Share a story about a time you encountered difference; what difference did it make?
By Nick Raths

Please excuse me. I’ve submitted before. But this just came to me as the perfect  “All Our Fullness.”

In my later years of participation in the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet we played a six movement piece by Spanish composer Enrique Granados, a pianist that exuded the heart of Spanish music. Most classical guitarists play some version or another of Granados somewhere down the line in their career. We decide to include a flamenco dancer in our performance. I had always thought I understood Spanish music until I met a great flamenco dancer named Colette Illarde. She choreographed the Granados for us. When she danced all the music suddenly made sense to me. It was then I really discovered Spanish musical movement. We took the show on the road, but on one occasion Colette wasn’t able to join us. Her stand-in was a Japanese flamenco dancer named Sachiko. Sachiko was so Japanese (whatever that is) but when the music started she was 100% Spaniard. Her hands were so mesmerizing I could barely keep my eyes on the music. After the concert we went to a local bar. A lot of the people at the bar recognized us with adulation. There was a Karaoke. Sachiko and I sang "I Got You Babe" by Sonny and Cher.

Retired music professor and classical guitarist Nick Raths is a member of Unity Church, former Worship Associate and Welcome Team member, current choir and Sangha participant. 

When did you become aware of your own cultural identity?
By Lisa Brosseau

I never really felt a strong connection or sense of belonging to my church, neighborhood or extended family growing up. We lived far from my parents’ families and rarely visited them. My Mom took us to Catholic church and religious education every Sunday, but she left the church in my mid-teens in response to its stance on abortion. I decided not to be confirmed and turned away from organized religion. The first time I felt a sense of cultural identity was in college. I went to a women’s college in the late 1970s. All the leadership positions in the college – staff and students – were held by women. This gave me a vision for what I could be in the “outside world” at a time when there were few women leaders in most organizations. The next time I felt a sense of cultural identity was in 1990 when I moved from the east coast to take a job at the University of Minnesota. I found a place that was welcoming, progressive and committed to the common good. My profession as a public health researcher and educator was full of colleagues and institutions focused on making people’s lives healthier. Encouraged by my soon-to-be husband to attend Unity (I was very skeptical), I also found a home with like-minded people in a spiritual and giving community. The first time a woman minister (Gretchen Thompson) led the service, I knew for sure I had found my spiritual home. Belonging, being accepted, and sharing similar beliefs are so important to one’s wellbeing. I count myself lucky to have found them in Minnesota and at Unity Church.

I am industrial hygienist (workplace health and safety professional). I worked at the University of Minnesota and University of Illinois Chicago as a researcher and educator for my entire career. I grew up in upstate New York and lived in Boston for 12 years before moving to Minnesota. I retired from academia in 2018 but continue to consult part-time. My husband (Allen Giles) and I are avid birders - we try to go at least one new place for birding each year.

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.