The following content was used during my keynote address to a group of very dedicated and wonderful volunteers at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock (UUCSR), where I am currently President and Chair of the Board of Trustees. This marked my 19th year teaching first graders in our Religious Education Sunday classes. Each year, a teacher is selected to share their Odyssey. I had the honor of being selected in 2012.
I believe the following story will provide you with a deeper view of who I am and the journey I have traveled. Each one of us has a story to tell, and every story is inspirational in its own way. I encourage you to share your story any way you can – whether written in a journal for your eyes only, or spoken publicly, among small groups of friends or large audiences. Sharing your story is a way to strengthen your identity and liberate your spirit.
Odyssey – RE 2012 UUCSR (Nancy Chen Baldwin)
[Edited March 2015]
There is nothing more spiritual than coming to UUCSR on Sunday morning to teach our first grade class, “The Haunting House.” As a lifelong learner, on each teaching Sunday, I also put on my learning cap. I come to learn from my students. We ask the children what “Haunting House” means to them. More often than not, they get it. It’s a place where we build houses. Houses of different kinds, houses that we live in, and houses in which we store memories from each stage in our lives; houses that we come back to visit over and over again, in a spiritual sense. The most impressive thing about children this age, to me, is their human spirit, their search for truth, their curiosity, and their desire to connect with each other. For me, these are the same reasons why I am there: to teach, to learn, and to be part of a community. The class curriculum and the students provide me with opportunities to continuously connect with my inner child and to grow spiritually.
Before we continue with my Odyssey, I would like to take a few moments to recognize and thank my teaching teammates, Debbie Kahn and Paul Winkler. They are the rocks of the class. They play key roles in shaping a respectful, loving, caring, and safe environment for our first grade children. Debbie has been a wonderful teammate, as well as good friend for 15 years. Paul joined the team two years ago, and he brought his energy and new technology to the class – a great addition. Of course, I had a good mentor, John Lee, who taught this same class for more than 20 years, and he has since moved to Florida retiring. There were many other teaching-mates during the last 17 years – Gary Hirschfield, Bill Keller, and Jean Cohen just to name a few. Thank you all.
Where did my UU roots come from? I was raised a Buddhist, and lived in a Confucian way that integrated Taoist elements. This blending was very fundamental of eastern religions, and it was my way of life. It had all the ingredients of UUism. I was born in a farmhouse on a mountaintop north of Taipei, Taiwan, just after the Chinese Kuomintang came to take over the island from the mainland. As I understand it, I came from a family of tea farmers. Although my family had emigrated from the mainland many years past, we were pretty much identified as “Taiwanese.” In fact, society saw anyone from the mountains this way – unless you came from mainland China with the Kuomintang, you were Taiwanese. I guess you could say this was my very first exposure to political and economic oppression, of mainland Chinese oppressors over the native Taiwanese and, of course, the semi-occupation of American troops. The good news, however, was that there were a lot of opportunities for economic growth. People working in farming areas – rice, tea, or otherwise – came to the city to seek a better life. It sounded like the American dream… except, here, it was on a small island and the dream generally only applied to newcomers from mainland China.
My family was very poor. Tea farming was pretty difficult on a mountainside. Everything was done by hand and finding a consistent water source was always a challenge. My parents eventually came down from the mountain and went to work in the city as construction workers. I, at the time, was the only child (I came to find out later that I indeed have an older sister and five younger siblings). I traveled with my parents from construction site to construction site. While they were busy building houses, I was left in the temporary housing of “tent cities”. I have experienced poverty in various forms. I was poor economically and poor in family connections. On the upside, I learned how to be independent early on in life and came to appreciate the different aspects of human conditions.
When I was five years old, my parents, in their continuous financial struggles, sold me to a Chinese woman in hopes of a better life for me. She who I came to call “mother” was a single woman who, in her own right, has a story to tell. The woman was probably about 24 years old when she bought me to be her chambermaid. In Chinese culture, it is very important for elders to be taken care of by family members. Since she was not able to bear children, I was her child “substitute.” She worked as a temporary wife for American GIs stationed in Taiwan right after the war; this was how earned money to support her blind mother and two younger brothers. Thanks to the Americans, I was fortunate enough to go to elementary school. This was part of the Sino-modernization plan, wherein all school-age children were required to attend school, regardless of gender (thank God for that, the female child did count). That was my big break. Through the state-instituted exam process, I went on to junior high school. I received a scholarship – otherwise, my adopted family would not have been able to afford the tuition. I had a great math teacher as my mentor. In my last year of junior high school, my adopted mother married an American Merchant Marine and immigrated to the United States. I was 14 years old. This was my second big break, although it was difficult, in the beginning, to get myself assimilated into the American system, with language and cultural barriers. But then, look at me now….
My most memorable moments of my childhood (between ages 5 to 14) in Taiwan reside in my relationship with my adopted grandmother. She was the source of my UU beliefs, and my treasured teacher. She was a devoted Buddhist and a female spiritual leader in her small, rice farming village. She taught me the fundamentals of human relations, leadership, and women’s rights. “Stand up for yourself,” she would say. “Do what is in your heart and learn how to use the smarts in your head. There is always a need for a balance” – the Yin and Yang thing. I was too young to appreciate what she had said then, but I know her words influenced quite a bit who I have become today.
I graduated from San Jose High School in California with honors (with or without English, I got through high school with flying colors). My high school counselor and ESL teacher were my heroes. They helped me through the college application process and I was accepted by UC Davis with a full scholarship. This was in 1968. Anti-war protests were everywhere, and Davis was no different. Students staged anti-war rallies and slept on the railroad tracks that sat in the middle of town to prevent trains from carrying ammunition from the government warehouse in Stockton to warfighters in Oakland. I participated with my college friends. That was my very first social justice engagement, American style….
In the late 60’s and early 70’s, the United Farmer Workers movement, led by Cesar Chavez, was in full swing in Davis. We had a lot of farmland around Sacramento Valley – Dixon, Woodland, and Fairfield. Salinas County, where a majority of the country’s lettuce was harvested, was not too far away. We staged a boycott of lettuce and grapes, and picketed in front of the Safeway right outside campus. We marched with Cesar Chavez in Salinas (we had very strong student activism at Davis, then, and we were bused down there quite often). My first husband was the Assistant Dean for Student Affairs, and headed an “Upward Bound” program on the Davis campus. The program was designed for under-privileged high school students from surrounding communities to visit the campus for various academic and social programs. Most of these students lived on farms with their parents. Their situations were not quite like the tent city I knew, but the communities were similar. I visited many of the farming families. I saw their living conditions with my own eyes. I heard their stories, and their hopes to be part of the American dream. I was in the same lot with them, from a different situation – same picture, different movie.
While I was a student at UC Davis from 1968 to 1972, I found a Universalist Church (more of a humanist church) just outside of campus. I was not very active in the congregational life there, but that was my first UU encounter. The congregation did not have a robust RE program. It was a small community church, so students felt welcome there – it was a social gathering place for some of us.
I graduated from UC Davis in 1972 and was planning to apply for law school. However, having been a poor student for too long, I took a job with the federal government working for the Air Force Depot in Sacramento as a civilian employee. I was placed in a fast-track Presidential Internship Program where I was able to rise in the ranks fairly quickly. It was not my career plan to work for a military institution. I never thought I would become an engineering director for one of the largest defense contractors in the country. I wanted to work for the United Nations as an interpreter – that was the thought, anyway – with my International Economics and Political Science degrees. And, with my language skills, it seemed like a perfect fit; but life has a way of paving its own directions. As part of my career development, I went to Sacramento State University to study for my MBA. After the first year, I switched to social work and eventually obtained a Clinical Social Work license in California, where I practiced part-time in a social service agency for about 7 years. During that time, I worked at the Sacramento depot as a technical manager during the day, and practiced as a clinician at night. My caseloads were focused on young adults, which was based on my field internship experience at Napa State Mental Hospital, where I had worked with boys ages 7 to 13.
In 1985, through working for the government, I met my current husband, Doug, who was an Air Force military officer. We got married in 1987 and made the decision to relocate to New York when he left the service to work for IBM in Manhattan. I was hired by Grumman Corporation on Long Island in 1988. Our son, Robert, was born in 1989. When he was five years old, we were looking for a place to provide Rob with some form of religious education. Through a mutual friend, we were introduced to UUCSR, and we joined the congregation in 1995. I was recruited by John Lee to teach the first grade class with him. I loved the class curriculum and John was a great teacher. Back then, we had Barry Andrews, who was the visionary on how UU religious education ought to be. I was sold – and continue to be so. Children and youth are the keys to the future of our congregation and the UU movement. This was the vision of our founding families when they first started RE classes in the house on Murray Street in Port Washington. I think they were onto something wonderful.
Both of our children, Rob and Ashley, attended RE classes here at Shelter Rock. They both went through the “Coming of the Age” and “Whole Life” programs. Although they are not currently active in the young adult programs here, they live UU principles every day. Rob participated in the first Occupy Wall Street march and was one of the people arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. He was proud to be part of that movement, and we support him wholeheartedly. Our daughter, Ashley, did her summer internship last year with Planned Parenthood of Nassau County, and this past winter worked with a non-governmental organization (NGO) at the United Nations on a project that addressed climate change and its impact on the status of women. This coming week, she will start her summer internship working for the same organization on similar types of projects under the UUCSR Student Activity Fund.
In closing, I believe life experiences are the fundamental ingredients in how we shape who we are. How we apply those life experiences is the key to our roles as teachers. I learned and lived UU principles since I was very young. I had great teachers along the way. It is the connection I have with my UU faith and the Shelter Rock community that created my strong desire to teach. Teaching is one of the ways I feel I can best contribute.
Lastly, I would like to say that, as a teacher, teaching does not stop at RE classes. With our skills and beliefs in UU principles, we can and shall expand our roles in congregation life outside of the RE wing. To be whole, we need to be active in all aspects of UUCSR congregational life. Join committees and become part of lay leadership teams. Change is only possible when you are able to participate and contribute.
Thank you for all you do. I appreciate the opportunity to share my journey with you this evening.