Yesterday I was blessed to be able to enjoy walking around the Pilgrim Place Festival for over an hour. I ran into a work friend, a wonderful woman who volunteers her time with our students often. I was glad to see that she is recovering from being sick for a while. We spoke about ceramics and a fellow artist-teacher-friend who will be moving onto a healthier life option for herself - bittersweet. I told her to please say "Hello!" to my other work friends, a newly wed husband and wife that met at our wonderful studio and whom both took classes from the same art teacher I did (before me) in high school. (I am so new to blogging and know that I set this blog up to be abundantly accessible so I will not post anyone's real name or my place of work lest that get back to me via the head of the company wanting to share a disapproving word or paperwork!) The next booth I stopped at was one full of books written by the "pilgrims" who lived there in the Pilgrim Place community. I had the joy of shaking the hand of and talking with one of the authors who had been a missionary in Thailand and Burma for 40 years AFTER retirement! I felt all at once empowered and tiny! Empowered because he did that AFTER he retired! (if I understood correctly that is - I don't know - his hair was a very snowy white and he had the peace of an older man) I felt tiny because I had no really good questions to ask him it seemed! I tried and tried to think of good ones and I think I did ask one: Which part of your experience was the most difficult? The beginning, leaving or other parts? He answered with much resilience and explained how much support he and his team received throughout their time there, how their main question to the people they were there to assist was, "What do you need?" I even learned all about how he created a dictionary of their language (it had not been done before) with help and that you can buy it on Amazon for $125.00! I could've casually interviewed him all day but did not want to be a pest. So I purchased just one of his four possible books on display and am looking forward to reading his stories.
I strolled on through the village and started noticing that I hadn't seen too much ethnic diversity in the crowd. I wasn't surprised because of the location of the community and the probable affluence of the residents living there. I also got to thinking about the real pilgrims of the 1700's. We are taught that they were Europeans who had been persecuted for practicing the religion of their choice, Protestants (of the Catholic church), etc. Were these the same people then that overtook the Natives upon arrival? I believe some of them were and that lack of cultural understanding and (in)tolerance produced fear which caused much of the violence. One culture respects mainly the earth and its gifts while the other respects the self. I do realize I am being very vague so feel free to offer up facts that indicate otherwise. Then my mind began to wonder which of those first pilgrims would think slavery was a good idea. When I thought of why they were leaving Europe I thought none of them probably did and wondered who AFTER them came up with one of the most cruel social constructs in the history of the world. But, I remembered how the Natives were "othered" and taken advantage of, stolen from, and massacred. Maybe it was a few pilgrims. . . But WHO exactly? I wanted to believe that it was just tobacco and other product company owners that learned about the fortune to be had in "the Americas," and came over later to dominate and duplicate their own business ventures. I will look it up but more specifically I was wondering what my family's connection to slavery was. I would like to search for the possiblity that some of my family (probably my father's side which came from Switzerland in the 1700's and eventually followed Church of the Brethern which stemmed from Mennonites which stemmed from Quakers) may have not only been against slavery but worked very hard to put a stop to it. I think I better have a conversation with my grandfather.
The point of all this, however, is to simply search for positive forces in my ancestry. Find out who and what they did so I can share that with my children and my children's children someday if they ask. I am very aware that families branch and break and shift and that I may be asking for a large dose of negative involvement with the ugly past as well. That is something I am willing to face to find the very important pieces of positivity that also exist.
In the meantime, I will just have to continue sloppily wading through my own thoughts and questions one of which, yesterday, was: "Is it very offensive or not at all offensive to give my (African-American) boyfriend or his family an LP of Bill Cosby now that I know they have a record player and just played an Alex Hayley piece the other night when I was there?" Part of me knew that it could be taken as a racist move ("Oh, she just bought this because Alex Hayley is black and so is Bill Cosby as if being black is the primary reason we would listen to an LP produced by a black person," yet I had to see how bad my mistake was...I had to see if my curious ignorance could teach me a lesson or propel far away from learning altogether. Granted, my boyfriend loves me and his family likes me pretty well, too, so...it's not a totally unbiased reaction they will offer. I don't think it would be wise to present such a "gift" to a newly made friendship with certain African-Americans as it would be seen as extremely offensive or hostile or ignorant at the very least! It taught me a lesson from which I am still learning...Also having to be patient with family members who, like myself before I dated someone of a different background, have never thought of certain everyday expressions as being racist or at least having originated from the times of slavery, never questioned the media and movies' roles in shaping the minds of an entire society, etc. We talk about these sorts of things often but I am basically in private preschool and he holds a proverbial doctorate from a culturally rich, university. I am starting to give myself homework though, so maybe I'm beyond the pre-school stage. . . If you pray or meditate, I desire your prayers in my search for truth.
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