Living Your Difference As Gift
As someone living and working in another country and culture, I have become quite familiar with the experience of “difference”. Some days I hardly notice it, having lived, breathed and moved in its shadow for so long. But at other times it still impinges, unwelcome, upon my consciousness: when I walk into the lunchroom and don’t understand the conversation with its jokes and innuendoes; when I try to make awkward conversation in Tagalog with the lady I buy vegetables from; or when my opinions on how we should live together as community seem to conflict with those of others. The first few months of working in the place where I have my ministry now was an especially interesting experience. As a Singaporean with a background in law, newly venturing into research and advocacy on social issues in the Philippines with colleagues who were sociologists, I felt quite often like a fish out of water and unsure of myself. One day as I was relating this to a companion, she asked, “Well, what d...