Back From My Travels

I am home after being gone since last Thursday. I went on one of my “barnstorming the Pacific Northwest” trips. Our conference of churches—which consists of congregations in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska—has an annual meeting on the last weekend in June, hosted by one of the congregations, as well as a one-day meeting in February. The meeting in February traditionally has been held in or near Portland. This year, we met at Portland Mennonite Church.

I left after work last Thursday morning and drove as far as Spokane to spend the night. On Friday morning, I picked up Jan and Gary, who were also attending the meeting. Jan is on the board with me and is the person for whom I am making the commission quilt top. Her husband is self-employed but has also served as interim pastor for congregations within our conference. The drive from Spokane to Portland takes about six hours and it was nice to have the company. We got to Portland mid-afternoon and met up with Jeryl, our pastor, who had taken the train from Kalispell the night before.

Our gathering on Saturday consisted of approximately 50 people; each congregation is encouraged to send their pastor and one lay leader or other representative. I was there in my official capacity as a board member but also as a representative from our church. The topic was “Intercultural Competency,” and the presenters were two women from MCC Central States.

[FYI, this note came in to all the churches who made comforters for MCC a few weeks ago: Thank you to the hundreds of volunteers who came together in January for MCC’s Great Winter Warm-up! Due to snow, some events were delayed by a week, but the totals are in and we collected more than 9500 comforters, that’s 3,000 more than our goal! From start to finish, each comforter is created with love and MCC always hears from comforter recipients that they can feel the love from the hands that created their new comforter.] 

I went into this workshop not knowing quite what to expect. Our conference has a number of Hispanic congregations and we have, at times, struggled with understanding how best to relate to them. We get randomized seating assignments at these events, and I found myself at a table with four men: a man a bit older than me who is also on the board, the young African-American pastor of one of the Oregon churches, a pastor from one of the Hispanic churches, and another young man, also from one of the Hispanic churches. (We make translation services available for those who are more comfortable listening in Spanish than English.)

I thought the presenters did a great job of navigating a difficult topic. They started by having us evaluate our own personal cultures—the backgrounds and identities that influence each of us most strongly—then moved us on to discussions of group dynamics. The topic is certainly too complex to tackle in a one-day session, but they gave us a lot to think about.

Something happened toward the end of the meeting that I’m still processing. Each table group was given a case study and 30 minutes to talk about it. At the end of that 30 minutes, a representative from each group was supposed to present to the larger gathering. Whenever I am part of a table group that is asked to present something, invariably, every single time—including this one—I get asked to be the group representative. It has happened for years. I used to be willing to be the spokesperson, because if you put a microphone in front of me, I WILL talk, but as I get older, I am more inclined to encourage someone else to take that role. (Also, I was sewing down a comforter binding during this meeting and I wanted to get the last 9” of it done before the meeting ended.) Our young African-American pastor finally agreed to be our representative.

After the last table had presented its findings, a woman stood up and said she was dismayed to see that all of the table representatives had been men. (At this, all of the men at my table looked at me somewhat reproachfully.) I overheard her later telling someone that when it came time to choose a spokesperson from her table, everyone immediately assumed one of the men would fill that role.

I am not trying to minimize or discount her experience in any way. I have no doubt that she experienced this exactly the way she described it, but it made me think about the different ways in which each of us moves through the world. I don’t sense any difference in treatment in the church because of my gender—especially now that most of the older generation of men is gone—but she is younger than me and clearly she does. And I am not sure what to think.

After the meeting, the board decamped to the restaurant next to the hotel and had a short board meeting, which we concluded the following day after the early service at Portland Mennonite. I missed seeing Katherine, our Executive Conference Minister, because she was home sick with the flu. I like to talk quilting and vintage sewing machines with her.

By 3 p.m., I was on my way up to Seattle. Thankfully, it being Sunday afternoon, traffic was light. I had made reservations to stay at a wonderful Airbnb just a few doors down from the house where DD#2 lives with three other Gonzaga grads. She met me there and we went out and got some dinner.

I’ll post about the rest of my travels tomorrow, but for now, I leave you with a pic of my remnant rack haul:

There will be more treasures to show you tomorrow.