An AOF story about difference.
By Matt Brown

I grew up in an all-white suburb of Boston, we vacationed in all-white places in all-white states. My exposure to people who did not look like me was nil. I think I was in tenth grade when my mother started as a volunteer driver for a program called METCO. I can't remember what the acronym is for and I probably never knew, but it was a program in the early 70s intended to give "inner city kids" access to the wealthier, better equipped suburban schools. This program was a precursor to bussing, which officially started a few years later, resulted in many a disaster, and is now remembered in infamy. 

As I mentioned, my mother was one of the volunteers who provided transportation for the program, and we had a VW bus. In the afternoons, after school let out, I would often accompany my mother on her route, returning kids to their homes. Because of our car we could take a small crowd; it was loud and fun, with lots of chatter, and I listened. I was introduced to people who didn't look like me living in neighborhoods I had not been to and knew nothing about. I sat up and took notice, I could feel a visceral reaction I had not anticipated, a jolt to my senses. I did not know anything of the struggles or challenges or daily stressors these kids and their families dealt with but in a naive way, I began to understand there was an alternative to the way my family lived, or maybe it was more that I had suddenly become acutely aware of my circumstances, my community, and my privilege.
 
Matt, now happily retired, lives with his wife, Lia Rivamonte, in St Paul and has been a member of Unity Church for 25 years.

By Angela Wilcox
​An AOF video about difference.

An AOF video about yearning for multicultural community. 
By Rev. Oscar Sinclair

An All Our Fullness story about encountering difference.
By Rev. Oscar Sinclair

An All Our Fullness story about cultural identity. 
By Ann Sax Mabbott

I became superficially aware of cultural difference quite early in life, as I came to the US as a Dutch-Indonesian refugee at the age of five. I was born in Amsterdam, but my parents were born in Indonesia, and considered Indonesia to be their home. When Indonesia gained its independence from the Netherlands in 1949, anyone who was Dutch, or part Dutch as my father was, could no longer live there. We were sponsored for immigration by a Presbyterian church in Pittsburgh.
I grew up eating both Indonesian and Dutch food, and with many stories about life in Indonesia. It wasn't until I was an adult that I learned that the United States was only accepting Dutch Indonesians as long as we were at least 50% European, which my father was.

​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.

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 — as an Adult ELL teacher for 25 years with 15 of those spent working at the International Institute of Minnesota, 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.

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.

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.

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.”