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Wednesday, 04 November 2009 10:56 |
Doesn't everybody want to be like us?
No.
In fact "us" as White Anglo Saxon Protestants (wasp) becomes a smaller part of the pool every year. Most of the people who live in Grand Prairie are not like the people this church has had in its make up over the 129 years of our history. Truth is there are one third the number of people in our zip code that look like us traditionally as there were 30 years ago. Our neighborhoods have changed and the people living here have different traditions than we have. I remember sitting next to a man who was flying home to Atlanta from Dallas to attend the New Years Eve service at his church. He was black and it is his tradition to be in church for the coming of the new year. Every niche of our community has its own set of traditions, and most of them are not like ours. Christmas Mass is the tradition of Catholics, Las Posadas is the Hispanic tradition of going from house to house telling the Christmas story. We have been collecting European traditions over the years and think they all just came to be, but they are a mixture of English, German, Dutch, Scandinavian, French, Italian, and even Russian. They have become so much a part of who we are and what we do that we sometimes think they are really just Texan. But Texan is becoming so much more diverse. We have so many other cultures to assimilate.
Do we want to be like everybody else?
Probably not, unless we want others to be a part of our church. If we expect Hispanic folks to join our church, we need to take on Hispanic traditions while blending them into our own traditions. It is not that we would do away with what we have, but rather we would incorporate new (for us) traditions into our year.
I am looking forward to this cultural melting pot. I enjoy seeing the way others have built their beliefs into traditions. It is going to be fun finding new ways to celebrate our faith. And to think that we would be the ones to make a place for others to feel comfortable here is exciting.
I have noticed that places that want Americans to visit go out of their way to make sure Americans are at ease. The staff speaks English, if they want an American to spend dollars. I found English speaking staff in Moscow book stores , Mexican shops, French bakeries, and even signs on highways in English. What are the signs we put out that say, "You are welcome. You may not look like us, speak like us, or even think like us, but you are welcome, and we will try to understand you first, in order for us to love you into becoming followers of Jesus Christ."
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