by finn schneider
 
In the spaces and communities that contextualize my being and doing, the proliferation of rainbow flags and symbols during the month of June has become a familiar ritual, the marking of a season of sorts. Pride month, in my experience, is a season of paradox; ripe with contradiction and characterized by tension if we are willing to dig just a bit below the shiny surface.
 
Designating June in this regard invites the learning of LGBTQ+ history, a practice which is important not just for those of us who are queer and/or trans. Many of us associate Pride Month as commemorating the Stonewall riot, a collective uprising against police violence in New York that culminated from a series of protests led by BIPOC drag queens and transwomen. This courageous act of resistance is often understood as the start of the LGBTQ+ movement, and yet it is one of countless such efforts to interrupt state violence directed at queer and trans people. How does uplifting a singular (and often white-washed) story of resistance contribute to the consolidation of an extraordinarily diverse and diasporic grouping of people and histories?

I was well into my 20s and exploring my identity as a trans person when I learned about Compton’s Cafeteria riot, an uprising led by trans women and sex workers in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco who were being targeted by police violence. Compton’s Cafeteria riot predated Stonewall by three years and yet remains largely unknown in mainstream understandings of LGBTQ+ history in the U.S.
 
What happens when we become attached to a particular historical narrative as representing an entire grouping of people marginalized on the basis of gender and sexuality, and perhaps even feel proud of ourselves for being aware of that particular narrative? Whose histories are lost, or intentionally invisibilized? How does designating a particular month as the time within which we reflect on particular histories set us up to believe that such reflection and learning ought not be an ongoing practice?
 
Pride month asks us to become educated about and commemorate stories of struggle and resistance and resilience; this is important work. At the same time, this call to gain knowledge paradoxically contributes both to the flattening of complex, varied histories, as well as to the belief that we can and ought to be able to know and understand “the Other” on our own terms and through our own frameworks.
 
Pride month invites celebration of difference and designates time and space for joy, revelry, community, and solidarity among LGBTQ+ people and those who love and affirm us. To me, as a queer and trans UU, these are practices of faith and expressions of covenant rooted in our belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every person and the interconnected web of all existence of which we are a part. In other words, the season of Pride invites life-giving and community-building practice. Herein lies another paradox. While collectively enacted, Pride month is imagined through configurations of individual identity and individual rights frameworks.
 
What opportunities and challenges come with imagining gender and sexuality primarily through the framework of personal identity? As an expression of our faith, we must and will continue fighting for the rights of self-expression, futures free from violence based on real or perceived identity, and equitable access to societal resources and institutions.
 
At the same time, there is sacrifice inherent in centering and leveraging individual, identity-based, rights-focused approaches to working toward transformational justice. Visibility, for example, is often equated with progress in relation to LGBTQ+ people and issues. Undoubtedly, increased visibility has played a significant role in shifting hearts and minds toward greater societal acceptance in recent decades. Visibility, however, is not harmless; nor is it accessible to or desired by all LGBTQ+ people symmetrically.
 
The focus on personal identity at the heart of Pride month and central to mainstream change-making efforts has resulted in meaningful societal progress for many LGBTQ+ people and groups; it has also come with a cost. As a practice of faith formation, how might we complicate our engagement with gender and sexuality by thinking critically, collectively, and generatively about the ways that our UU tradition both limits and expands our thinking, doing, and being?
 
Pride month, and the abundance of rainbow flags that mark its arrival in my corner of St. Paul, is layered and complex for me. One of the many things I appreciate about queer frameworks and ways of being is their capacity for engaging paradox productively. Many moments of my life are characterized by navigating in-between spaces, never quite fitting in easefully. Even while such navigation brings with it exhaustion and sometimes hurt, I do not seek easy resolution. Engaging paradox has grown my capacity to see the world and other beings with complexity and expanded the ways in which I feel connected to holy mystery. It is my hope that we, as members of Unity Church, will deepen our covenantal commitment and collective faith formation practices through exploring and engaging contradiction and paradox.     

Laura Park, Beloved Community Staff Team and Director of Membership and Hospitality
 
Each video in the SoulWork series offers ways to think about and develop practice on both sides of the Double Helix model. In the third video, Team Dynamics co-founder and President Alfonso Wenker explores the among practices that move us out of the stage of Minimization on the Intercultural Development Continuum (IDC) into Acceptance, where we have more intercultural competency skills to fruitfully respond to and connect across cultural differences.

Alfonso notes the difficulties of moving out of Minimization, the ways in which the move into Acceptance challenges our comfort, and the ways in which practices of noticing and naming our own physical responses and of noticing and naming the behaviors and practices we’re seeing among us can help us move closer to our church’s multicultural ends. Alfonso provides some wonderful questions we might ask ourselves when we’re together to help us notice and name our practices. The most moving part of this video is at the end, where Alfonso explains HeartWork, the hardest part of leaving ethnocentrism as our home base. Make sure to watch the video to hear his invitation into deeper understanding and practice.
 
SoulWork for You: Spend a week noticing and naming your body’s reactions to cultural differences. What feels hot? Cold? What feels tight or closed? Loose or open? What do you notice about how you’re sitting or standing and where you’re looking?
 
SoulWork for Groups: Invite the groups you meet with at Unity Church to do the same noticing and spend some time unpacking your reactions. When your group members are familiar with the individual noticing practice, move into a practice of noticing together. Set aside time to notice patterns in your group practice, without judgment. In what ways do those patterns move you closer to or further away from the church’s multicultural ends?
 
Also, if you or your group is interested in completing the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), a tool that will tell you as individuals or as a group what IDC lens you’re using in intercultural experiences, please contact Drew Danielson, [email protected]. 
 
Next: SoulWork#4 – Paradox (Coming July 28)
Previous: SoulWork#2 – Presence

SoulWork is the term we use at Unity Church for when we engage our Unitarian Universalist faith formation and antiracist multicultural work together. We use a Double Helix model to invite the congregation into this SoulWork and the SoulWork practices, models, tools, and an eight-part video series help us live into increasing complexity on this double helix.
 
To learn more about SoulWork, please visit our Adult Faith Formation page. There you will find a link to the Double Helix Model of Faith Formation and Antiracist Multiculturalism worksheet to help you develop practices for Within, Among, and Beyond. Visit Unity’s YouTube Channel, SoulWork Playlist to view all eight videos in the series. 
 
Image credit: Graphic Recording by DrawingImpact.com ​

Laura Park, Beloved Community Staff Team and Director of Membership, and Shelley Butler, Beloved News Team
 
SoulWork is the term we use at Unity Church for when we engage our Unitarian Universalist faith formation and antiracist multicultural work together. We use a Double Helix model to invite the congregation into this SoulWork and the SoulWork practices, models, tools, and an eight-part video series help us live into increasing complexity on this double helix.
 
Each video in the SoulWork series provides clarity on the what, why, and how of antiracist multiculturalism, and offers ways to develop practices on both sides of the Double Helix Model. The first in the series of videos focused on the practice of noticing and listening. The second has to do with the spiritual practice of presence, a key skill in grounding us in this work and what will help us sustain it. 
 
Preoccupied presence is the norm. We tend to approach a conversation or group work with some trepidation and a screen; thoughts and questions that distract us from being fully present: I want people to know I am serious about this work–am I coming across as I want? What will people think of me if I say or do the wrong thing? 
 
Sometimes without even realizing it, we present a persona to others, a somewhat perfected version of our authentic self. It’s understandable because it can be scary and uncomfortable to unveil ourselves and risk showing that our values may not always align with our actions. But given that we are all in this work together, and that one of our ends is to “know each other in all our fullness,” isn’t this the right place and time to practice being fully present with each other and with those we partner with in the community? 
 
Wonder. Heart. Clarity. These are what can come from the spiritual practice of presence, but also what we are likely to miss if we don’t. 
 
How do we practice being fully present with others? Meditation is one practice of being fully present Within. To practice presence Among, first let go of the inner critic that tells you that you are not enough, that you need to present a persona of who you want people to think you are. As Alfonso says, “Presence is more important than personality.” Then, let go of all the distractions of the day, pay attention to the person or group at hand, and allow yourself to “lean into the quality of presence that interconnects us all.”