PERCEPTION CHECK
"Peace be with you." ~Luke 24:35-48
Without going to check, can you name what is in the center on the back side of a United States one-dollar bill? Once you are ready, then I will tell you, it is the word one. How many things in our lives have gone into what intercultural communication studies call passive perception? What is it in our lives that we actively pay attention to – we actively perceive?
All of our perceptions are subjective. Nothing we call as objective is truly objective. Perception is defined as how we experience our world by way of our five senses. We are influenced by our life experiences, our judgements, what we have been exposed to, our cultures, and our beliefs.
“We don’t see them as they are, we see them as we are.” ~Anaïs Nin
A few years ago, while I was attending a program in Rochester, New York, a friend told me that I have been attending a “sterile church” and not a “real church”. Before hearing this, I attended a number of different Catholic churches over my life time, in a variety of languages, and in several different countries around the world. They all seem similar - we sat in pews or in chairs arranged like pews, we kneel and stand accordingly, and we say similar prayers.
The first time I attended this “real church”, I felt scared. This was a mass, held every Sunday at a homeless shelter, with the people whom I had forgotten and I had passively perceived. This was a place where everyone was welcomed. The majority of the population were people with black-colored skin. Upon entering the front doors, it was chaotic, noisy, and people were jammed into this small space. There was one section with chairs situated like pews where we took our seats and I sat in between my two friends to carve out a small safe space. As I sat and looked around, people were in wheel chairs, some stood, some napped, some sat at benches, and some sat at chairs scattered throughout. There was a commotion before mass began because the scheduled priest came late, people were talking loudly, while the choir continued to rehearse. What stood out was their choir. This choir was unlike any other I had ever listened to because they sung from the depths of their hearts. They used what they had like broken mics and a semi-working piano. Some members stood and made different gestures whenever the choir sung. People came as they were.
There were many questions that entered my mind. Why was I scared? Why are people everywhere? Why does this place exist? My initial feeling of being scared slowly transitioned into incremental understanding of the need to alter my perception by doing familiar things in a new way. In this case, I needed to attend “real church” to alter my perception of the way a “sterile church” looks. This helped me to see how much larger the body of Christ could be if we were able to change our perception.
How am I invited to change my passive perception into active perception?
Tram Nguyen