbors, co-workers - should be easier to engage with, even across cultures, because the longevity of those connections affords the ability to engage in those ways.  Right?

Alas, how many of us make choices to have meaningful relationships with people of different cultures?  I wrote about this last year but it bears repeating: it is in our control to make life decisions that afford us opportunities to have diverse networks.  Yet how many of us actually capitalize on those opportunities?

Sadly, much of America is characterized by the opposite.  We willingly and consciously choose residential locations, schools for our kids, and places of worship in ways that reinforce segregation.  Too many of our workplaces are homogeneous, and even if they aren't we don't put forth any meaningful effort to connect with people different from us. Our lives are poorer for these choices, and our kids learn terrible habits and are not prepared for when the choices are theirs.  And as a result, we don't have any real relationships with people different from us.  There's nothing meaningful that can happen cross-culturally if that is the case, which it is for too many of us.

By the way, the best thing about these cross-cultural trainings back in college were not their high quality and stimulating content.  The best thing was that it was never forgotten that the whole point of all of this is not to have an interesting experience that you can write home about, but to see more fully how awesome God is for being a God across cultures and languages and foods and dress.  What a wonderful blessing that truth is, and what a wonderful blessing for these trainings to always point back to that.

Similarly, diversity can be hard work.  Cocooning with people like you is safe and easy; putting in the work to truly to connect with others who are different from you can feel risky and draining.  Crossing cultures takes effort, and sometimes it creates awkwardness and offense.  But even when that happens, when it happens in the context of authentic relationships where people know where everyone's heart is, that can strengthen the connection and affection in a community.  And through it all, it yields a far richer and more fulfilling life.  Now that is worth pursuing, and making real life choices to do so.  As it is written in the Good Book, love covers a multitude of sins.  We will invariably sin against each other, but if we are connected by love, love still wins.