Gaining cross-cultural awareness

Not only are there many cultures around the world, that word, culture, scales right down to each nuclear family. The culture of our own family is what exists, something we take for granted, what’s normal and takes no effort. I encountered that as a child, with the culture of our neighbors. It was their family’s Christmas culture that surprised me. I learned that the Christmas tree was brought into their house a few days before Christmas Day, but only decorated, by the parents, after the children went to bed on Christmas Eve. There were real candles on the tree that were lit just in time for when the children came down on Christmas morning! Weird! Yep! A cultural difference, a cultural clash if you will. I decided I preferred our way of doing Christmas (translation: the way it should be done). That was an insignificant difference, but I was to learn as I grew older, there were far more consequential differences that existed around the corner and around the world.

I’m currently tutoring a young man in English. He came as a refugee from a different culture, a different language, a different religious background. He’s talked of the political danger in his home country. As we talk and get to know each other, I see his struggle to comprehend not only our language, but our traditions, our many and different holidays when everything shuts down. He always asks me to explain each one. He talks of people who are rude when dealing with him. He works hard to understand the various systems one confronts as a newcomer. Each day brings new challenges, but he loves, despite the difficulties, living in the US. In particular, he loves our mountains and our parks.

I write all that because I think, for Jesus’ disciples/apostles, with the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, there was a massive ‘cultural’ shift in the way they lived. It was a new age, the church age, and they were responsible to guide, to teach, to help others understand this new way of being. To navigate all this ‘new’ meant learning to hear from, to discern, the directions given by the Spirit. Unlike when Jesus was physically present and they could simply ask him for clarity, now they needed to learn how to take time to be still enough, and focused enough, to decipher the directions deposited in their spirits by the now-indwelling Spirit of God.  And then they had to be able to teach this new way of life to the many newcomers streaming into the church from all different cultures.

Today, in our technology-driven world, quiet spaces are a rarity. The felt need to stay digitally-attached, to be in a rush, to be productive, to be clock conscious at all times, to enter the fray on Monday morning and collapse again on Friday evening, seems completely, and culturally, normal – for us. We even make it a bragging point to talk about how busy we are! We find ourselves sorely in need, as some writer has exhorted us, of discovering how to live at God speed. It’s a brand new discipline for many of us, but the rewards of intimacy with our Divine Helper merit our best efforts. By the way, He’s glad to help, too.  PD