Index of Rev. Grey's Columns

I couldn't have been more excited as the World Series approached the ending and it looked like our Chicago White Sox were really headed for victory. And then, yes, they won! Score a big one for the south side! Well, I am a south side Chicagoan, not exactly born and bred, but after all, I did live here on the south side when I was between the ages of 7 and 11. Only four short years, but they loom large in my memory, and they were formative. I became a White Sox fan then. Okay, call me fickle. Between age 11 and returning so many years later to serve our congregation, I did have a thing for the Yankees, a fling with the Red Sox, and a brief interlude with the Phillies (that was unusual, I am most attached to the American League). But none of them felt like "who I am." The south side White Sox do.

Identity has its plusses and minuses. We start out attached by biology through the umbilical cord, and our genetic makeup. Some of us grow up in those biological families, others grow up in adoptive or foster or other hopefully family-like settings. But attachment, if we are lucky, comes early and with it a sense of belonging. We belong to a family and they to us, and then we belong to a street (mine, S. Euclid Ave), a neighborhood (Jeffery Manor), a school (mine was Warren School just off of Jeffery St. and I was a South Chicago Y girl.). You may have your own early senses of belonging. A religion, a culture, an ethnicity. Sometimes identities are blended, mixed, and sometimes even confused. When they are deep and strong, so that they feel like the core of us, we may take them for granted, and see the world through the lenses they taught us. One scholar who has specialized in conflict resolution said we feel most deeply, and bring our whole selves to the struggle, when the conflict touches on our identity. Maybe that is because an attack on identity feels like a threat to survival. It may be harder, then, to see something from outside those lenses of identity, from another point of view.

When the White Sox won a game and when they won the World Series, players and the managers were interviewed and, perhaps as they had been taught to do, they found a way to say a good thing about the opposing team, recognize not only their own success, but also acknowledge the other team in a positive way. In life conflicts, we hope we can learn to extend ourselves beyond ourselves and see the perspective of others early enough to shorten conflict and even, hopefully, resolve it. Some forms of education teach us to recognize a less limited identity and see the full humanness in others who are of a different identity, a different race, culture, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, religion. That is what Unitarian Universalist religious education, whether through worship, classes, or social interactions, teaches and even emphasizes.

Blessed by our local identities, we are, in addition, beyond our local identities, citizens of the world, human beings, beings of the cosmos. May our faith help us learn that more expansive, global identity. May that larger sense of self strengthen our compassion for victims of disaster or violence anywhere in the world, and for all who suffer, whether near or far. May our faith enjoin us to work ceaselessly, in whatever small or large ways, to bring greater peace and justice into life, this day and each day.

With love, in faith,

Nina