A friend of mine is an Episcopal priest who grew up on land that has been her family's home for many generations. Her relatives trace their life on their property back to before the land was named as it now is, "Arizona" and "Mexico."
She treasures the values and wisdom she inherited from her nearly 100-year old mother as well as what she learned from her family and her neighbors.
Her grandparents' home was the center of the family compound in the village where she was raised, with aunts and uncles and cousins nearby. They all grew up speaking their grandparents' native language and learning the ancient traditions of their people.
She learned that in the beginning, everything was created at the same time and made of the same four elements: earth, air, fire and water. Every individual human also shares these four elements, as we too are the stuff of earth, made of minerals; we breathe the precious air; we have temperature and the fire of life; we are sustained and refreshed by water and cannot exist without it. And just as every human has all of the same elements as the rest of creation, so there is both male and female in each of us. These are some of the things she learned from her extended family.
Today as an Episcopal priest, she values these insights. She sees the four fundamental elements present in the life of the Christian Church. The fruits of the earth, bread and wine. The living Breath and Fire of the Holy Spirit. The generative waters of Baptism.
The heritage and values that she inherited from her people formed in her a key orientation. She and her people look first for sameness, not difference. They assume the presence of relationship with other people, places and things. They call earth's animal creatures brother and sister, and our celestial neighbors have similar family names. Every human being is a brother or sister.
It is in her nature to look for the interrelationship of all creation. To consider everything as holy. Everyone and everything is a part of the whole, and therefore everyone and everything belongs; everyone and everything is in relationship. Everyone and everything bears a quality of holiness. In her native tradition, the flow of life is all inclusive, circular and continuing in the cycles of day and night, seasons and years. All is Sacred.
She says this reverent and inclusive world view was breathed into her by her parents, her community and her ancestors.
But when she was sent off to school as a child, the school she attended had a very different way of thinking. There was good and there was bad. And it wasn't an ethical distinction. It was an ontological distinction, a difference of being. At home she had been taught the difference between good and bad behavior. But now at school, she was taught that the world was completely divided between good and bad, right and wrong.
The English language was good; her ancestors' language was bad. She was forbidden to speak it. The beliefs and teaching of the school's denomination were right and good; all other beliefs and teachings were wrong and bad. She was forbidden to follow her ancestors' traditions. The school tried to drum out of her everything she had been taught by her family. It was bad. She ended up wondering if she were bad.
It took her a while to heal from the scars and wounds of the shaming and condemning she experienced at a young age. Her journey took her back to her ancestors' teaching, yet in a new way.
She found that there was much that was true and good and beautiful in the teachings of her school and in other communities and traditions. There are many ways to express what is true, and good, and beautiful. The four elements and the interrelationships are there, if you look for them.
When she re-embraced her inherited value of looking for the ways we are alike, she discovered an underlying unity and relatedness.
Sometimes when I am in a discussion with someone who seems very different from me – so wrong – I'll try to shift the conversation. "I know what you are against. Now tell me what you are for. What are your values?" Almost always, I can find agreement about what we are for. We can continue to debate, but now we are searching together for the best strategy to accomplish the good things we both value. Then, relationship happens.
Of course it does, after all, we're made of the same stuff.