Navigating cross-cultural differences while creating Spirit Rising

Something a QUIP Friend said early on has really stayed with me. I don’t think he was trying to be prophetic, but his words worked on me that way: “The work that you are doing,” he said, “is a microcosm for work that must be done with deep fissures in society.”

I think the question “What does it meant to be related to these people we do not know, whose lives and beliefs look very different from our own?” is the question right now, not just for Quakers but for all of us who live on this planet. Our technology, civilization and environmental degradation have both made us more connected and more aware of how we as human beings have always been connected and interdependent. How might knowing each other transform, nourish and challenge the ways that we live now?

I think we did our best to live into these questions – faithfully, awkwardly, imperfectly – in doing this book. I hope it can be a journey for you, as it was for us.

Angelina Conti was the project coordinator for Spirit Rising and also served on the editorial board. She works as Peace Studies teacher at the Woolman Semester, a high school semester program in California.

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