Sidewalk Conversations
"Let the one who thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall..." (1 Corinthians 10:12)
Standing strong and remaining true to your calling is no easy task. No one sets out to crash and burn. In fact, it's actually the opposite, most people want to stand strong, remain effective, and be true to their values all the way through to the end. But, it is really hard to do.
In these interviews, Piet Van Waarde (a 40 year veteran of pastoral ministry) has heart-to-heart conversations with ordinary people about what it takes to stay faithful and effective in the things that matter most.
Sidewalk Conversations
**SPECIAL** The Genius of the "AND" with Shaina Zavala | Part 3
**Join us for a special summer series of conversations with Shaina and Piet about the genius of the "and." We are so excited to share this 4-part discussion with you AND for the launch of season 4 of Sidewalk Conversations this August! If you enjoy this episode and want to check out all of the things Piet is working on, head on over to the Piet Van Waarde channel on Youtube.**
Today, we explore how either-or thinking creates false dichotomies, particularly around diversity and merit, and how embracing the "and" allows for more nuanced understanding.
• Personal story about university chaplain experience with minority students feeling disconnected
• Resistance encountered when trying to understand different experiences
• How comfort in black-and-white thinking prevents us from facing harder truths
• The false perception that acknowledging differences creates division
• Benefits of seeking understanding across differences
• Applying "and" thinking to politics and other controversial topics
• Maintaining personal convictions while recognizing others' truths
Join us next episode as we continue this conversation, exploring how this approach affects the life of the church.
All right. So now I want to get into something that may be a little bit more controversial. All right, so in our culture, one of the places where I see the either or thinking so prominently is in this area of discussions about diversity and discussions about merit, and so I'll set it up this way. I had an experience when I was early on in my career. I was serving as a chaplain at a university, and there was a group of minority students, and I could sense that they were not necessarily feeling as part of the university community as I hoped they would, and the truth of it was that I grew up in a predominantly white community, and so I didn't have a lot of information about, like, some of the challenges that go along with growing up as a person of color in our culture and so on, and so I wanted to ask the question. I was like okay, so let's meet with some of these students and ask the question what makes this experience or this environment challenging for you?
Piet Van Waarde:And what was surprising to me was that there was another group of people who were saying well, why do we need to focus on that? Why can't we just be all like brothers and sisters in Christ. Why do we have to talk about the ways in which we're different? About the ways in which we're different, and I was thinking well, we can talk about that too and also understand that this was kind of difficult and there are maybe unique challenges to their experience in this community, and can we like pay attention to that and be conscious of the fact that we're all brothers and sisters in Christ?
Shaina Zavala:Isn't it interesting like hearing you say it now. It sounds so common sense, right, like again, this is true and this is true, and you know you said this earlier, but in higher education, in religious settings and in a lot of the time, you know, in business, those are the major points where finding the and is difficult in society and I think people again are used to seeing things very black and very white, and in this instance it was probably quite literal.
Shaina Zavala:And I think this goes back to if more people were able to have that mindset of all of these things can be true, and what I find, as a person who's mixed and I'm half white, half black is that when it gets to the things that are harder to accept, or the harder the ugly truths. Um, that's where people the comfort is in. It's black or white and so, hey, we can just do this and that's going to be more comfortable for everybody. And again, what we want to encourage everybody to do is to be like it's not super comfortable, but it's going to serve everyone better if we recognize this to be true, like in that instance, it was just what's their experience and is it different?
Shaina Zavala:You know, the answer could have been and for some reason that tends to have a negative connotation when you want to do that, but it doesn't have to. It was just what's their experience. Is it different? Can we make it better and do it was just what's their experience? Is it different? Can we make it better? And the fear we talked about that in a previous episode, the fear that it could make it have a snowball effect or it could cause division or it could kept, you know, some people from wanting to even have that conversation.
Piet Van Waarde:And that's, and that's why I think this, this conversation, is so valuable, is because I think it takes away, um, some of the the the associated challenges. To say, like you dispel some of the things that are not true, Like it's okay to have the conversation even if it's uncomfortable, because there are some things you discover along the way that really are helpful, that people say, oh well, this may actually contribute to our feeling more unified as I understand what some of the challenges are that these people have experienced or not to interrupt you, but what's the harm in if, at the very least, you're going to get more understanding from somebody?
Shaina Zavala:And again, this is not something that's unique to a race thing. This could go into any conversation. You could take this into politics, you could take this into um you know any super hot button topic right now that's going on, you know, in the media. You could, you could say I just want to come with the approach that multiple things can be true at the same time and imagine you have a bunch of adults walking around having a healthy dialogue. I know what my truths are, I know what my belief system is, I know those things and I can recognize that somebody else has them and we can have a conversation and I'm open and this can be true and this can be true. And that's what that comes down to, whether it's diversity, whether it's you know we said merit, whether it's on any topic.
Piet Van Waarde:Well, I want to have one more conversation about this with you, but we're going to save it for my next episode, which is how does this affect the life of the church?
