belong

Weekly newsletter 2.9.2021

Friends, 

When I was in Divinity school  (yes, I went to Div school; no, I never wanted to be a priest), I had the chance to take a course with Diana Eck, a celebrity professor (well, celebrity in academic comparative study of religion circles) and director of The Pluralism Project who coined language to talk about attitudes toward diversity. While Eck rooted this language in her engagement with religious identity, I’ve found her terminology to be useful more broadly, especially in understanding how people respond to difference. In general, she posited, attitudes toward diversity fall into three camps: exclusivist, inclusivist, and pluralist. 

An exclusivist attitude rejects difference - the “my way or the highway” or “nulla salus extra ecclesiam” approach. An inclusivist (or, she sometimes interchanges assimilationist) approach might acknowledge difference, but it also imposes one’s own worldview and values onto the different other. While it includes the other, it only does so within the boundaries of one’s belief system, only engaging difference using one’s own vocabulary and way of understanding. Comparativists might note an inclusivist attitude in someone who constantly analogizes between someone else’s experience and her own, but ultimately always understanding the other’s experience only through the lens of her own. And then there’s the pluralist approach, which might be the rarest because it requires some degree of mutual accommodation, not just accommodations by the other. “The logic of pluralism,” Eck wrote in an address marking The Pluralism Project’s 25th anniversary, “was not one of incorporation, but of genuine encounter, an encounter that recognizes difference, that does not elide differences into a ‘we’ that is already known.” In other words, a pluralist attitude seeks to know the other in her own language, in her own context, and to be reciprocally known by the other. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of work to be ready to communicate one’s values and desires and to be ready to encounter another’s. 

Sometimes, I use the metaphor of a guest with an allergy at a dinner party to illustrate these attitudes. The exclusivist approach is like a dinner party with a set menu. Allergic to a key ingredient? Too bad. Eat what’s offered or stop at McDonald’s on the way home. This part of the metaphor doesn’t need much deconstruction - you’re in or you’re out. The inclusivist approach is the dinner party where the host provides an alternative option for the allergic guest, a separate or as they say on airplanes “special meal.” The host may go to lengths to advertise the alternative options and demonstrate awareness of the needs of the allergic. That sure seems friendly, but it ultimately reflects a limited amount of accommodation. The majority of the group gathered at the party gets to experience the meal as envisioned by the host, but the experience of the one with an allergy is materially different. S/he doesn’t get the same culinary experience, and s/he typically has to explain to at least a few others why and how they’re different. For sometimes-vegans like me, it’s helpful to keep an elevator pitch in one’s figurative back pocket to make everyone else feels better about their food choices and less threatened by mine. The pluralist approach is the dinner party that is the most complicated to plan. The host knows and considers the restrictions of her/his guests and adapts her/his own experience and that of other guests. Perhaps it departs from the host’s original plan, but it allows for people with different needs to be able to break bread together.

When I hear language about inclusion, I worry that it’s not enough. A desire to include others, however generous, is just an invitation into one’s own safety zone. And yeah, I know, programs and practitioners engaging the work of inclusion (often partnered with diversity and equity in job titles, academic programs, and corporate initiatives) intend to go farther, to do the work to be not just welcoming but to be able to build new relationships, to be able to transform individually and collectively. The word and the idea of inclusion, though, just doesn’t get there because it doesn’t prioritize mutual or reciprocal accommodation. I keep coming back to the idea of belonging, that each of us can and needs to develop a capacity for belonging, for being at home with ourselves, for being able to be home for others. That’s the space in which we can build real transformation.

If your inbox is bursting at the seams, please feel free to unsubscribe. If you’re interested in updates on bill hulseman consulting or my own reflections on ritual, education, and dialogue, read on! 

UPCOMING

• Guided Meditations | Mondays, 4:00pm PST, via Zoom

• Religious literacy: how to talk about religion without pissing anyone off | 6-week symposium on Thursdays at 5:00pm PST begins on February 18. Sign up here!

• Good Stuff II | 4-week symposium on Mondays at 5:00pm PST begins on March 1. Sign up here!

UPDATES

In October, I participated in the Leadership in the Age of Personalization Summit which explored what Glenn Llopis describes as the shift from standardization to personalization in healthcare, corporate America, and higher education. Out of the dialogue started in the summit, Llopis has been publishing a series of articles on Forbes.com that integrate clips from the summit and aim to keep the conversation going. The most recent, “Inclusion Doesn’t Start With ‘Firsts’: It Requires Leading With Humanity And Belonging,” includes highlights of the panel I participated in and focuses on inclusion as an essential strategy in effecting broader change. 

My own response was rooted in an insight by Resmaa Menakem. In My Grandmother's Hands, Menakem looks to the impact of inherited trauma and the role it plays in the bodies and experiences of both victims and perpetrators of white-body supremacy (if you haven’t encountered this phrase, Menakem explains it here). Most of the book focuses on the experience of inherited trauma for Black people in the US, but he also addresses the intersection of inherited trauma and basic psychological needs in White people. He writes: 

White body supremacy offers the white body a sense of belonging. It provides a false sense of brotherhood and sisterhood, of being part of something intrinsically valuable...there are other ways to belong and many other things to belong to. We can belong as family, as friends, as intimate partners, as neighbors, as countrymen, as fellow human beings. We will not end white body supremacy or any other form of evil by trying to tear it to pieces. Instead, we can offer people better ways to belong, and better things to belong to. Instead of belonging to a race, we can belong to a culture. Each of us can also build our genuine capacity for belonging. 

For me, Menakem offered a tangible response to the question, “What can I do?,” a question I’ve been especially wrestling with since June. For higher ed - for all ed, really, and for all institutions, organizations, and communities - Menakem’s insight provides a starting point - “we can offer people better ways to belong, and better things to belong to” - and inclusion is the strategy for developing our capacity for belonging. 

Registration for Symposia is open! The next two to launch are: 

• “Religious literacy: how to talk about religion without pissing anyone off” is a 6-week symposium on Thursdays that begins February 18

• “Good Stuff II: talking about listening, seeing, feeling, and other ings” is a 4-week symposium on Mondays that begins March 1. 

Full descriptions are on my website. Symposia are limited to 10 participants and need 4 to run - if you’ve thought about participating, please sign up! If you’re eager for meaningful conversation away from the noise of current events, come join! For more details and to register, click here.

Guided meditations via Zoom continue! Mondays at 4:00pm PST. The aim is to practice being present - to ourselves, to others, and to the world. If you or someone you know could use a 20-30 minute dose of peace and quiet on Mondays,visit the meditation page on my site to sign up.

GOOD STUFF

Listen

Yes, Ella again. But this time, Ella is just the messenger, carrying the words and music of songwriting and queer icon Billy Strayhorn. As a Black man, Strayhorn wasn’t able to pursue a career in classical music, but in his twenties he impressed Duke Ellington so much that he got an instant invitation to join his orchestra, launching a 30 year collaboration that delivered some of the best and best-known songs in the American songbook. “Something to Live For” (reportedly Ella’s favorite song) is lush and rich, and the stretched-out phrases amplify the longing in the words. “Oh, what wouldn’t I give for/ someone who’d take my life/ and make it seem gay as they say it ought to be/ Why can’t I have love like that brought to me?” Strayhorn was one of the few celebrities at the time who didn’t hide in the closet, though he neither pursued nor was dragged into the limelight. He was an artist-turned-activist who famously developed a friendship with Dr. Martin Luther King. He marched on Washington in 1963, but he didn’t live to see Stonewell, the riot led by queer and trans people of color that pushed the movement for LGBTQ rights out of the shadows and into the mainstream. 

If you stream music on Spotify, I’ve started a playlist called “Bill’s Good Stuff,” including music I’ve loved for a long time as well as things I’ve come across more recently. Feel free to add the playlist to your favorites! Bill’s Good Stuff Spotify Playlist

Read

In this week’s meditation, I used Elizabeth Anderson’s “Praise Song for the Day,” which she composed for and delivered at the Inauguration of President Obama. 

“Praise Song for the Day"
Elizabeth Alexander

 A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration 

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

 All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what’s on the other side.

I know there’s something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp, 

praise song for walking forward in that light.

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