I've come a long way

A long time ago I asked one of my professors who just got back from playing a game of tennis what the score was. He replied, “we didn’t keep score. We chose not to quantify ineptitude.” Sometimes when I am asked how old I am, I am tempted to say, “I choose not to quantify a life of ineptitude and alienation by keeping track of my age.”

On better days, I tend to think of the long way I have come. In my case, literally, that’s a long, long way. From where I was born to where I have spent most of my life, which is Ohio, it is approximately 8500 miles.

Chronologically it’s a pretty straightforward journey. <show slides with pictures of growing up, family now, job as wireless engineer and work as a community organizer>

In spiritual terms, though, my journey is from alienation to inclusion. For someone who looks like me, social alienation is not hard to come by. I have the misfortune to look like whomever the US is currently at war with. In the 80’s, I was Iranian. In the 90s, I was Iraqi. After 9/11, I’m a generic Muslim terrorist. One friend suggested that I shave my moustache to keep the harassment to a bare minimum. A policeman who pulled me over for no reason in Columbus advised me not to wear a hat. I wondered why he said that.

My sense of alienation was most acute in Oklahoma where I lived for five years during the 80’s. I call Oklahoma my personal Vietnam. Life in Oklahoma was an eternity of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. I was so lonely I’d try to strike up a conversation with wrong number callers: “that’s ok. Where are ya’ll from?” I’d go to Christian churches and find a circle of empty seats around me as if my skin color was a contagious disease.

Over the next two decades I realized that my salvation from alienation could only come from inclusion or rather, self-inclusion. I became an extrovert. Instead of belly-aching about strangers thinking that I was someone fresh off the boat who couldn’t speak English, I’d introduce myself and try to establish a human connection based on any perceived common ground.

Another discovery I made is that loneliness, alienation and even depression could be relieved if I admitted the privileges that I do have and worked to share them with others. I may not have White privilege, but I have other privileges resulting from my being male, straight, middle class, well-educated, suburbanite, and an American citizen.

In 2003, I became the co-chair of the Same Sex Marriage Task Force at First UU, Columbus. We organized services at various churches and put together a Gay Straight Solidarity Service with Christian and Jewish clergy and about five hundred participants. Later on I began the Racial Diversity Task Force that mobilized people of different races to come together for what we call, public witness events such as the “We ALL Belong” rally to the Ohio State House where we publicly witnessed to our belief that we are God’s children without exceptions and no second class citizens. I was instrumental in changing the name of the Social Justice Committee at First UU to Justice Action Ministry (JAM for short) to emphasize to the congregation and the larger community that we are a ministry, not just a committee. The congregation voted to work on two justice areas to focus on for the next two years, Women’s Health and Poverty Alleviation. We found that deeper involvement in community-wide justice issues made our church a bit more diverse and attracted youth because they could see we walk our talk.

Here are some clips of events we organized (I will only show a glimpse of each to save time):

If you are interested in organizing or participating in a public witness event related to a justice area of your own choice, please include your name on the sign up sheet.

So the fatherless child from Southern India who had to sit all alone in church in Oklahoma found that his spiritual well-being is tied in with the well-being of others. He still has moments of loneliness and alienation but at least he knows where some of the medicine for his condition is. Thank you again for being my companions on this journey this morning.

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