as a minister and someone who believes strongly in the power of love, i pay attention when i don’t love. that could be outright hate; it could just be a whole lot of judgment. or it could be just that i feel distant and separate from a group or subgroup of society. i don’t understand them. when i notice that i have mistrust, judgment or separation from a person or group of people, i generally get around to asking for it to be lifted from me.
almost invariably, the way that particular prayer gets answered is by sending me real people to know. for the first several decades of my life, my close circle of friends was lily white. i “loved” and considered myself an ally of african american people as a group but as i didn’t really know any african american people in a close way it was difficult to consider that love real. i asked for that condition to be lifted and all of sudden i was in two years of practitioner training with 5 other people: two black, two white students and the teacher black for the first year. that started me on having lifelong african american friends. ministerial school, ministry, and other communities continued that gift.
the same happened with trans people. while i had no problem in theory with people’s gender or sex transitions, i didn’t know (or know that i knew) a single trans person. i had questions. i had concerns. i had a sense of separation. a sense of “us” and “them.” again, i prayed for this to be lifted and people appeared in my life who were already living their lives as fully transitioned male to female and female to male. i had the opportunity to get to know two people who were just starting in that transition, both from female to male. over time i witnessed four of the seven kids who grew up in a close pod with our children (who are now in their late 20s) reveal that they did not align with their original gender assignment. three of them identify now as “non binary” and use the pronouns “they/them” and one who was assigned a female sex at birth lives as male now. i also witnessed two friends my age move publicly from female to nonbinary identification. all of this gave me real love of real people. not theoretical love.
the past few years i have been praying to end my separation from republicans. in almost all settings, the range of political beliefs of my friends, (west coast) family, neighbors, coworkers and acquaintances is vast. it runs from bernie sanders supporters to elizabeth warren supporters and everything in between. and while you would be right that i’m being ironic; we actually think those differences are real.
of course those are nothing compared to the differences between my beliefs and today’s republicans. i believe that the best role of government is to provide a stable continuous safety net for everyone: comprehensive cradle to grave health care, affordable housing, fully funded free k-college education and more. republicans traditionally believe in a much more limited role for government. and vast swaths of them believe, based on lies that have been fed them, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
for the past year, i have worked the california state assembly (one house of the legislature) in which democrats hold 62 out of 80 seats (77% of the house). in the state senate democrats hold 32 out of 40 seats (80% of the house). like the u.s. house of representatives and unlike the u.s. senate, you only need a majority vote to advance almost all legislation. so all of the leadership and power lies with the democrats. republicans exist but they are a non factor. if an interest wants to stop a public interest bill, they turn to democrats, not republicans.
but recently, actual republicans have parachuted into my life in two contexts, day job and spiritual work. i have learned this lesson before, but i’ll share with you that despite the fierce dividing line in the culture, it turns out it is actually very difficult to tell republicans from real humans. like most humans, they have two legs, two arms, a head and a torso. like most humans they have experienced joy, happiness, pain and sadness. and in my case, it is particularly easy to relate since most of them look like me. in the spectrum of humans, they are more likely to have paler pinky yellow skin like mine and they might even have blue eyes and dark blonde/light brown hair like i do.
it also turns out that some of them are funny, inspiring and likeable. in a recent multiple day work training with colleagues from “both sides of the aisle” i found myself laughing, planning and conspiring with people who turned out to be republicans. it turns out to be very useful that i don’t remember names well, so when they were introducing themselves and which newly elected “member” of the legislature they serve, i had no idea if that assemblymember was a dem or a rep. (eventually in this job you get to be somewhat familiar with all the “members”–as we call them, like it’s a club–but a whole slew of new members just got elected so i have no idea who is whom at this point)
i’m also realizing that it may actually be easier for me to feel kinship with people who have very different beliefs from me than it is with those who have only slightly different beliefs. in other words, the more i assume you are like me, the more i judge you for not believing what i do. (this phenomenon must have been studied. back in the 90s–yikes–when i worked in coalition for medicare for all/single payer health care in washington the folks i judged and sometimes despised were the people who said they were for single payer (aka medicare for all) that i perceived to be working to “sell us out” to the clinton administration rather than the health insurance industry that should have been our mortal enemy.)
anyway, the point is, i’m excited about my new “exotic” friends and the relief it brings from holding a whole group of people as “enemies.” love to hear your examples of getting to know people who are different from you.