Figuring Out Ethnic Identity

FUI always brings up questions of ethnic identity. Always. Generally at FUI it is the first time many of the white students have thought about the importance and significance of ethnic identity in general and in relation to their faith and witness, and the minority students are challenged to press in to who they are and all the complications and joys that come along with that. Here in the inner city where the majority are minorities and the discrepancy between those with wealth and power and those without generally correlate along ethnic lines, it is bound to bring up tension. And at FUI not only are there a mix of ethnicities amongst the students, which brings up cultural differences and tensions, but issues of ethnicity come up in every single one of our urban ministry classes, because here in the inner city it just cannot be avoided. Pretty much every single day I have a conversation with a student that has to do with their wrestling with their own ethnic identity, or with the idea of ethnic identity in general.

And funny enough, last week Nancy Donat, a family friend who is a missionary with youth here in inner city Fresno asked me to come speak to her youth group last Friday about ethnic identity. It was quite a fun challenge to figure out how to convey such a complicated but important topic to a bunch of 12-18 year olds, the majority of whom were Latino, especially when I'm used to working with college students. But I think what I shared is a pretty good taste of the conundrum of ethnic identity and faith. Its a good conundrum. I'll share a synopsis of what I spoke on.
-How many of you have heard that your faith and your ethnicity can connect? That ethnicity matters to God?
-We know the ethnicity of every single person in the Bible! Obviously, God's not afraid to talk about it, so why should we?
-Think about Moses from the Bible. Born a Hebrew, but raised after age 8 in the dominant Egyptian culture. He comes to an ethnic crises and wants to hang out with his people. He sees how they are mistreated, gets carried away, and kills an Egyptian. Then he gets scared and runs off to a whole other culture- Midian.
-Then God confronts Moses in the burning bush that he needs to go back to his Hebrew people. Moses doesn't want to because he's afraid he'll be shunned and he'll fail. God tells him he needs to go anyways, and that He will be with Moses.
-God used a Hebrew man who knew his way around Egyptian culture to free God's people! Ethnicity is all over Moses' story, and God uses it in big ways.
-Acts 17:26-27: "From one man He made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from any one of us."
-God put you in your family, your neighborhood, your skin color, and your ethnicity on purpose, and for a reason. Why? So that we would reach for Him! Ethnic identity is a complicated and confusion thing, and that means we have to seek out the God who made ethnicity about it!
-Being a biracial person who grew up in the dominant culture, but pretty much forced by God to confront my ethnic identity, has meant that I need to keep seeking out God about it. There are times where I feel that I'm not white, but I'm not really black either, so I say "just forget them both, I'm going to go hang out with Latinos." But God has to call me back to the fact that He made me white, and I can't ignore that, and He made me black, and I can't ignore that, because then I would not be acting out of the beautiful biracial person He made me to be! I can't ignore or try to downplay God's workmanship. He made each ethnicity, and He called them all good.

For minority students, rarely does it need to be explained to them the importance of ethnic identity, since they live in a world where their ethnicity is made obvious to them and those around them. For white students, they are often shocked to learn that they have an ethnic identity, and struggle with why it is so important. My favorite is to talk to bi and multi-racial students, because I understand the tension and the confusion of figuring out not just one ethnicity, but 2 or more, and all the fun complications that come with that. Last weekend I hung out with Lani, a biracial white and Latina, who came up to me after our urban ministry class on ethnicity and said, "I'm confused about myself! Can we talk?" What we ended up talking about was a lot of what I had shared with the youth on Friday, but also that as biracial people, our ethnic identity journey tends to be a spiral, not a straight line. We go back and forth between being comfortable with who we are, to leaning more towards one ethnicity, then the other, to being confused, to being comfortable again. We kind of have a one up on other people because the confusion pushes us to God. I encouraged her to keep pressing in to the tension, because it is there that we find more of God and of life.

The Process of Process Group

Once a week myself and Claire, another student staff, lead a process group of 4 students to help them sort through all that God is doing in them at FUI. We couldn't have asked for 4 students more different from each other. There's Rachel, a generally quiet, fairly nerdy white student from Cal Poly who is majoring in computer science. And there's Christina, a calm and level headed artsy black student from Las Vegas, who generally doesn't like to talk to much in groups (she told me the only way she likes to process is through art, not talking). Then there's Colby, an Asian-American business student from Cal Poly who just became a Christian this year, and so is nervous about being the only guy, the only Asian, and a new Christian in our process group. And then there's Judith, the happy, fun loving Guatemalan who never stops talking.
Our first process group was an interesting one, as the students' differences were definitely felt, and Judith was doing a great job of waiting to speak, but since nobody else wanted to talk, that meant a lot of silence. But on Sunday we could see them beginning to get used to each other, probably helped by a weeks' worth of interesting stories from their sites. I have been blown away by their insight and ability to see Jesus at work in the city, and how perfect they are for the sites they are at- even if they might disagree. Judith talked about how crazy its been to see humanity and beauty behind the often harsh exteriors of the kids she works with, and

Christina and Colby at process group

Rachel talked about how fun its been to see that she actually likes working with kids- and they like her too! Christina talked about the challenges as well as the excitement of working with mostly Hmong refugees, and Colby talked about listening to the Holy Spirit to direct him to which homeless men he should talk to and hear their stories. It is so great to think that these students get to live in and experience being in the places that I'm pretty sure Jesus would have made a bee-line for- where there is the most hopelessness and poverty.

Unexpected Jesus

Every Tuesday and Thursday night we have urban ministry classes (which actually could count for seminary credit if we wanted it!) and we began with talking about what exactly the Kingdom of God is. Phil Skei, the director of the Fresno Institute for Urban Leadership (FIFUL) and his wife Rici helped us to see that the Kingdom of God is not just something that we experience when we reach heaven, but is something that we are to be a part of bringing to earth as it is in heaven. We learned that the Kingdom of God coming to earth means that Jesus brings Shalom, which we often think of as just peace, but in reality is so much deeper than that. It is the way things ought to be in us, between us, and for us. The Kingdom of God's Shalom is desperately needed in impoverished and inner city communities. We were challenged by Rici to take our "5 loaves and 2 fish" of the things that we individually are talented or inclined towards, and use them among those in need.
The second class was on urban revitalization, which I actually wasn't too excited about, because it seemed so dry and academic, especially compared to talking about the Kingdom of God. Craig Scharton, the director of urban revitalization for the city of Fresno who isn't a Christian came to speak. He spoke of factors and situations (such as the building of a freeway through the Lowell neighborhood) that have contributed to the neighborhoods decline that no one would know with out digging deeper behind the face value of poverty and decay in inner city Fresno. He spoke of how much he loved seeing new life come to broken down neighborhoods, and how he gets to be a part of that process. As he was speaking, I was hit by the idea that he was explaining exactly what Jesus does with people. He sees behind their harsh exterior to places of deep need, and he brings new life. I couldn't help but think about how similar Craig and my jobs were- that I get to be on the front lines and sometimes be a part of the process of seeing new life come to people. I left that class much more encouraged than I expected to be coming in.

Goals Reviewed

Another week in downtown Fresno, and it has been a full one! Weekly summaries are difficult, because I find it hard to know where to begin- if only I had time for daily ones! So I'll try to break it down in sections:
At my site: The past week has generally been only 2 kids while I'm at Fresno Street Saints in the mornings, and although I had a great time with those 2 kids and saw Jesus in them in the joy and fun they had, I struggled with feeling that a government funded enrichment program should probably have more kids involved, and the planned "structured recreation" didn't seem so structured. I'm pretty good at going with the flow of things, but because the site director was rarely around, and the other 2 volunteers were unclear on the protocol, I wanted more structure. On Friday we had staff training with all the interns and staff from the 3 Fresno Street Saints sites, and it was there that I was hoping to get some answers. I did not want to come in, however, thinking that I knew how an inner city youth program was supposed to be run, but I was hoping to at least find out what the goal of the program was and if there were any rules, and many of the interns had similar questions. At the training, the director, John, asked us what we thought these kids would be doing were they not spending the day at Fresno Street Saints. I hadn't thought of that. They would probably be bored and at home in their unstable environments, and would probably be getting into trouble. He also said that a lot of these kids haven't learned social skills, and the general response that they have learned in their environments is to fight back instead of talk. Fresno Street Saints wanted to provide another option. We did talk about having more structure and actually following the schedule, but I had an enlarged view of the program, and wasn't in so much need of structure. But getting the kids to stick around would be nice. Today we definitely improved in that area, and we had 5 kids instead of 2!

First Week in Fresno

           Today is the one week mark of my time here in lovely Fresno, CA! We started with 2 days of staff orientation led by our incredibly FUI director Todd Minturn and his wife Carrie. Todd and Carrie definitely know how to care for staff and lead us into a summer of guiding students through difficult issues. We had 3 hours of a retreat of silence, we've practiced centering prayer, and we've read books and discussed the topic of the True Self vs. the False Self (I read the book The Human Condition by Thomas Keating, it is short and amazing if you want to check it out! http://www.amazon.com/Human-Condition-Contemplation-Transformation-Lectures-Harvard/dp/0809138824). In short, I felt very prepared for the 27 students to arrive on Wednesday, and we began our week of orientation.
           Orientation was jammed full!  It included an  interactive game on the Fulton Mall where we stepped into the shoes of a newly arrived immigrant family, and a study of Nehemiah 1 and Luke 9:1-6. We did a driving tour of downtown Fresno where we learned the extensiveness of the poverty (such as the cycles of poverty and hopelessness people get stuck in in areas such as motel drive pictured here)

  as well as the redemptive aspects of people who have followed Jesus into the heart of the city. We played cross cultural simulation games to prepare ourselves for the challenges of crossing cultures, and I led a discussion of the "Approaching Differences Diagram" where students learned to assess their posture when entering in to cultural differences. We worked on Saturday to help expand the building of King Solomon Missionary Baptist Church, and we read and discussed the life changing book Theirs is the Kingdom by Robert Lupton. We've had a lot of fun too (including watching "Despicable Me" with the community in a park downtown) and have eaten some amazing food (pupusas and pho!). I have so much loved getting to know the students, who are from colleges around the states, but primarily California.
            And today we started working at our non-profit sites.  Myself and 6 other students are with an organization called Fresno Street Saints, which is an enrichment program for low-income kids. We're split up among 3 sites, but today at the site I worked at most of the kids went on a field trip to Cal State Fresno, so I was left with Tiani, Rain, and Jaheem. We had fun playing Monopoly (sort of) and Tiani and Rain did my hair, and I struggled to understand what 3 year old Tiani was saying to me :) Here in downtown Fresno you have to learn to just go with the flow, and be ok with unexpected turns of events. I am looking forward to more learning and steps outside my comfort zone, and to see what God does with the students here.

          Students at orientation prior to the driving tour.  FUI director Todd is on the right.        
    

A Strong Exhortation

I'm reading a book called "The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage" about the lives of Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, and Walker Percy who were Catholic justice workers. An excerpt Thomas Merton wrote about Harlem in the 1940's stood out to me strongly when I was reading today, especially as I go back to live in inner city Fresno this summer:

"...if Catholics were able to see Harlem, as they ought to see it, with the eyes of faith, they would not be able to stay away from such a place. Hundreds of priests and lay people would give up everything to go there and try to do something to relieve the tremendous misery, the poverty, sickness, degradation, and dereliction of a race that was being crushed and perverted, morally and physically, under the burden of a colossal economic injustice. Instead of seeing Christ suffering in His members, and instead of going to help Him, Who said: "Whatsoever you did to the least of these my brethren, you did it to me," we preferred our own comfort: we averted our eyes from such a spectacle, because it made us feel uneasy: the thought of so much dirt nauseated us- and we never stopped to think that we, perhaps, might be partly responsible for it."

A reading from a fourteenth-century anonymous work, The Cloud of Unknowing:
 “For I tell you this: one loving, blind desire for God alone is more valuable in itself, more pleasing to God and to the saints, more beneficial to your own growth, and more helpful to your friends, both living and dead, than anything else you could do.”