Across the Miles

Hello, I'm Dick Foth, and I'd like to welcome you to known stories to make sense of it all. These stories are what I call walking books, real-life people, different places, different ages, different cultures, and I want to have some conversations with them across disciplines and generations and cultures in order to encourage a kind of knowing fresh lenses through which to see the world. One of those lenses will be Scripture, or more specifically, Jesus of Nazareth, whose life, I believe, changed the course of the history of the world. So thanks for listening in. Great to have you with us. I have a friend, Norm Edwards, who is a great young guy. He grew up in Montreal, Canada, that has spent much of his life in other parts of the globe. And recently we had a conversation about culture that I think you'll find interesting. Norm, it's great to have you here today. It's good to be here. And I want to talk to you about culture. So I'm going to read from Miriam Webster, Dictionary, a couple of their definitions of culture. Here's one. The customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group. That's one. Here's another one. The characteristic features of everyday existence, such as diversions or way of life, shared by people in a place or time. So we talk about the culture of Minnesota or Southern culture or whatever it is. So my classic question, I know it's classic, it's my standard one. Where were you born and brought up? Yeah, it's interesting. The second definition, I'm sorry, talking about a place and a time. I think the time is as important as the place, depending on where you were born and brought up. I was brought up in Montreal in a French-speaking family. My mom is French. My dad is English, but the home language was French. So you're a Kebacquois, as I said, we miss you. Okay, so I'm saying that correctly, Kebacquois. And you went from there where? I moved around. Yes, I left there at 17 years old and went to Rhode Island to study. Was there for a number of years met my wife there. When we got married, we moved to Kansas City for a few years from there to another place in Missouri, Springfield. And then from there to Cortez, Colorado, that was the smallest town I'd ever lived in at the time, 6,000 people in the town. And then you went to a big place? And then from there to Moscow, Russia. Well, okay. Why not? Cortez, Moscow. Pass to the continent. Somewhere around 14 to 17 million people, depending on the day. Eating borched. Yes, sir. So I'm a kid from Oakland, California, spent a few years in India as a little guy, came back to Missouri for a year, California, then to Illinois, back to California, DC, now in Colorado. Each of those places is a culture. What kind of culture in your growing up years was it being French, Canadian, or Kebacquois, whatever that? However, we speak of that. Give me some sort of triangulation on the character of that culture. Sure. The French Canadian culture is very different than the Canadian culture. Okay. And people wonder what part of Canada it's almost exclusively Quebec. There are some pockets somewhere out west, but the Quebec, Kebacquois, there's another one at the Acadians of the East, but the Quebec, in the largest one, is a culture that is very insulated intentionally. They choose to remain insulated in the sense of maintaining their culture, their language, their customs, very close families, very Catholic. Okay. And that kind of defines the broad stroke of Quebecers. Okay. How does that differ from Cortez, Colorado? Cortez, Colorado, and Quebec. Well, there is there is pretty much no similarity except that people are good people and people are living their lives trying to make a living. That's about the extent of how it goes. Yeah, I heard an ambassador once in DC. There said there are two nations in the world, good people and bad people. I don't know that I would call it that way. We really, we loved our time in Cortez, but it was a huge adjustment. Sure. Simple life. If you went just outside of the city limits, you had ranchers and people who just lived off the land and that approach to life, whereas I didn't grow up anywhere near that. So you're the core lens of your life was was a French religious culture touched by baguettes and cross-hands or whatever, but you now live a lot of the time or have for some years in Eastern Europe or in Russia and Ukraine. Correct. What are some of the some of the core values in that part of the world? Some of the core values would would actually kind of be the same with it in the sense of family. Family is a big value. All right. People I believe in the Soviet Union value their individual identity or what you used to be. Yes, I'm sorry. Forgive me. I should know much better. Even though their identity was somewhat stolen from them, their personal individual identity, people still long for it. And so with the collapse of the Soviet Union, you've seen a lot of that development come out. And so the individual cultures because the Soviet Union was such a broad empire, it swallowed up so many people's that you have these pockets of individual ethnic identities really rising up now and taken pride in their languages, in their culture, in who they are as people. So you have those values. Family, personal identity, some of what we have seen that is probably a holdover from the Soviet is the challenge with trust. Trust is a big difference between what you see in North America and former Soviet Union. Talk to me about that. In North America for the most part, I trust you even though I don't know you until you prove otherwise. Okay. So I'd leave my bike in the front yard when I was a kid and not expect that any difference, I'd find any difference, my bike would be there when I came back. In the former Soviet countries, you anticipate that you can't trust somebody unless they prove otherwise. So there you have to earn trust from the get-go and here it tends to be given more readily and you have to lose it. Yes. That'd be fair to say. Right, here we've earned it until it's lost there. You don't have it until you earn it. Wow. You know, it's interesting that you talk about family as a cultural value. Family is a culture, isn't it? And it's interesting that whether you're in, I would bet this is true just about in any ethnic group, in any place in the world, that that piece really, really plays a basic part in peoples existence and how they view the world. It's interesting. My family culture was one of travel because we went overseas early and Ruth's was one of stability. So I was sort of the wing-sized, she was sort of the roots side and our marriage has reflected that. She has encouraged me. Now you have family, your girls were brought up in the Ukraine or in Russia. Is that correct? Yeah. My girls viewed that as home. If there is one, we just have this conversation with the girls just recently. One of them says to people, I'm American, I live overseas. The other one says I'm Canadian, I live overseas. So that's an interesting dynamic right there. But I believe that you don't really know a person until you know about their family. Okay. I think there's just so much root to the person there. Right. Whether it was a bad situation or a good one, it's just when you meet somebody, you may meet them at chapter five, but you need to reach chapter one to four to really know them and that's mostly lived in their family. Whether it was even foster home or whatever it might have been. And so when you look at my girls, for example, you've got to know what we lived as a family, to truly know my girls. I think that's where culture, where values, where family all come together. So you speak French? Yes. Your girls speak French? No, they understand quite a bit. Okay. Do they speak Russian? Yes. Do they speak English? Yes. But all of us speak family? Correct. You know, that's really an interesting piece because when you go overseas, I was brought up as a young kid from three to seven in India where I had a British colonial culture embedded or immersed in a larger Indian, mostly Hindu culture. So you have all those pieces in play and they call us third culture kids because the culture we create is an amalgam of the other cultures that we bring to play. Exactly. But it's fascinating that you bring up family because I think that cuts across a lot of that part. Any of the thoughts? Yeah, it does. It cuts across all of that. You were a blend of the experiences you've had. Sure. And because our kids experience different cultures at different times, they become a blend of that while retaining their identity. So it's this unintangible piece of their lives that the challenges to it is a confused loyalty at times, not to a family, but to where do you belong? Right. You have an ignorance of your home culture. So that's a little bit of a challenge and then you're aware that you don't necessarily fit anywhere. But that in itself makes you fit in your family more in the sense that you're anchored there more than anywhere else. What a huge challenge that proposes or that presents for the question of immigration today. When you think of it, coming from Syria to Greece or coming from Iraq to the United States or to the UK, the challenges aren't as finding a home and getting in a school. It's this whole business about how do I respond and relate? Absolutely. That is a massive challenge. I have to say, though, I think America, probably in my experience, does that better than almost any other nation? Why do you think that is? I think historically America and Canada are nations made up of immigrants. So we were immigrants from the Greek yet go even with Native Americans coming from various places, right? Exactly. And the history is not that far removed. It's only a couple of hundred years. Exactly. Where you go to Europe and that history is so far removed now and they have become anchored in their particular culture. It's always fascinating to me in Europe how the countries are so small. They're the size of states in the United States and yet you have a completely different culture, language, ethnic group, way of life. Everything is different as soon as you cross a border. It's just fascinating. But I think history has given them the time to develop that. I see. And in America, we haven't gone there yet. Right. And I think it's a beautiful thing that we're trying not to lose it. Sure. Absolutely. One last question and we could have this conversation forever. But one last question would be how do you see the culture of the kingdom of God impacting other cultures or cutting across other cultures or whatever language you want to use? How do you talk to me a little bit about that? Well, in every country that I've been in, people tend to serve God through the filter of their culture. Okay. I don't think that's wrong. Sure. I think that is kingdom living. You find how you through your culture can live the kingdom and the kingdom finds you in your culture. So the scripture that says, so this good news to the Greeks, to the Jews, to the Scythians, to the whomever knew what it was talking about or knew what it meant. Absolutely. Same message, different approach. So the way in which I grew up in church at some point in my life in Quebec was very, very different than the way it's happening in the kingdom living in Russia or Cortez. Or Cortez for sure. You know, I heard them. I heard an anthropologist who was a linguist who was into the interpretation or not the interpretation, but the translation of scripture, which is always a challenge when you're in other cultures. And he said, I think he said in West Africa, you would never translate that scripture where Jesus says, behold, I stand at the door and knock. You would not translate that way because in that culture, the only people who knock on your door are thieves. Your friends stand outside and call. That's not good. So the thing that strikes me about you, is that you and your family seem to have moved from culture to culture and gained from each piece in some way. You don't seem to have fought it. You don't seem to have pressed back against it, but you have made those cultures kind of an amalgam of how you talk about Jesus and how you talk about the kingdom. Absolutely. There's a term for third culture kids. They use the term chameleon. You adapt to each environment that you're in. And it's not pejorative. It isn't a bad absolutely not. It's not negative to do that. It's honoring the culture that you're in. It's understanding that your culture is not the right one. It is a different one. And it's understanding that those people have a great grid that they view life through that you need to learn about and learn from. And so your worldview is what gets affected. And it gets expanded. And that's a very positive way when you're living, kingdom living. Normedward, thank you. Norm, my friend from Montreal, Rhode Island, Missouri, Colorado, Ukraine, and sitting in my car here in a parking lot. Great to be with you. Enjoy their time. Thanks. Bye-bye.