Cross-Cultural Engagment

My family left yesterday, flew home to snow and the threat of tornados, hopefully bringing home with them a new sense of understanding and interest with regards to traveling, Costa Rica, and my life here. I had an absolute blast with them, watching them engage the strange and different world around them, being with them as they felt awkward and uncomfortable in new settings and situations.  To say the least, they were great students :)

Today, I want use them as an example to discuss the topic of cross-cultural engagement.

Engagement, not just passive witnessing.

To be engaged in something means to fully apply oneself--heart, mind and soul.  No aloofness, no reservations, no judgement allowed at this engagement party.  Here, we are diving in, not with swimmies strapped to our arms, but fully submerging into the clear blue water before us.  We need to feel that cool water against our skin, taste its saltiness on our tongues, be swept away by the currents swirling around us.  

Diving in is, in my opinion, the only true way of getting to know something.  You can read about Paris, for example, all you want in your textbooks, about its history, its culture, its landscape.  But you can't really know it until you've been there, until you've sat in the shade of the Eiffel Tower, until you've ordered a pastry in broken French, until you've gotten lost on the windy streets that make up the city.  And even then, that's only scratching the surface of that life.  

But it's a start.

So I want to challenge everyone of us to take that dive today, in whatever new environment you may find yourself in.  Going on vacation?  Don't get sucked into the tourist life and forget to experience how the locals live outside those safe and colorful walls.  Visiting a new church?  Make sure you sing as loud with the rest of them, yell Amen! when they yell Amen!, and praise our Lord right alongside of them.  Visiting Grandma at the nursing home?  Well, give her a hug and chat with her, and with her neighbor, and with those in the hallways because they too live there and need some company every once in a while.  

And so what if you feel weird, or uncomfortable, or scared?  WE ALL DO.  I still do every day and I've lived here in Costa Rica for over a year.  But I try to not let that stop me from experiencing the world around me.  Jesus doesn't want our fears to rule our lives.  He doesn't want us to be confined to live in the comfort of our homes.  Jesus himself walked the dusty streets of Jerusalem and the rest of Israel, engaging people as he walked, asking questions, lending a helping hand.  He's the example we should follow.

So I say let's follow in his dusty footsteps.  Let's walk the streets, engaging the people and the culture as we go along.  Let's learn and let's be amazed.

Stay tuned!