the generalisto

dmha:

speakingoffaith:

Knowing Many Faces
Trent Gilliss, Online Editor

I’m finally getting to reblog this photo and quote post from DMHA:

“When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky” - Buddha

Ten minutes later, she posted this image, a perfect complement:

We read a lot of news that paints people, religions, political affiliations, communities, immigrants, and so on with broad brush strokes. What we lose in the process is an understanding of the one, of the individual. I know it; I feel it; I fight against it. But, it was a couple of months ago that Mona Eltahawy challenged my thinking.

Krista, Kate, Mitch, and I were invited to the Ford Foundation, one of our major funders, for a constructive critique of Speaking of Faith — our programming, topics we’re covering, voices we’re including, interviewing techniques, diversity of staff, etc.

Ms. Eltahawy, a columnist who writes about Muslim issues, was one of the panelists who attended. She hadn’t heard our show before being invited to participate in this group. She listened, and as we were talking she said something that surprised me — that she loved our Being Catholic show. She, as a Muslim, identified with the nine lay voices in that program. Why? To her, being Muslim is a splendorous outpouring of expression — from the ultraconservative to the secular, from the professional engineer to the counter-cultural novelist — and that, to some degree, Muslims themselves describe their faith and live it out at many different levels, in many different ways. They wrestle with their faith in much the same manner as those Catholic voices.

It’s serendipitous, and fortunate, that we have stumbled upon Ms. Hassan’s tumblog. This Somali student who describes herself as a “nomad studying Anthropology and Sociology in adopted Saint Paul” is one individual informing my cultural understanding of the many communities in which I live. She loves films, especially French ones. She has an eclectic music palette — Judy Garland and REM and Negramaro and…. She looks at the ground; she photographs it.

She hangs out at some of the same parts of St. Kate’s campus that my wife and I would hang out with our son.

And, she reminds me of the other communities we encounter that shape my understanding of identity and what it means to be human — and how to celebrate too.

This is a wonderful piece. Thank you for this and also introducing me to Ms. Eltahawy!