Mid-Week Missive: Acknowledge the Other Person's Experience and Perspective
The Mid-Week Missive is based on Community Rules: An Episcopal Manual by Ian Markham and Kathryn Glover, both administrators at Virginia Theological Seminary. I am working my way through this book, reading and writing through the lens of our Life Together as part of the Christ the King Episcopal Church family, as well as part of the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast.
Rule # 6: Acknowledge the Other Person’s Experience and Perspective. Markham and Glover’s reflection on this rule can be found in their book, which can be purchased here.
How does this rule apply to our Life Together at Christ the King? This rule implies that, even in in what oftentimes end up being relatively homogenous Episcopal communities, we will encounter the “Other Person,” and he/she/they will have a different experience and perspective from our own.
The first church I served was founded in 1816 and the second was founded in 1922. They were similar to one another in that they both served as the home parish for generations of families in particular neighborhoods - one out in horse country of Baltimore County and one on Ortega Island in Jacksonville. They are difficult to get to if you didn’t know where they are located, and they both have extremely strong “insider” bonds that run deep and old. It is easy to be one of the “other persons” at these parishes by virtue of not having grown up in the neighborhood and/or being a multi-generational member of the parish family. So the challenge for these two parishes was to find a way to authentically integrate “the other” into the parish family. The thick boundary between outsider and insider wasn’t intentional – it was an organic matter of history and location.
At Christ the King, our context is very different from my previous two parishes. Our “boundary” between insider and outsider is not nearly as thick as those others. I would be naïve to claim that such boundaries don’t exist at CtK, but they are much less ingrained and much more fluid. But what that means for us is not that “others” don’t exist at CtK, but rather, we are, in some ways, “other” to one another.
One example is that we have a healthy population of “snowbirds” who integrate into our parish family for the winter. I think that many of our snowbird brothers and sisters truly consider CtK to be their parish “home away from home” as opposed to simply a church they visit on vacation. But they are still “the other” in our midst. While I personally have enjoyed getting to know many our snowbird friends, I haven’t truly acknowledged their experience and perspective as well as I could have. They are a valuable resource for us – almost like a cadre of in-house “consultants” from afar - who could offer feedback on their experience at CtK while sharing with us helpful ideas from their home parishes. Our snowbird friends are “the other” from whom we can learn a lot, and I look forward to making a more concerted effort to do so in the future.
Another example of “the other” in our midst is our Parish Day School. Now don’t get me wrong - The Treehouse Episcopal Montessori School is wholly owned by Christ the King Episcopal Church, and is a mission of our parish. So in that sense, the Treehouse is not “the other.” We are different parts of the same body, each with our unique purposes and functions. Our “otherness” has been and continues to be a true gift. But, as we have experienced in the recent past, our “otherness” can pose profound challenges. I think one key to holding this “otherness” in a healthy, life-giving tension is to embrace Markham and Glover’s 6th Rule for Communities: Acknowledge the Other Person’s Experience and Perspective. Before we get bent out of shape by someone or something we see as “the other person,” let us first acknowledge their experience and perspective. My recent experience has been that the more I remember to do this, the more fruit it bears for me personally as well as for our church family.
Pax,
Richard+