A Dream Worth NOT Fighting For
Peaceful Politics Please #5 of 11
Three weeks after arriving as an expat in England, I was called by local church leaders to serve as the Relief Society President in one of the highest welfare-needs areas of greater London. This gave me the responsibility to organize and motivate over 200 women from over 20 different countries to care for and minister to one another and their families both materially and spiritually.
As an absolute newcomer, I had no experience with the women or their various languages and cultures. I didn’t even know how to finagle the tangled bus and tube system inside the many jurisdictions involved, or how to make my way around a U.K.-style grocery store — both of which were daily necessities in my new job. Soooo, first on my to-do list then was to get the lay of the land (literally and figuratively) from the outgoing President. After her lesson on train maps and schedules, I asked what she thought my greatest challenge with the sisters would be. Her answer? “UNITY”.
Oh really? Oh yes.
The Filipinos stayed tight with the Filipinos, the Africans stayed tight with the Africans, the Brits with the Brits, the Aussies, the Eastern Europeans with the Eastern Europeans, the Indis with the Indis, etc etc etc.. Every other woman serving in official positions in that R.S. all, without prompting, said the same thing.
The biggest obstacle to material and spiritual progress for that Relief Society was a lack of UNITY.
I was totally overwhelmed. I had no idea how to overcome disunity among people I myself knew so little of. A sense of utter inadequacy flooded and never left me, offset only — day after day, week after week, month after month — by a miraculous kind of LOVE: love that woke me every morning, put me to sleep every night, and pushed my American rear-end out of its comfort zone all the hours in between. It kept me searching and praying for answers. And I finally got them… somewhere in the cavern of overwhelm — where spiritual ideals and human realities seem a bridge too far — I, at last, came closer to understanding and living at least two of the great principles involved in UNITY:
- RESPECT (even admiration) for differences, melded with
- RECOGNITION for common values, dreams, and goals.
I learned the hard way that to experience both, simultaneously, takes a lot of maturity: emotional and spiritual INTELLIGENCE and MATURITY. Think about it. Willingness, Desire, Openness, Humility do not come easily. Admitting that you may not be 100% right (and in fact, if you think you are, you’re wrong) is tough. Stepping down from your comfortable throne to let another sit there for a while, goes against the grain. And locking arms with people-you-currently-cannot-fathom is a profile in courage.
But it can be done.
I eventually saw and felt it in one of the most diverse and divided corners of London. It took months to make headway, and I’m sure, 10 years later, is still requiring a head full of steam. Peace and unity (in a family, in a church, in a country) is always a work in progress. I believe it’s “in progress” right now, right here, in one of the most diverse and divided corners of the globe — the one referred to by my sisters in London (with awe and admiration) as the UNITED States of America. For as strained and frayed at the seams as we feel right now, I believe there’s enough of us, a majority even, who ARE mature enough, or who WANT to be mature enough — to keep this great, pluralistic society going and growing. We just have to
- RESPECT, even appreciate, our differences (instead of demonizing them), and
- RECOGNIZE our common values, dreams, and goals (which are far more than we think).