**SPECIAL** The Genius of the "AND" with Shaina Zavala | Part 3

**Join us for a special summer series of conversations with Shaina and Piet about the genius of the "and." We are so excited to share this 4-part discussion with you AND for the launch of season 4 of Sidewalk Conversations this August! If you enjoy this episode and want to check out all of the things Piet is working on, head on over to the Piet Van Waarde channel on Youtube.**

Today, we explore how either-or thinking creates false dichotomies, particularly around diversity and merit, and how embracing the "and"  allows for more nuanced understanding.

• Personal story about university chaplain experience with minority students feeling disconnected
• Resistance encountered when trying to understand different experiences
• How comfort in black-and-white thinking prevents us from facing harder truths
• The false perception that acknowledging differences creates division
• Benefits of seeking understanding across differences
• Applying "and" thinking to politics and other controversial topics
• Maintaining personal convictions while recognizing others' truths

Join us next episode as we continue this conversation, exploring how this approach affects the life of the church.

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Episode Transcript

Piet Van Waarde (00:00):
All right.
So now I want to get intosomething that may be a little
bit more controversial.
All right, so in our culture,one of the places where I see
the either or thinking soprominently is in this area of
discussions about diversity anddiscussions about merit, and so

(00:23):
I'll set it up this way.
I had an experience when I wasearly on in my career.
I was serving as a chaplain ata university, and there was a
group of minority students, andI could sense that they were not
necessarily feeling as part ofthe university community as I

(00:43):
hoped they would, and the truthof it was that I grew up in a
predominantly white community,and so I didn't have a lot of
information about, like, some ofthe challenges that go along
with growing up as a person ofcolor in our culture and so on,
and so I wanted to ask thequestion.
I was like okay, so let's meetwith some of these students and
ask the question what makes thisexperience or this environment

(01:06):
challenging for you?
And what was surprising to mewas that there was another group
of people who were saying well,why do we need to focus on that
?
Why can't we just be all likebrothers and sisters in Christ.
Why do we have to talk aboutthe ways in which we're
different?
About the ways in which we'redifferent, and I was thinking
well, we can talk about that tooand also understand that this

(01:33):
was kind of difficult and thereare maybe unique challenges to
their experience in thiscommunity, and can we like pay
attention to that and beconscious of the fact that we're
all brothers and sisters inChrist?

Shaina Zavala (01:43):
Isn't it interesting like hearing you say
it now.
It sounds so common sense,right, like again, this is true
and this is true, and you knowyou said this earlier, but in
higher education, in religioussettings and in a lot of the
time, you know, in business,those are the major points where
finding the and is difficult insociety and I think people

(02:05):
again are used to seeing thingsvery black and very white, and
in this instance it was probablyquite literal.
And I think this goes back to ifmore people were able to have
that mindset of all of thesethings can be true, and what I
find, as a person who's mixedand I'm half white, half black
is that when it gets to thethings that are harder to accept

(02:29):
, or the harder the ugly truths.
Um, that's where people thecomfort is in.
It's black or white and so, hey, we can just do this and that's
going to be more comfortablefor everybody.
And again, what we want toencourage everybody to do is to
be like it's not supercomfortable, but it's going to
serve everyone better if werecognize this to be true, like

(02:51):
in that instance, it was justwhat's their experience and is
it different?
You know, the answer could havebeen and for some reason that
tends to have a negativeconnotation when you want to do
that, but it doesn't have to.
It was just what's theirexperience.
Is it different?
Can we make it better and do itwas just what's their
experience?
Is it different?
Can we make it better?
And the fear we talked aboutthat in a previous episode, the
fear that it could make it havea snowball effect or it could
cause division or it could kept,you know, some people from

(03:13):
wanting to even have thatconversation.

Piet Van Waarde (03:15):
And that's, and that's why I think this, this
conversation, is so valuable, isbecause I think it takes away,
um, some of the the theassociated challenges.
To say, like you dispel some ofthe things that are not true,
Like it's okay to have theconversation even if it's

(03:38):
uncomfortable, because there aresome things you discover along
the way that really are helpful,that people say, oh well, this
may actually contribute to ourfeeling more unified as I
understand what some of thechallenges are that these people
have experienced or not tointerrupt you, but what's the
harm in if, at the very least,you're going to get more
understanding from somebody?

Shaina Zavala (03:59):
And again, this is not something that's unique
to a race thing.
This could go into anyconversation.
You could take this intopolitics, you could take this
into um you know any super hotbutton topic right now that's
going on, you know, in the media.
You could, you could say I justwant to come with the approach
that multiple things can be trueat the same time and imagine
you have a bunch of adultswalking around having a healthy

(04:21):
dialogue.
I know what my truths are, Iknow what my belief system is, I
know those things and I canrecognize that somebody else has
them and we can have aconversation and I'm open and
this can be true and this can betrue.
And that's what that comes downto, whether it's diversity,
whether it's you know we saidmerit, whether it's on any topic
.

Piet Van Waarde (04:41):
Well, I want to have one more conversation
about this with you, but we'regoing to save it for my next
episode, which is how does thisaffect the life of the church?