My Musings on Lenses

A recent Cultural Competency training made me start thinking about the lenses through which we look at the world. Whether we realize it or not, we all have them, but most of the time it's unconscious. By the lenses through which we see the world, I mean things that are a huge part of our identities and that frame our lives and influence how we interpret what we observe and experience. Some examples are gender, race, class, sexual orientation, our level of physical and mental ability, whether or not we are employed (and if this is by choice), how old we are, and other experiences we've had that are important to our development such as what kind of education we have, if we've experienced some type of abuse or neglect in our lives, and if we were raised in a religion.

The lenses a person could have aren't necessarily positive or negative—some might be more challenging to have or need to be challenged at times and some people might want to work to change how they see the world. However, certain lenses may hurt us or help us to find justification for doing things that hurt others. Still others might make us more inclined to see the world as a hopeful place or influence us to make an effort to do good.

It's important to become aware of the lenses we have—even more so if we are a part of a majority group that's been taught that their lenses are neutral, normal, natural, or right compared to people not in the majority. Once we become aware of how and why we see and experience the world the way we do, we can understand ourselves, other people, and our interactions with other people better. For an extreme example, a rich, white, straight male could have a hard time seeing the difficulties of anyone who isn't rich, white, straight, or male, and have a hard time leaving his place of a whole lot of privilege (he also might feel like he’s being picked on—I don’t know since I’m not a rich-white-straight man). However, I think that if he's able to become aware that there is a reason he sees the world in the way he does, that will go a long way to help him see around his golden glasses and come to understand other people better and it will improve his relationships with people who are not like him.

From a less privileged position (but still pretty privileged), as a white woman, it is helpful to me to remember that I should not expect that women who are black or any other race or ethnicity have been taught the same things I’ve been taught or have the same opportunities and advantages I’ve had. It is also important to keep in mind that they may not see me the way I see myself.

I started thinking about which of my lenses is the most important or influential in my life. I came up with a few big ones, but I wasn't really sure which one was most tied to fundamentally who I am.

If all of the lenses I have were going to be thrown in a bag and scrambled around with all kinds of other lenses and then I’d draw out of that bag (and maybe pull out some of the same lenses and some different ones) and I could only keep one of my current lenses for sure, I'd keep female. Even though it would be most beneficial to keep white instead of female—if by beneficial I mean having the most privilege—and even though I'd have a chance of getting female again, it's so central to my identity that I cannot imagine parting with being female. I would not be surprised if many people would choose to hang on to their gender, if only because of how important gender and gender roles are in our society.

It's interesting (but not surprising) that one of the most important parts—if not the most important part—of my identity is something that is socially constructed. Then again, so are many of the other major lenses a person can look though (such as race).

It also occurred to me that we might not like all of our lenses: someone may not like seeing the world through the lenses of someone who grew up in poverty or the lenses of someone who has lived for thirty years with depression. I suppose I'm lucky in that all of the lenses I identified as major ones for me, I either feel positively towards or feel only a slight dislike for. I wouldn't necessarily choose all of them if I had a choice at the beginning of my life, nor would I want to throw any of them away if I had the chance now. Some of them I think help me see the world more clearly, while some may often obscure my vision of reality.

Once I start thinking about things like culture and privilege and how those things interact in the world and in the lives of everyone, it’s hard for me to stop. There is so much to consider and there are always new realizations that I hope are leading me in the direction of better understanding and cultural competency. I could probably write a book-length work just on my own personal musings and what I’m learning, but I don’t really have time, nor am I an expert so doubt it would be worth if for anyone to read.

What I do believe is worth it is for everyone to educate themselves on these topics, to figure out what lenses they look at the world through, and to do their own musings.

Citizenship, John Jay, and No Religion

Yesterday I went to a citizenship class. Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement recently received a grant to start a citizenship program and the class I attended yesterday is one of the things we're doing with the grant. Tomorrow I'll start spending some of my time working with people who are applying for citizenship.

In the class, we played bingo with words that are on the test for reading and writing. The words are also included in the 100 questions so it's easy to incorporate the vocabulary into studying for the civics test.. Some examples of words/phrases we used were Washington, Maryland, The Constitution, Adams, 1787, freedom of religion, and John Jay. I did not know who John Jay was, but apparently he was one of three men who wrote the Federalist Papers (the other two are Madison and Hamilton, which I did know).

The class only had seven people in it and the age range was somewhere from around 20 to 60. Everyone in the class had obviously studied from the week before (this was the second class out of five) and were working hard to learn. I don't know if I've ever been in a class with such motivated students. I was surprised at how motivated they were considering it was a Saturday morning and the room we were in was about fifty degrees (everyone wore their jackets the whole time). Then again, maybe I'd be motivated too if I'd been waiting to apply for citizenship for five years and wanted to have some small say in how the place I was living was run.

To me, the most interesting thing that happened was when we talked about freedom of religion and what it means—freedom to practice any religion you choose or to choose not to have a religion.

While I was pondering how I'd missed ever learning about John Jay in my seventeen years of formal (I swear I'd never heard of him until yesterday), there was a young man who was pondering something much deeper. He was maybe a year or two younger than I am and sitting directly across the table from me. He was frowning and he said, “excuse me, teacher, there are people who have no religion?”

“Yes, some people don't have any religion,” said the woman teaching the class.

“No religion? None at all? How can that be? How do they live?”

I think I was nearly as surprised by his his confusion as he was that some people don't have a religion. I was also sad because of how confused and sad he looked. He kept shaking his head and after the class had moved on, he said quietly, “I didn't know it was possible not to have a religion. How is that?”

His neighbor—a lady who was probably about his mother's age—said, “why don't you ask them?”

“Oh,” he said, “I've never met anybody like that.”

Even though I didn't know how he could live in the United States for at least five years and not realize that not everyone is religious, I could imagine the confusion he felt. After I thought about it for a little bit, I found myself sharing some of his wonderment: I understand not believe in anything specific or having any particular religion, but I find it hard to imagine not having any type of spirituality. When I look at the beauty of nature or witness someone doing something truly kind for another human being I don't know how anyone could look at that and see only a beautiful coincidence.

I know that not having a religion is different from not having any kind of spirituality, but what I started thinking about was kind of an extension from the young man's reaction.

With all of the violence in the world, all the hatred, all the poverty and oppression, and all of the random natural disasters it's easy to see why someone might not believe in the loving God that I believe in. Still, not to believe in anything at all? That makes the world seem even more hopeless. Of course, then it can be argued that people believe in God only to make themselves feel better when things go wrong or to explain things they can't explain themselves. Even if that's true and people live happier, more hopeful, and more generous lives because of those false ideas, is that such a bad thing?

A Nourishing Lent

This lent, I'm going all out--in fact, I may have bitten off more than I can chew: I've given up everything that doesn't nourish me in some way. I'm not just talking about food that doesn't nourish me physically because we need much more than food to nourish us. People need social, mental, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual nourishment. This means that I'm giving up food without nutritional value, yes, but I'm also giving up other things that aren't good for me such as wasting time (with things like solitaire), complaining about nothing, negative self-talk, and anything else I deem not to be good for me.

Some people say that it's better to add something good during lent rather than give up something bad--making lent a positive instead of a negative. I've done this in the past and I've found that it takes more energy to add something than to give something up (which, of course, is part of the point). I thought about adding something this year, but lately I've found myself so tired and worn down that it's overwhelming to think about adding something new. It will take a lot of energy to give up everything that doesn't nourish me and I'm sure I'll have my slip-ups (I already have). Still, I hope the end result will be that I feel refreshed and have more positive energy to share with my community, my placement, and on my relationship with God.

I hope everyone has a nourishing Lenten season whether you're giving something up, adding something, doing both, or haven't yet decided to do anything at all.