Living alongside

For most of the last twenty-five years, I have been an American living in Scotland – living, loving, learning – feeling very much a part of the place I now call home.

And one of the reasons I would identify as enabling me to embrace my adopted home, to connect to the community is that I am not alone in my difference. Scotland is a diverse population in a multi-cultural United Kingdom and a European Union that has a colourful, vibrant tapestry.

I love the rich difference and the gifts our diversity offer: ‘multi-cultural’; ‘richly diverse’; ‘living alongside’ and ‘tolerant’ These are words I have used to describe Scotland, the UK and Europe – I have said them with pride and great affection - but recently my understanding of what multi-cultural means has been given a shake.

In September, I travelled to Bosnia-Herzegovina and visited Srebrenica, where in July 1995 Europe saw its most horrific unilateral act of violence since the Holocaust – over 8000 Muslim men and boys systematically slaughtered in just four days. We met with the mothers left behind and some of the survivors who daily face the memory of what was done to them.

We were taken to the International Commission on Missing Persons, where they have worked for over a decade to identify the bodies of over 6000 individuals and we stood in the morgue among row after row of unidentified bones. It was unimaginable that something like this could happen.

We spent time in Sarajevo, a city of great beauty, awash with culture and history, still bearing the scars of bombs and bullets. And it was there that the sharp challenge to my understanding was laid down.

Our host, Resad spoke of how quickly and unexpectedly war had come. In a matter of weeks, he went from a nineteen year old in Levi’s and Converse to a soldier in his father’s borrowed work overalls with a machine gun and three bullets.

In that struggle after the breakup of Yugoslavia, when Bosnia-Herzegovina voted for independence but was violently challenged by Serbia, neighbours turned on neighbours and life lost all recognition. Resad spoke of his pre-war home and used these familiar words: ‘multi-cultural’,’richly diverse’, ‘tolerant’ and ‘living alongside’.

But there is a profound difference between ‘living alongside’ and ‘living with’, between those who share your space and those you share yourself with. If we are ever to be truly together, we need to move beyond tolerance to a deep cohesion that not only accepts, but embraces, not only ‘knows about’ but seeks to ‘understand’. Perhaps that is the first and greatest challenge to our Union.

About the author

Sally Foster-Fulton is the Convener of the Church of Scotland’s Church and Society Council and is the Associate Minister at Dunblane Cathedral. Sally is originally from South Carolina, and studied divinity at Columbia Seminary in Decatur, Georgia and Trinity College Glasgow. She was ordained into her first charge as minister of Camelon Irving Parish Church in Falkirk. Sally is an ACT Alliance Climate Change Ambassador and has written books of prayers and reflection for Holy Week and Advent published by Wild Goose Publications. She is a regular contributor to Scottish television and radio broadcasts.