Stays the Same: Always Changing
Stays the Same. Always Changing.
It's a paradox that calls into being the yin-yang nature of existence.
Even as cycles of time spin around us, the circle is more of a spiral than a fixed wheel, and often feels more like a spider web at work, shaping into new connections and intricate patterns that take shape and then in a moment are gone, only to be replaced by new ones.
I'm now settling into my sixties with a recognition that what I understood to be true as a child (back in the early 1970's) has shifted and at times has been upended and recalibrated. And of course, those who were aging into their sixties during that time were definitely feeling the same way. At that time the revolutions at work in civil rights and women's rights (as well as the birth of an environmental justice movement) were shaking long-held notions of human relationships and societal norms. I was being consciously formed in a whole new atmosphere around racial equity that just one generation earlier could only imagine..
As I grew into adulthood, I felt the tensions around the "well, of course" attitude that I was given as a child to understand the innate equality all people deserved, and the struggle of an older generation "trying to get it" as their world-view was being taken apart. And yes, this generational pattern has been at work forever, as our human race tries to come to grip with who we really are and how we fit into this intricately beautiful creation.
Funny, isn't it, how things keep coming around again to shake us off our "grounded-ness" and give us space to grow. And even more amazing are the ways in which this is just a reflection of an ongoing process - another spin around the circle.
And so it is that pronoun buttons have made an entry into the cafe as a reminder of my place for growing.
As a child, gender was a simple equation. Either / or. That's how it was reflected to me in language, in customs, in the way the world worked. And although it was evident to me, even as a kid, that not everyone fit into the boxes of either / or, those exceptions were meant to be seen as oddities. And yes I witnessed, and sadly participated in, the "othering" of those whose behaviors didn't match up to the gender boxes so carefully crafted by the generations before us. I do remember feeling the dis-ease of these interactions because it didn't match up with the messages I was getting of how all people were beloved children of God - created in beauty.
That an understanding of gender has been my blind-spot over the years, and that I didn't tie gender-politics into my other activism as a young adult, provides me with a feeling of disappointment in myself. That I was ready to hear and understand the intersections of gender and equity some twenty years ago, I am grateful. That I am still learning and have much room to grow, I am aware. This new awareness has offered me a place to grow more deeply as a person and as a business owner in a restaurant industry that has benefited from the abuse of gender roles.
While I have promoted the cafe as a safe and welcoming place to work, it is true that it has been less inviting for someone who didn't fit into stereotypical gender boxes. The tensions of generational understanding - and my own ways in which I missed the mark - meant that those who did join us on staff often didn't get the support they needed to be seen for who they were.
As an employer, I could certainly wrap my head around the challenges of young people whose paperwork didn't match the way they identified themselves. I made efforts to get names and pronouns correct, but, missed the deeper work of building relationships. The cafe has always (thank you to our predecessor (Sweetski's Bakery) been a place that offered an unconditional customer welcome of the full continuum of gender identity and sexual orientation. We posted the right signs and supported the right causes. Positions throughout the cafe are filled by a mix of genders. Policies are in place to protect staff from gender and sexual harassment. And still something seems to be amiss.
In the last few years, I've had many personal experiences surrounding gender issues that have pushed my comfort zone around what I've been taught, what I've understood, what I've taken as true, what I've missed as unfair, and what I've recognized as my own ways of causing harm. And I'm certainly seeing myself as one member of a generation that is being shaken up by younger people who are growing up with the "well, of course" understandings that gender is a continuum and there are expressions of gender all along this continuum that are valid and natural and beautiful.
The use of language is a direct reflection of these new understandings. Just as I was shocked as a child by older adults' use of language to describe people of color, or how older men used language to demean women, I now see how the language of gender itself can cause shock for our younger generations. If you understand yourself as not a typical (stereotypical) he or she, those pronouns, as an older generation knows them, don't feel right when used in your presence. It's an evolution in process and even for someone who is aligned and allied with the movement, it can be dismaying to fall back into old habits of thinking and speaking. Fortunately, I find in this generation a willingness to both forgive and teach.
And yet, the desire to move forward, get on with it, and not have to correct an older generation over and over again, is exactly how I felt growing up wondering why the world couldn't just learn. Here we go again. Keep the changes coming.
As you see more pronoun buttons in use at the cafe, please understand we're just doing what we've always done, changing to fit a new reality. Although it's not "just like composting" back in 2006, it is just like those efforts to learn a new habit, a new set of vocabulary, and new behaviors that now seem pretty normal.
May we find our walk along this Green Path both familiar and new, comforting and challenging. And, if we're open enough, to recognize so much more along the path than we've seen before.