Listening to Community

All of us have heard it said that God gave us two ears and one mouth for a good reason. My grandmother would say that we were supposed to listen to others twice as much as we share our own thoughts. If you could call what we talked about as kids "thought."

When I first came to the John Perkins Center, I spent the first summer reflecting on a related concept in Christian community development: Listening to Community. This idea is related to the felt need concept and asset-based community development. The former is connected listening to community for a number of important reasons:

"As we listen to their stories and get to know their hopes and concerns for the present and future, we also begin to identify one another person's deepest felt-needs; those hurts and longings that allows us opportunities to connect with people on a deeper level, which is always necessary for true reconciliation to take place."

Listening helps locate the community-based assets. These assets provide a launching pad for self-directed community improvement. The Christian Community Development website states:

"Asset-based community development focuses on the assets of a community and building upon them. When fused together through Christian Community Development, they can have extremely positive results.Every community has assets, but often these are neglected. When a ministry utilizes Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), it names all of the assets in the community that helps the community see its many positive characteristics. It is through these assets that people develop their community."

I thought listening to community seemed great in theory. We Americans, however, believe in relying on experts to lead us in the most rational and efficient direction towards our goals. These experts—our doctors, teachers, ministers, therapists and government officials—tell us how to improve our lives and our communities. So, I thought that listening to community sounded great, but it’s not best practice. In other words, we need some experts to help us out, I would have argued back then.

After working and teaching at Seattle Pacific for almost two years,I have grown a lot in this area. While I bring a degree of subject matter knowledge to bear on my work, I’ve learned to listen to my colleagues and students.This might seem counter-intuitive when thinking about community development involving poor communities. In my mind, wherever we work or live, as Christians, we are all involved in reconciliation. Paul writes:

"All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation...We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God." 2 Corinthians 5:18-20 (New International Version)

Being reconciled to God involves human reconciliation. I'm learning that the reconciliation the leads to developing communities involves listening to and honoring the thoughts of others above my own While my colleagues at other universities find no repugnance in trying to insinuate themselves, and their ideologies, into institutional policy and their students' belief systems, I’m more interested in dialoguing around the material that I teach or institutional issues.

Dialogue requires a generous conception of the other that leads to generous listening. On the one hand, trying to change others is hard work. In fact, I’ve been trying to lose 10 pounds for a year, only to gain 10 more pounds. In other words, changing oneself is difficult enough. Letting go and listening to others allows me to understand their goals and to try to support them, where I can.

Generous listening requires trying to understand what the other is attempting to communicate. It requires forgetting about inserting one’s opinion when our conversation partner takes a breath, but honoring their words and thoughts by allowing them to speak without imposing our own thoughts on their communication.

On the other hand, developing a generous conception of the other is critical to reconciliation.This requires recognizing the sacredness and dignity of others based on their being made in the image and likeness of God. This attitude should lead to our treating the other with dignity while acknowledging the integrity of their thoughts, beliefs, and perspective.

When reading Kat Charron’s book, Freedom’s Teacher, I was surprised to hear the same concept emerge in her biography on the grassroots educator and activist Septima Clark. As an educator Clark learned to listen to parents and meet her adult and school-aged students where they were. As a young brash teacher and community organizer, she experienced negative consequences for her presumption and then began to take this more wholistic approach more seriously. She also learned to listen to her white political mentors, the Warings, discovering that listening led to gaining their ear, and the ear of others.

Clark began to appreciate this concept, around 1918, at the beginning of her teaching career. Clark learned this skill among the poor black farmers who spoke Gullah on St. John’s Island outside of Charleston, South Carolina. Eventually, she became a leader at the Highland Folk School. Afterward she would return to St. Johns, for intermittent periods, to teach in the black community and help residents with their economic, social, and political goals. This work would continue until the grandmother of the Civil Rights Movement passed in 1987.

Charron’s narrative helped me to appreciate how empowering education has always been mutually constitutive. It educates and empowers both student and teachers. Its power comes from the teacher's recognition that the all students is bring a mind, ideas, and a wealth of knowledge to the table. This awareness leads the educator to pay attention.

When it came time for Clark to choose a collaborator on a return trip to St. John, listening was the most important skill that she looked for. Consequently, she chose Bernice Robinson, a former beautician. Clark explained, “We felt that she had the most important quality; the ability to listen to people.” Robinson had learned to do so in her beauty shops in New York City and Charleston. We might find this an odd choice, but Clark's and Robinson’s ability to listen to community allowed them to train and influence thousands upon thousands of activists and educators. Many were practitioners themselves such as Rosa Parks and the great Fannie Lou Hammer .

"Where I'm From": recognizing one's social location as preparation for reconciliation

This past summer, Dean of SPU’s School of Education Rick Eigenbrood(on the right with my girls and busy bee) offered me the opportunity to teach a diversity course to students entering the Teacher Education Program at SPU. So beyond editing the newsletter and hanging out and conspiring with art studio director Katie Kresser at the Seattle Art Museum, last fall,I’ve been spending time stretching and being stretched by our students. It's been transformative for me as an educator. Part of helping students to understand the perspectives of others requires helping them to understand their own social location. In order to do so, we have included a literary exercise in the course that involves writing a poem titled: "Where I’m From.” The first time 'round in class, our students provided some of the most transparent writing that I've heard in a while. What follows below are poems from three brave and brilliant students who were willing to share their thoughts.
Please scroll down to read our students' poems. I'm sure that you will be moved.

Anna Coulson

Life Hasn’t Always Been so Easy

I am from the Sun Shine State,
lived there a long time
Grew up on many streets;
Thought that was fine.

From rich to poor my roots are defined broad,
that’s OK cause’ in the center there was always God.

My parents are Stanford grads, they wanted a better life for me,
So instead of sending me to school, they taught me how to read!

Being home-schooled was such a great way to learn,
Taught by my parents, respect was earned.

I have been blessed to have the parents I have had,
because if they hadn’t adopted me, life could’ve been pretty sad.

I have brothers from different backgrounds, I never saw the difference,
Because my parents taught us - it wasn’t about appearance!

From the streets in California to the green Irish land,
I love the variety of where I come from- but prefer the beach and sand!

I am from the moments that show up in family pictures,
Bright eyes and happy smiles are remembered through the years.

Life hasn’t always been so easy,
I struggled with abandonment,
Because I had those birth parents
who did not want to commit.

God has taught me to forgive, move on, and be grateful
Because some kids don’t ever get the blessing I have had, ever at all.

Trace the history and you’ll land in Ireland and England,
Although that’s “where I ‘m from,” I have never been.

Jenny Braun

A Yearning for Difference

Growing up had blessings and disappointments.
From Buckley to Bonney Lake back to Bonney Lake, WA.
That’s where I lived with
a family who cared and always loved deep.
Minus the fact that sister smoked crack,
and my brother, just a pothead who was mean.
Parents always there with insurmountable support.
There is nothing you can’t do, seek the Lord and go, be you.

All white, though sister looked Mexican.
Never knew why, that’s just how it is.
Longed for difference, always attracted to people different.
Then nephews were born.
Beautiful with skin so smooth,
Could hold him for hours mesmerized by those deep brown eyes
Touching that curly brown hair.
Looking at that creamy brown skin.
World was changed when another one came
They looked just the same except for the name.
My heart yearned for more difference

Always grew up in a white society
Where money was always there and education was in front of me.
School was easy, never got pushed.
Until Mr. Waz you are too smart not to go and be “gifted”.
Taking his advice, going for the challenge,
Hated the place and the people were vicious.
What are you too smart or something? We don’t wanna play with you!
Confidence all gone, just wanted to be social.
Went back to the place where I could be me with people who weren’t mean.

Missing the innocence of life.
Playing with neighbors, riding on quads, up and down on the teeter totter
Playing paintball with brother
Making memories in Sunday school, trusting in God
Only care in life was getting up for school
And occasionally getting the owie that mama nurse had to fix.
Blessed with athleticism so played every sport,
Always got made fun of cause I was always too short.
That’s how God made me and now I see, his glorious workings in simple old me.

To see the importance of where you are
Don’t forget to look back from where you were from.
Past is the key to understanding the story of the person in the present.

Chester Pineda

Born by the Wedding Band

A switch or belt
Football pads and soccer cleats
The lingering sting of defeat
I’ll always remember how it felt

Vicks cured all that ills
Blistering fever or freezing chills
(I’ll always remember my grandmother saying, “you’re not sick till you’re dead or dying")

Family comes first
Just after God

From Spain to Mexico
Pineda grew
Viermas (that’s Friday) from the Philippines flew

A rosary hung from my great grandmother’s hand
To Saint Rita she prayed and prayed
For the great grandchild, born by the wedding band

It is my job to prove
To the Saint of lost causes
I’m no lost cause
But how, how do I choose?

Shake it off you’re not hurt
Nothing is bleeding, broken or burnt

According to Chester Pineda, writing this poem required a little trip down memory lane for me. I recalled some of my most prominent childhood memories, soccer, football, and martial arts. But what I remember most is always what my mother told me, "Unless something is broken, or you're bleeding; you're not hurt." He can still hear these words ringing in his ears today.

Got Plums?

During the spring, our two girls wanted to run a lemonade stand in the community. Risako and I weren’t sure about it. Then in August, a neighbor shared how her 12-year-old son bought a laptop and iPod with money earned at his lemonade stand on Queen Anne. A few days later, Risako, my partner, asked me to clean up the fallen plums from our yard. As she watched me work, she came up with a brilliant idea. The girls would sell the Italian plums from our tree, before they fell off the tree and rotted on the ground. I suggested adding water and doggie treats to the menu as well. People in Seattle just love their dogs.

Well, the first weekend the kids made $135 dollars. They definitely had a grace on their business; Risako reported making $60 dollars within the first two hours, while standing near a public restroom at Green Lake. The following week was quite different. They first day, after their return, it took six hours to make $4 dollars. The team returned home demoralized. Poor sales had taken the wind out of their “sales.”

The following evening, the nonprofit that I volunteer with invited us to join them for Childhaven night at a Mariner’s game in Safeco field. During the game, a vendor came by with cotton candy, announcing that it would cost $5 per child; they coolly waved him away. I was impressed. Instead, our three entrepreneurs decided to share nachos. While remaining silent at the start of this adventure, their budding awareness of finances moved me toward seeing things Risako’s way. But why had I been so ambivalent about the whole enterprise anyway?

After reflecting on the matter, my thoughts went back to returning with my mother to San Diego from Los Angeles to live near my grandmother, and my “grandma” having me help her clean offices — her second job. Worn out from the work, I had spent many a day sleeping during class in elementary school. Later on, when I was in junior high, my mom sent me to shine shoes with my grandfather. I continued to work and run small family businesses through high school and the first year of university. I learned a lot of valuable lessons about life and work during that era in our lives.

At the same time, I thought, every American is captured by the idea of social mobility, and every parent wants better for their children. But what does better mean? A great education at a good school, ballet and music lessons, I thought. What about the good that comes from real time encounters with the world? For example, shining shoes gave me the opportunity to engage all kinds of people. I wanted them to have a good education and the ability to understand the experience of poverty without being poor.

Risako put me to work despite my doubts. The following Friday night, I found myself out there on the trail at Green Lake. I also found myself quietly rationalizing the whole thing. Wasn’t it right for dad to support and protect his kids? I could teach them how to interact with their customers, I thought. As the day began to fade away, my doubts dissipated giving way to calm as peace began to prevail.
It sort of felt like I was back at the shoe-shine stand on Broadway in downtown San Diego, or at our ice cream shop, Papa Sweet’s. I found myself striking up conversations with the local folks. Even visitors who weren’t buying anything at all wanted to talk.

For a moment, I had the sense that I was being placed back in the marketplace for some unknown reason. When I first moved to the Emerald City, 20 years ago, I sold T-shirts on the corner of 23rd and Union, as well as in Seward Park and on Capitol Hill. I spent a lot of time talking to Seattleites and transplants from other cities. Looking back, some of my most enduring relationships are people that I hung out with back then: Maria Kang, Inye Wokoma, Caroline Scott, Efrom Howard, and tons of folks from the music scene.

Yet and still, this time around, it was indeed a humbling experience. Back then, I was a new to Seattle, and had blown into town wearing red, gold and green. My revolutionary "look" was accentuated by natty dreadlocks and a beard. At the time, I lived in a share house of other social outcasts in Wallingford.

This time around, I had returned to teach at an excellent Christian university, after spending almost seven years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while earning two degrees at Harvard. In other words, something else was going on. It wasn't merely child's play at business that led me to submit to Risako's request. Now, I was straddling the tension between privilege and disadvantage.

My time in New England involved rubbing shoulders with the intellectual, social, and financial elite. However, in reality, I hadn’t moved far up the socioeconomic ladder. While standing at Green Lake, I was forced to admit to myself we could use a hand to pay for the kids' extracurricular activities and the technology they craved. But it was also an adventure, often it felt like a parable come to life.

On the one hand, I will never forget when a major televangelist walked past us. I yelled out, “Hey kids, look that’s the preacher mom likes on television.” He and his wife looked up for a minute and walked to the edge of the sidewalk and passed us by, twice. Like others, he had mistaken us for panhandlers.

On the other hand, unexpected people stopped to bless us; people with obvious ideological differences from the evangelical views that give shape to our lives. They offered their own fruit and friendship. One day, a homeless man gave our children money from his cup. They hesitatingly accepted it hoping that it would lift his spirits. In the end, we found ourselves in the car driving home asking, “Who had acted as our neighbor?”

At the end of our journey, during the month of August, I had a great deal of peace and some joy to go with it. On sales days, we would develop a gathering of folks who weren't even thinking about ending our conversations. These folks included lawyers, professors, teachers, graduate students, business people and a financial planner. One night, as a gift to themselves, the girls decided to go to the local Korean beauty shop for a cheap haircut on their dime. Another night, they wanted to purchase sushi. We were bonding as a family in unexpected ways.

A number of interesting interactions followed our business encounters.

One night I checked my email to find a message from our church. We had met a local scientist who had written to say that he wanted to get to know me better. He thought that we could run at Green Lake or I might attend a bible study. Wow! I had two other powerful moments that involved people on the streets of Seattle.

My girls began to ask us to help others, the poor, the homeless. One Saturday, they wanted Maestro, a dreadlocked shoe-shine man downtown, to polish their soccer cleats. I’ve known Maestro since my early days as a wannabe Rastafarian when I first arrived in Seattle, back in ‘88. His street pose had always signaled a cool indifference. While cleaning the girls' shoes, Maestro told them about how doing honest work allowed him to awake in the morning to a person who he had no problems facing: himself. After they paid him for their shoe shines and his wisdom, Maestro looked me square in the eyes and quietly said, “I love you man.”

It would be impossible for me to convey to you, my dear reader, what these words of reconciliation meant to me. I had sought some kind of a connection with this man for decades, but he had remained aloof despite all my gestures. Twenty one years later, providence had intervened unexpectedly as we aimlessly walked down the street. My children’s concern and tolerance had melted his facade. Reconciliation didn’t stop there.

The following week, I was exiting a grocery store where a woman, though I'm not sure, was selling the homeless newspaper. She seemed a little scattered and disorganized. Without my eyeglasses, I stared trying to discern whether or not she was sober. Walking over to the corner, I gave her a dollar, she looked at me and said, “Thanks for seeing me and coming over to help me.”

In that moment, I realized the treasure of our experience, as a family. To begin with, somehow it felt as though we had become more of a family. More importantly, our light and momentary struggles had opened our eyes to the pain of others, their humanity; their poverty became more real to us. If I had returned to Seattle to a cushy job and lots of money, I might have become smug and raised children who would overlook the poor. This possibility had quietly been a constant fear. At this point, however, I’m certain that my girls will continue to see those who are in need. My hope is that they will continue to have an amazing capacity for empathy.

Watch This! The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism

I began reading Jonathan Walton's new book, Watch This!, on the night before last. His prose is amazing--both academic and readable. It's a must read, I want to share a bit of it, and will write more later. The introduction concluded with an application of Roland Barthe to the author's subject matter.

Before doing so, I will share why I found this passage interesting. Walton's thesis struck me because I have been thinking about a recent conversation with someone with a lot of influence about new visions for our society. My conversation partner deployed an argument that implied our current society, with all its beauty and blemishes, is simply the natural product of time and human activity.

Moreover, they seemed unable to imagine further evolution. In my mind, this kind of thinking creates the context for an unconscious apathy that leads to half-hearted approaches to adressing social (in)justice. Anyway,after reading the following excerpt in Watch This!, I went to slept with a new insight into how we tend to believe that culture is static. Walton writes:

… Roland Barthes has argued that when cultural myths become naturalized over time and become that which is taken for granted, they serve a legitimating role. Whatever systems of relations are in place are deemed natural and legitimate—what has always been will always be. Appeals to cultural myths of American success, black victomology, and the Strong Black Man legitimize conservative and anecdotal based views of wealth distributions, racial discrimination, and gender hierarchy that contradict the liberating intent of televangelists. They (cultural myths) may also serve to anesthetize participants [in institutions advocating social change] to the unjust ordering of the larger society even as persons seek to revolutionize their own world. So while the ritual of self-affirmation may inspire hope and optimism about achieving the ends of individual liberation, the competing ritual of social accommodation can frustrate the televangelist's professed aims by encouraging viewers to appeal, adjust, and adapt to ideological conceptions of an unjust society. (Walton, 2009).