Monthly Archives: July 2014

Show Us Your Beads!!!

DSC_0224“It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.” —Maya Angelou

Hello friend,

Wanna make some jewelry with me? Okay, this is what we are going to do. Each of us will make a necklace out of colorful beads and a piece of string. I will give you the string and six Dixie cups full of different beads: white, black, yellow, red, brown, and blue. Next, I will name someone in your life, and you will put a bead onto your necklace corresponding to the race/ethnicity of that person:

  • White Beads = Caucasian/White
  • Black Beads = African American/African/Black Caribbean
  • Yellow Beads = Asian American/Asian/Middle Eastern/Pacific Islander
  • Red Beads = Native American/Indigenous People
  • Brown Beads = Latin American
  • Blue Beads = Multiracial

Make sense? Okay, let’s make a necklace!

Mother, Father, or Caregiver—With my Mom a true Scandinavian and my Dad a mix of German and Irish, I come from one pasty bunch! Two white beads for me.

Three closest friends now—Here I get to add some color to my necklace. My three closest are one guy who is as white as me, one Filipino, and one African-American. Add a white, black, and yellow bead to my string.

Significant other (current or immediate past)—My wonderful wife is African-American, so another black bead for me (I imagine two beautiful blue beads for my kids, too).

Boss/supervisor—Another white bead.

Favorite author—So many to choose from—I LOVE books—but I will go with Henry David Thoreau. White again!

Favorite celebrity/athlete/person in the news—I am wildly unhip when it comes to celebrities, but I definitely follow sports. For the last few months, I have been glued to all things LeBron James. I’ll take another black bead, please.

Musical artist you listen to most on your MP3 player—I have been pretty full of Joshua Radin lately. White bead.

Two TV characters you identify with/want to be friends with—I probably don’t deserve any beads for this category, as I hardly ever watch television shows (I watch sports occasionally). However, the one show I try to keep up on—Parenthood—has mostly White people in the cast. I will take one white bead only (but you should take two if you watch more than I do).

Your doctor—That reminds me, I need to find a doctor! I should probably be embarrassed to admit that I do not have one, but it is the truth. If I want a bead in this category, the best I can do is claim my children’s pediatrician. What the heck! Give me another yellow bead.

Your dentist—While I am pretty much a free agent in this category, the last work I had done gets me another white bead.

Your spiritual leader (i.e. rabbi, minister, etc.)—I do not get a bead in this category, but you probably do.

The person you most admire—I am going to look at this in two ways: all-time historical heroes and people currently alive and in your life. Tough one! My all-timer is Gandhi, and my contemporary is my wife. There is much to admire in each; I am so glad I chose to study one and marry the other. Yellow bead, black bead.

Your three closest co-workers—I am in the palest office you have ever seen! White, white, and more white.

The last person you invited to your home—I have a huge, multi-racial birthday party at my house this weekend—can I get a blue bead boulder for that?—but the last one I had over is my Filipino friend, who brought his White wife and multiracial kids. There are options there, but I think a blue bead is most accurate.

Majority of the people who live in your neighborhood—I live in Minnesota and in the suburbs. Definitely white!

That’s it. We did it! Let us clasp our necklaces and see how they look. The first thing I notice about mine is the absence of brown and red beads. That is fair, though, as I have very few Native American and Latin American people in my life. I also find it interesting that, despite the fact that I have created a multiracial family, I have only one blue bead on my necklace. (This makes me wonder about the accuracy of the exercise in terms of measuring the range of diversity in my little world.) Of the other 19 beads on my string, twelve of them are white, four are black, and three are yellow. That feels like a lot of white, but is it?

While doing this exercise, I felt this odd pressure to produce a perfectly even spectrum of colors. I suppose I hoped it would show that my life is a shining example of diversity and inclusion. When the white beads started piling up, I admit to some gnawing feelings of guilt and shame. Then I started to wonder if I was subconsciously “cheating” to get more non-white beads, having conversations in my head like, “Sure, you have been obsessed with LeBron for the last three months, but over the long haul you are more of a Roger Federer (white) fan.” I had to keep reminding myself that the purpose of this exercise is to gain an AWARENESS of the diversity of my personal social network, not to make a judgment about it. Even so, I occasionally got defensive anyway, and thought things like, “Yeah, but this isn’t accounting for the diverse sexualities and religions of my social group. And what about age and economic class? “ I was reaching. I guess that I have always felt so grateful and enriched every time that I have been exposed to difference of any sort—whether it was traveling internationally or simply befriending someone at a local event and learning all about their life—that I had a hard time keeping myself from thinking, “The more colors, the better!” In the end, my necklace speaks for itself. It is my current reality, so I won’t run from it. I am ready to bare it.

How about you? How does your necklace look? Get out your journal and explore your social network. Does the look of your necklace surprise you at all? What stands out about it? Did you ever feel uncomfortable selecting a bead? Did you—like me—start to feel guilty after picking a lot of the same color, as though you had to justify the result? Although this exercise is to bring awareness to the diversity—or lack of diversity—in your life rather than to make any judgment about it, should we feel some shame if we have a relatively monochromatic necklace? I don’t believe so, but it should certainly make us think. Does your bead string motivate you to actively seek out situations of greater diversity to broaden your worldview and social network? Of all the people representing beads that I mentioned, which of your beads is going to be the next one to change color? Picture your necklace if you did this exercise ten years ago: in what ways is it different from today’s, if at all?   How do you expect it to be different twenty years from now? More colors or fewer? Would you be willing to wear your necklace to a social event and explain it to curious companions? Leave me a reply and let me know: Are you ready to show us your beads?

Celebrate you today,

William

My Big Gay Wedding

DSC_0237“Marriage should be between a spouse and a spouse, not a gender and a gender.” –Hendrik Hertzberg

Hello friend,

America has been abuzz on the issue of gay marriage recently. In the 2012 election, it seemed like a handful of states had the issue on the ballot, and there was a lot of doubt about its passage into law. In these last few months, however, it feels like a new state legalizes same-sex marriages every week. Politicians are—predictably—changing their stance by the day, suddenly enlightened by the swing in public opinion. The snowball is gathering speed and size. It seems almost a foregone conclusion that marriage equality will soon be a nationwide reality. And so, with a large population that has long been denied the right to marry now free to do so, we all get to experience something new: GAY WEDDINGS!

What a novelty, right? I love new experiences! So, when I heard that my wife and I had been invited to a wedding of two men that she knows, I was actually interested. You see, for me, going to a wedding is about the last thing I want to do on a Saturday (or any day). Weddings—like graduations, confirmations, funerals, etc.—are pure torture for me. I am not talking about just the formal part. No, the reception has no appeal to me, either. Basically, the entire affair is not a bit of me. It has, at its core, two of my least favorite things: ceremony and small talk. These two things always feel so superficial to me and thus a gigantic waste of time. The only two weddings I have ever had an interest in attending are my own and the one that I officiated. The next—and only—two I want to attend are hopefully in about 25 years, when my kids may decide to tie the knot. Otherwise, “No thanks” on the wedding invites. I’ll pass. Not interested!

But a gay wedding, you say? Hmmm…. That’s different. Maybe I could make an exception for that. I have to admit that the novelty factor was a definite draw for me. I went in thinking I may experience and learn something totally unique and that I had never thought of before. I thought that maybe either the wedding or some aspect or guest of the reception would make me say, “Wow! You won’t see THAT at a straight wedding!” But what should I have thought would be so unique and interesting about it? I think it spoke to the most shallow parts of me, parts that I am a little embarrassed to claim right now. I guess that, despite knowing better, I was subconsciously hoping to see something stereotypical happen: a flamboyant character or even some family drama around acceptance of someone’s homosexuality. Basically, I wanted my assigned seat at the reception to be right between Jack from “Will & Grace” and Big Gay Al from “South Park”, and right across from the narrow-minded grandparent.

So, what did happen at my Big Gay Wedding? It was the most run-of-the-mill, every-weekend-of-Summer wedding ever! It was no spectacle, no drama, no Jack or Big Gay Al to entertain me. I came away totally un-Wowed by it. It was ceremony. It was small talk. It was toasts that made me cry. It was two supportive, proud families. It was true love. It was, in the end, simply a wedding.

As I drove home that night, the feeling that stuck with me was something like relief. Yes, after all of my shallow, pre-wedding musings about the potential of being fascinated by the event or the presence of stereotypes, I found myself so glad that I hadn’t been. I was relieved that any objective viewer would have simply described the event as “two people getting married,” no more and no less. There was nothing “gay” about it, nothing to distinguish it from the straight wedding down the street. Happy, in-love, adult citizens were cementing their union before God and their loved ones in both churches. I was so relieved for Americans—gay and straight—by the fact that I could have been just as bored in one church as the other. It never struck me that I should get to cast a vote to determine the sanctity of one wedding over the other.They were just weddings.

What a great teaching experience it would have been for parents introducing difference and inclusion to their children. After all of the heteronormative Disney movies and everything else that kids absorb in our culture, what a cool thing it would have been for a kid—heck, for anyone—to witness this wedding of two men. The kid would have been so bored and unimpressed by it that it would have made same-sex marriage so normal and uninteresting and UNCONTROVERSIAL. I wish I would have brought my own kids. It would have been a few hours of torture, as any wedding is for a kid, but the lesson—or, rather, the non-lesson—would last a lifetime. It certainly will for me.

How about you? How do you feel about same-sex marriage? Open up your journal and write out your Truth. How many gay people are in your life, and how close are you to them? Has getting to know them better “normalized” homosexuality to you? If I ask you about the first image that comes into your mind when I say “gay man” or “lesbian,” is it a stereotype? I confessed to my shallow desire to be entertained by a stereotype at the wedding, but I also used the title “My Big Gay Wedding” to spark your interest in reading this post as well, hoping to touch on the same type of base instinct in you. Did it work? What does it say about us that we are so silently fascinated by homosexuality and the people who practice it? What is your stance on same-sex marriage? Should it be legalized nationwide? How would it affect your position if your best friend, sibling, or child came out to you and told you that they would like to marry their long-time partner? Does it seem a little smug of us to think we should get to vote on the legality of the marriages of other competent adults in our society? Which marginalized groups have you once held a negative stereotypical image of, only to have that image shattered when you got to know some members of that community? I always find it a relief to discover that people are just people, and that there is no one way to describe every member of a group. I like it when those walls come crashing down. How about you? Leave me a reply and let me know: How big is your view of Love? 

Shine your light a little brighter today,

William

The Fine Line Between Compromise & Cowardice

DSC_0144“Accepting all the good and bad about someone. It’s a great thing to aspire to. The hard part is actually doing it.” –Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye

Hello friend,

A couple of nights ago, my wife shared with me some wonderful news about one of her oldest, dearest friends. Then she followed it with, “She is just the sweetest person on Earth. It is too bad she is incredibly homophobic.” Huh??? My sensibilities had just been completely offended by such a statement, and my mind started spinning with questions and challenges. How could you call someone “sweet” in one breath and then point out her severe intolerance in the next? How can you claim to be so close with someone who embraces such bigotry and not even challenge her on it? Even more, how can you even be friends with that person? What does that say about you?

These questions were flooding my mind, and I had to take a step back from the situation to keep my blood from boiling. I am probably on the extreme end of the spectrum when it comes to how quickly I am offended by intolerance and bigotry. I am highly sensitive to racism, sexism, classism, and in this case, heterosexism. Thus, I had to fight myself to keep from pouncing on my wife’s statement about her friend’s seemingly contradictory personality traits of sweetness and homophobia.

You see, I hold my wife to a very high standard. She runs a multicultural center and is a highly conscientious and brilliant educator in the field of tolerance and diversity. She has been a shining example for me to follow in the many years we have been together, so the bar is set high regarding the people I expect to find in her inner circle. Thus, even as I was struck a bit sideways by the mere idea of a “sweet homophobe”, I was shaken even more by the fact that this walking contradiction was her dear friend. How could she fraternize with a bigot? Where were her high-minded ideals of tolerance and inclusion? Had they been compromised? Was my wife–this paragon of virtue–actually a spineless coward?

Before I let my idealistic image of my wife crumble in front of my eyes, I needed a reality check. I needed to understand just how glass my own house was before I started throwing stones at hers. I started combing through my mind and my history to dissect my closest relationships. I wanted to know if, and to what degree, I had compromised my own standards to make friends and to keep my loved ones dear to me. Maybe I was spineless, too?

I didn’t have to look far to find examples. My family is the greatest. Of course I love them all, but more than that, I genuinely like and respect each of my siblings and my parents. I very much look forward to every chance we have to get together; these are my favorite times of the year. BUT—there just had to be a “but”—there are definitely things that don’t get talked about for fear of upsetting the applecart. Several years ago at Christmas, I mentioned casually that I was no longer a Christian. BOOM!!!!! It was like a silent bomb went off. No one has spoken about the topic in my presence since. Then there is politics. I grew up in a house that worshiped Ronald Reagan and all things Republican. As far as I can tell, the rest of the gang (and their extended gangs) has remained pretty far—some very far—to the right. I, on the other hand, lean heavily the other way on pretty much everything. So, do we have a dialogue on the important issues of our time and the way our country is going? Heck no! We stay as far away from that as possible. Nobody wants to start a fight or to risk thinking less of someone that is going to be in his life for a long time. Avoiding the conversation keeps everyone from exposing themselves. Our silence keeps the peace. Denial runs deep.

My dearly departed father-in-law wanted nothing to do with his Black daughter dating—much less marrying—a White man. It wasn’t personal–it didn’t matter that I knew him before we even dated and never had a problem with him—the rule was for any White man. He openly denounced the relationship from the start, and carried it to the point of not attending his daughter’s wedding. He was always kind to me when I visited his house after our marriage, and my wife continued to dearly love and even admire him to the day he died. Still, it was tough to wrap my mind around, and despite his friendly actions, I never quite got myself to the point of real comfort around him because I could not untangle the web that could hold such extremes of belief and action. My wife, though hurt by his disapproval, remained as loyal and loving to him as ever.

It reminds me of the way we idolize people and want to see them one way, subconsciously blinding ourselves to the not-so-heroic stuff. We see Christopher Columbus as the brave explorer and discoverer of America, neglecting the land-raping, slave-taking parts. We see Thomas Jefferson as the author of our Constitution, top-tier President, and one of the most brilliant men in our country’s history, conveniently looking right past his history of holding (and having children with) slaves. We see Martin Luther King only as the great Civil Rights champion, ignoring his infidelities. We shield ourselves from the truth in order to make things fit more comfortably in our minds. Caricatures are easier to deal with than complexities. This goes as much for our heroes as for our loved ones.

Is it even possible to have it all one way, though: to see our loved ones as entirely commendable and agreeable, to sit comfortably with everything they do and stand for? As it turns out, human beings—all of us—are complicated creatures. We are not cartoon characters, so plainly hero or villain. No one is completely clean or completely dirty. Despite our greatest efforts to paint each other entirely black or white, it turns out that we are all a big, messy rainbow of grays. If we chose only to love the pure, we would all surely be lonely souls.

So, we do our best. We love those whom our hearts can’t help but love. We love our family members through some cosmic-genetic-magnetic force that pulls us together in that “no-matter-what” way that we can feel but can’t quite explain. We love our friends because we fell in love with their best qualities when we met and now cannot simply choose to fall out; they are residents of our hearts whether we like it or not.

For all of these residents of our heart, we find a way to make peace in our mind. It is a delicate balance of trying to see the good in them without being in total denial of the less savory elements. We become managers of our interactions, chemists desperately trying to avoid a combustible mix. We choose to steer clear of conversations that will explode in our faces, only dealing with certain issues if they are thrown hard at us to the point of inevitability, and even then only briefly and tactfully. We choose our battles.

There is no doubt that it requires a certain level of denial. There are just things we don’t like to think about when it comes to our loved ones. Even more than thinking about it, we definitely avoid actually confronting the offending companion. Be honest, do you really want to have a dialogue—either internally or with the problem person—about your father’s racist comments? Do you want to address your best friend’s homophobia? How about your sister-in-law’s belief that poor people are poor because they are lazy? No, as repulsive as all of these things make us feel inside, there is no doubt that our tendency is to deflect them as best we can, steering instead toward safe harbors of conversation in the service of keeping the peace.

But how much can you swallow—how much can you compromise your principals—before you reach the point where you feel entirely spineless? The answer, of course, is different for everyone. Much, I suppose, depends upon how much we feel like we “need” the relationship (frequency of visits certainly plays a role as well). If we are willing to let it go—obviously not as convenient with family as it is with friends—we may be more willing to take the risk. Sometimes we take the risk because the relationship cannot be let go of (e.g., if you and your sibling have fought and made up a million times before, you might think one more round for a good cause is worth the family drama).

Whatever the justification, it seems that we, more often than not, pretend that our loved ones’ unacceptable views do not exist. We sweep them under the rug. It is, whether conscious or not, a compromise of our beliefs in the service of keeping the relationship. But perhaps it is really much more than a mere compromise. Maybe that is putting a nice face on it. Perhaps it is more accurate to call it cowardice or spinelessness. After all, if you are not sharing your Truth or not addressing your loved one’s Truth for fear of disliking each other, aren’t you living like a coward? It takes a lot of courage to be who you are and accept others for who they are.

That was the one part, in hindsight, that my complicated father-in-law had down. He may have openly disapproved of my relationship with his daughter, but he didn’t shut her out or stop loving her because of it. They both spoke and lived their Truth—and agreed to disagree on how she should live her life—and kept right on loving and admiring each other despite their differences. They were able to meet each other right where they were and accept the other’s beautiful complexity rather than living in denial and pretending everything was wine and roses. Perhaps that is the courage we should all aspire to. Yes, I think I will start there.

What about you? How do you justify spending time with/accepting/loving someone who holds views so antithetical to who you are and what you stand for? Get out your journal and write about your relationship with your loved ones. Which ones can you share your Truth with and fear no drama? Which ones do you not even want to hear their Truth?  How willing are you to challenge someone on their actions or beliefs? Does it make a difference if that belief regards you (e.g. your race, sexuality, politics, etc.)? Are there people you avoid at family gatherings, knowing they will say or do something that will make it hard for you to hold your tongue and keep the peace? What issues are off-limits when you get together with family? Are those issues different when you gather with your friends? Which of your relationships could withstand a challenge like this? Which relationships would crumble? What does the answer to those two questions say about how you should value the relationships in each camp going forward? Maybe you would be doing both parties a favor with a challenge. Is there one relationship in particular in which, if you don’t challenge them soon, you will pass from the point of compromising for the sake of keeping the peace to the point of feeling like a spineless coward for not telling your Truth? Leave me a reply and let me know: Where do you draw the line between compromise and cowardice? 

Surround yourself with Love,

William

Remembering America

DSC_0181“Nostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison. Think about how often we compare our lives to a memory that nostalgia has so completely edited that it never really existed.” —Brene Brown

Hello friend,

I just returned from my 4th of July holiday weekend at the lake with my whole family: wife, kids, parents, siblings, nieces, and nephews. It was awesome! I am a huge lover of family gatherings, and when you add the lake and Summer to the deal, I am ecstatic. So, needless to say, I was feeling very happy and grateful all weekend. I was reminded of so many of the reasons I am glad to be me. Being surrounded by loved ones has a way of doing that.

But, even as I was enjoying each moment of the weekend, I couldn’t help but become a bit nostalgic for bygone days. Some of that nostalgia was the natural result of being on the lake where I spent the blissful, carefree Summers of my childhood. However, there was one event in particular that really sent me reeling back in time—back even before my time—and made me long for those bygone days of America in simpler times. What event could hold such an unexpected power over my heart and my memory? A boat parade, of course!

Like many lakes around the country, every year on the 4th of July, my family’s lake has a boat parade. Usually there is a theme—e.g. cartoons—and folks decorate their boats and passengers accordingly. This year, though, in an effort to get more boats involved, they invited anyone to join, and with any décor. So, at the very last moment, we decided to be a part of the parade. We grabbed a bunch of American flags and jumped on the pontoon. As we headed across the wavy waters on a dark, windy day—getting splashed in the face with each bump—I thought we would end up miserable and regretting our decision to participate. How wrong I turned out to be.

As we pulled our boat into the line that had already passed a quarter of the lake’s shoreline, I instantly took note of all the people who had come out to their decks and docks to watch and wave at us. It was people of all ages, often three generations at a single cabin. My nieces instantly got into it, shouting “U.S.A. Rocks!!!” at each gathered group as we slowly passed. My daughter soon jumped into the act, and my son relished the opportunity to blow the horn at everyone. Even as we fought the wind and waves, there was quite a celebratory spirit alive on the boat. The more people that waved and shouted at us from shore, the more fun it became. I was tickled at the joy that the children got in waving the American flag and greeting the onlookers with shouts and waves. I found myself openly joining them. It was a surprising treat.

That childish joy, however, was not the greatest gem that I discovered on that 4th of July boat parade. No, the real prize that was uncovered in that pontoon and on those docks was a sense of community and patriotism that I thought was long lost, a throwback to yesteryear. The longer the parade went—we were on a very big lake—the more amazed I became at the number of people who had come out to wave and to support both us and their country. It was almost every cabin! But it was not just the numbers that got me; it was the age range. It was little kids getting a great kick out of a parade, and it was their parents happy to share the experience with them. It was senior citizens. It was even teenagers!

It seemed clear to me that these folks had been coming out of these cabins to watch this parade for years and years, generation after generation, to pay a simple but heartfelt tribute to the good old U.S.A. and to the neighbors that had made the effort to make this holiday special. It felt like a real throwback to the time after the World Wars, when people actually were sincerely grateful that America existed and that they got to live here. There was a purity and innocence about it that moved me deeply.

The further we went along the parade route, the more beautiful the experience felt and the more grateful I became, both that we had chosen to participate and that I live in America. I really liked that there were these last vestiges of simpler times here in our increasingly impersonal, jaded, modern world. I so often find myself lamenting the fact that, even in my relatively safe neighborhood in suburbia, I don’t feel comfortable letting the kids out to play alone in the driveway or yard, and that it seems awkward to let them run over to see if the neighbor kids are home before I text the parents to see if it’s okay. I hate that I probably wouldn’t answer my doorbell if it rang right now. It seems that, in spite of all of our amazing technological advances in recent years, our sense of community has been lost. Likewise, it feels like it is open season on our country’s leaders and our nation’s actions around the world.

And yet, there I was in a boat parade on the 4th of July, and an entire community of people stepped out of their doors to wave to their neighbors and cheer on this magnificent place called America. I must say, it made my heart feel really, really good. It restored something inside of me that needed restoring. I remembered not only how great my country was, but also how great it still is.

How about you? How do you think America has changed in your lifetime? Get out your journal and take a trip back in time. How safe did you feel as a child? Did you know and trust your neighbors? How patriotic were you? How much respect did you have for the President and your government’s decisions regarding world affairs? Compare your answers to those questions with how you feel today in your neighborhood and in your country. How much has it changed? In what aspects of your life do you feel a genuine sense of community? How nostalgic are you? Do you look at the past through rose-colored glasses, or do you think you remember things quite accurately and impartially? Was our country better in your youth or now? How about your community? What other events—like the boat parade—feel as though they bridge the gap between today and yesteryear? Leave me a reply and let me know: How do you like to remember America?

Take the first step up your mountain today,

William