An AOF story about encountering difference.
By Nick Raths In the late 80’s and early 90’s I was a busy studio guitarist. I played on many records and commercials and also on the records of many black artists. At Flyte Tyme I was always called in for the "sweetener." I guess it was for my clean playing and ability to create a part on the spot. The irony was, at that time I was also a Doctoral Candidate in Music at the U of M. I was studying counterpoint, orchestration, Schenkerian analysis, and honing my skills as a classical guitarist. But the calls kept coming. I was called in to Flyte Tyme Studios to do some "sweetening" on a Janet Jackson record. The song was in Ab (bad key for guitar) so I thought I’d better make a chart to save time and takes. So, Jimmy "Jam" Harris and I went through the song slowly, him slowly on the piano, me quickly writing a chart. When we were done, Jimmy looked at the chart and was very impressed at my scrawling. I was very impressed that he could write such a song and not know the names of any of the chords or anything about music theory! This encounter hastened me back to a time of my own innocent spontaneity. The more sessions I did, the more my playing spontaneously breathed. Surprisingly to me, Jimmy was a perfectionist. I’d say, “Was that a good one?” He’d say, “We’re getting close.” Then I’d play it perfectly and chime up, “That take was awesome!!” And he’d say, “Sorry Nick, I didn’t have it in record.” I couldn’t help but forgive him and know the next take was going to be the one.
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An AOF story about yearning for multicultural community.
By Krista Finstad Hanson I am a white, Midwestern girl born in Iowa to a father from Minnesota and a mother from Wisconsin. My father's family are Norwegian Lutherans and "German from Russia" Mennonites. My mother's family are Norwegian and German Lutherans, Dutch Calvinists, and Swiss Mennonites who later became Methodists. I grew up with ethnic foods at holidays and smatterings of objects called by different words by my grandparents. A History of World Religions class in college put me on a quest which led to Unity Church, where my husband and I raised our two kids. After my parents divorced in 1979, my mom, two siblings, and I, moved to my mom's hometown Sparta, Wisconsin near Fort McCoy. 1980 was the year of the Mariel boatlift, and Cuban refugees were placed at Fort McCoy. My mom, a nurse, and her family volunteered with those refugees. Eventually, my aunt married one of the men from the boatlift. I now had a Tio José and a cousin from that marriage. In 1982, my mom married a man originally from India. He was divorced from his American wife and had three sons. I grew up in a diverse household with biracial and bicultural stepbrothers. As a second grader in Windom, MN, I once took a field trip to St. Paul and visited the Festival of Nations, a highlight of that year. How could I have known that my career—first for 25 years as an Adult ELL teacher, and then at the International Institute of Minnesota for 15, would lead back to that same Festival of Nations, an event (now defunct) hosted by the Institute. I regularly honor and celebrate my various ethnic heritages. I am proud to call the "sanctuary state" of Minnesota my home. I have been living the dream of a multicultural community all these years. Krista Finstad Hanson is a daughter, sister, wife, and mom of two adults who were raised at Unity Church. She works as an adult ELL teacher, writer, and historian. An All Our Fullness story about encountering difference. By Lisa Wersal Growing up in a farming community in Southwestern Minnesota 60+ years ago, the only people of color were a small number of migrant workers who came in the summer to do fieldwork. The migrant workers made an impression on me, as some worked across the road from us in the sugar beet fields of our neighbor. We were also out working in our soybean fields, removing tall weeds by hand. The migrant workers were exceedingly hard-working, putting in long days all summer. I first met African Americans when I was a junior in high school attending a camp near the Twin Cities for Student Rotarians. I marveled at the girls’ tight curls in their hair, because my hair was straight, and my mother preferred curls, so I dealt with all sorts of uncomfortable hair curlers in my youth. At that event, a Black man performed a song from South Pacific, “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught.” The theme of the song is that prejudice is learned, not innate. My family were part of a “minority” of sorts ourselves, because we were Catholic in an otherwise very Protestant region. I remember being questioned (sometimes “grilled”) by other students as to our beliefs and practices, like, “Why do you pray to Mary and the saints?” and “Why do you have to go to Confession?” They would then lecture me as to why their beliefs and practices were “right,” and ours “wrong.” I couldn’t figure out why it mattered so much to them that our traditions differed from theirs. We Catholics were blamed for the fact that the public school served fish on Fridays, which no one liked, even though that particular rule had been lifted by then, so we were not required to abstain from meat on Fridays. Fish sticks were simply easy to prepare for the cafeteria workers. Lisa Wersal was attracted to Unity Church because of the emphasis on spiritual practice. She co-facilitates Lectio Divina and serves on the Spiritual Practice Packet Team.
An All Our Fullness story about cultural identity. By Lia Rivamonte I may have been five when skipping down the sidewalk of my street a girl on her bike suddenly blocked me with her front wheel. “What are you, anyway?” she asked. It was a taunt rather than a question motivated by curiosity. Cynthia was one of the Smith kids, known for being bullies. I guessed my answer would be subject to further mocking but I didn’t know how else to respond, ”I’m Filipino.” How I knew that’s what she meant is another question altogether. My parents must have prepared my sister and me for such interrogations. After all, they chose this spanking, brand-new, all-white suburb of San Francisco in which to settle—they must have expected some resistance to the presence of their brown-skinned family. “Haha,” Cynthia Smith laughed. “You’re a peanut!” She continued in a loud singsong voice as she swung her bike back into the street, “A peanut!” As tame as it seems now, it was hurtful to my five-year old ego; I was shy and easily intimidated. I remember feeling such shame as I walked back up the street to our house, shaking, embarrassed. In that moment, I understood that me and my family were different from our neighbors and what it might mean to look different, eat different foods, and have grandparents that spoke a different language. Oddly, our parents seemed proud of these differences—almost boastful. And, to be frank, most of our neighbors were kind, even eager to befriend us. But it took just one little, ignorant girl and her simple question to awaken in me a feeling of inferiority, telling me I did not belong. Lia is a longtime member of Unity. Currently, she serves on the Beloved Community Communications Team and sometimes facilitates Finding Yourself at Unity. She is a writer and artist and lives with her husband, Matt Brown, in the Little Bohemia neighborhood of St. Paul.
An All Our Fullness story about encountering difference. By Shelley Butler "You say you love the poor? Name them." – Father Gustavo Gutiérrez I knew when I joined the working board of a non-profit several years ago that served a so-called third world country, that one of the pitfalls was developing a savior complex; “we” save “them.” Easy enough to avoid, I thought. Yet, as the writer on the board, I found it difficult to prepare fundraising letters and grant applications to persuade people and orgs to give money without some version of us/the haves vs them/the have-nots. And then I went to Haiti. To say I experienced difference is an understatement, as days went by when the only other American, white, or English-speaking person I encountered was my traveling partner. Children, who rarely saw white people, yelled, “Blanc, blanc,” and reached to feel my smooth hair. The difference in privilege was even more pronounced than race, language, and hair texture. As a guest, I ate the same food, slept in the same beds, and literally walked the same paths next to and often behind our Haitian hosts. The difference experiencing this difference was a change in me. Sure, I would still raise money, but not to save anyone, only to convince others to walk beside our Haitian friends, as one neighbor helps another. I understood Father Gustavo Gutiérrez really for the first time, “If there is no friendship with and no sharing of life of the poor, then there is no authentic commitment to liberation, because love exists only among equals.”
An All Our Fullness story about cultural identity. By Ray Wiedmeyer It was during a walk around Lake Harriet with a friend that the lightning struck. I am not sure how the conversation had developed but he shared something that day that has stuck with me ever since. He had read an article in The Atlantic entitled “The War on Poverty Is Over. The Rich Won.” Now I had never considered myself to be rich, or given much thought to what class we might be floating in. The statistic he shared that day was the amount of savings a “rich” person in America owns – their net worth. I realized that day that we were in the top tier of Americans when one considers wealth. I was shocked. After harboring negative thoughts all these years about the well-to-do, I suddenly found I was, in fact, one of them. Over time, I was challenged to realize how we had gotten here. Was it just because we had no kids and were frugal? We were not the beneficiaries of much generational wealth. But we were both able to attend college without accruing debt because the government chipped in much more than it does today. We were able to buy a house within five years of marriage because of a government guaranteed an assumable loan in a neighborhood where property values would triple overtime. And we could afford to invest fully in government tax-advantaged savings accounts at home and at work that grew quickly. What we didn’t have was the need to work two or three poorly paying jobs just to make ends meet. One of us slipped easily into the burgeoning computer industry, learning on the job, in what would turn out to be a well-paying profession. We were able to move smoothly through life because we were white, educated, and had advantages not everyone had available to them. ![]() Ray Wiedmeyer is a longtime member of Unity Church, where he serves on the Racial Justice Team and the Beloved Community Communications Team. In 2024, he served on the Ministerial Search Team that led to a successful call of Rev. Oscar Sinclair. Ray is also a longtime volunteer with Mano a Mano. He lives in St. Paul with his wife, Karen. An All Our Fullness video on cultural identity. ![]() Rev. Dr. Oscar Sinclair (he/him) grew up in East Lansing, Michigan and is a former community organizer who served in Lesotho in the Peace Corps. Within a year of completing his Peace Corps service, Oscar was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He was a member of the Unitarian Church of Baltimore and he describes his call to ministry as an unexpected coming to the realization that he wished to “embrace faith and hope even in the face of all that the world throws at us: faith despite, or maybe because of, all evidence to the contrary. I applied to seminary from a hospital room.” He, Stacie, and daughter Ailish came to St. Paul from Lincoln, Nebraska, where Rev. Oscar served the Unitarian church there. He has served as our senior minister of Unity Church-Unitarian since 2024. |
aboutAll Our Fulness is a Unity initiative for the congregation to share their thoughts and stories that we may know each other more deeply, in all our fullness. To contribute a story or video, please submit here. Categories
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