Touching the Earth

In the December 11 meeting we did an exercise called Touching the Earth brought from Sister Chung who follows Thich Nhat Hanh. Touching the Earth is about holding, recognizing, and feeling your past and your connections. Everyone can make it a personal experience and pull in what they have from their parents, grandparents, and ancestors.

As we first considered these blood ancestors and family members we touched the earth by going to the floor and lying on our stomachs. We need to return the seeds from our ancestors back to the earth. We also considered our land ancestors: everyone who has come together in this place, including those who were here before us. This process is necessary to give back to the earth and hold and recognize these ancestors.

The feeling of oneness that you consider in this exercise is related to critical pedagogy and the idea that we are all connected. We can also try to observe from the perspective of the earth and how it feels having all of this weight dumped upon it. In addition, this exercise has parallels to considering white identity and the process of letting go of the shame and anger and sending it back to the earth. We can also incorporate all of our land ancestors into ourselves and let go of anything bad and relase it into the earth.

Human Rights and Fear

In discussing America’s place in human rights issues, we wondered how many Americans really know what the International Declaration of Human Rights entails. We should be teaching our students, and they in turn should teach it in their classrooms to raise consciousness about it. This is related to feeling threatened by that which one does not understand. We need to unpack that idea and help students realize that we all have the right to believe in what we believe as long as we are not hurting anyone.

The climate of the world has changed and there is more fear and feeling of being threatened. People fear terrorism, being attacked, spied on, caught on camera, and are aware of a greater police and security presence in their communities and around the world. Students seem more afraid to express their opinions and think critically about some issues than a couple decades ago. We need to help them get past this and catch them up in many ways.

One arts approach in response to increased security is the Surveillance Camera Players. They are a group in New York who perform silent plays to security cameras and the staff who are watching the surveillance. It is a method to talk back to power and face fear through the arts. It shows both the playfulness and the power of the arts to make a strong statement.

Discussing Religion and Culture

One of the discussion questions we had in regards to Dangerous Living, the documentary we watched in November, was how do we begin to understand a religious belief that we do not share? There are many things that people believe with religious conviction that we must consider as instructors in creating curriculum and addressing topics such as evolution. Our students may have to deal with these issues in their own lives or in the school systems where they will teach. There are also issues not related to religion, but rather cultural or regional differences. For example, in the state of Georgia it is legal to strike a child and this can come up in education leading to debates on whether this is acceptable or not or how to address it in curriculum.

One way to address this issue with our students is to start familiarizing them with different religious ideas or practices through our courses. We can encourage dialogue by looking at religion or culture through readings and videos. That discussion will help us unpack some of our own beliefs and opinions about others’ beliefs and consider our lens, the media’s lens, and lenses of others. There are still students who believe that all Muslims are from the Middle East and that that represents a fairly homogenous culture. We need to help them see beyond that and realize that religion is not one ethnic group or region, but rather a universal phenomenon with believers of all religions all over the world.

Dangerous Living really brings gay rights issues and religious issues together. Those are both important issues for us to address with our students. You have to deal with both issues because they are closely linked. There are many mainstream films, in addition to documentaries, that offer interesting views of GLBT issues such as Philadelphia, Angels in America, Fresa y Chocolate, Milk, etc. Even gay characters in television over the past decade offer an interesting starting point for discussion of stereotypes and visibility.

These discussions on religion, culture, beliefs, sexuality, and human rights are very important to have with future educators so that they are prepared to think and act critically in their classrooms.

Dangerous Living, continued

Our discussion on GLBT issues abroad through the Dangerous Living documentary also brought up to questions of religion, politics, and considering other cultures not in this film.

It may be a Western idea to associate gay and lesbian people with secular views. There are many religious gay individuals and it is a huge conflict, in the U.S. and elsewhere, to manage the gay and religious identities and decide on the safety of coming out. There is a fear of losing that community.

Now, with recent legislation gay marriage has become a very sensitive issue for the GLBT community in the U.S. There is a big question of where gay people are going to be in the new administration. The gay marriage issue is really just the tip of the iceberg when you look at the decisions being made across the country. The reasons certain legislation is passing in each state is very complicated, though people are trying to attribute responsibility to certain groups. There seems to be a general fear of legitimizing homosexuality through gay marriage legalization and the increased visibility of the gay community that will come with that.

When we look at the documentary Dangerous Living, the political context is particularly salient. In many of these countries homosexuality was accepted traditionally or even recently. It seems to be who is in charge and what is going on in politics that determines the stance taken toward gay people. It is very much a current social and political practice more than a legacy from religion or something else. Even within the U.S. you see places where there is a lot of support and organizations in schools and the community, but other places where it just isn’t visible or accepted.

As the documentary is five years old we were left with a question of what the journey has been in these countries since then. And what about countries and societies not covered in this film? There was a discussion that in Korea there is less conflict in this issue: there are many famous transgender or gay actors and actresses and TV personalities, and you see open clubs supporting the GLBT communities in the universities. There seems to be less of a stigma around it and you see homosexuality more prominently in the media. It seems worthwhile to take a closer look at other countries to see where and how it is accepted and incorporated in the culture, and in what ways there are still less obvious challenges.