Marginality

The margins... the edges, the outskirts, outside, apart from... I felt on the margins most of my life. Funny, because most people would probably see me at the center of the world rather than on the edge. But in my mind I am always on the margins looking in.

In the past year I have come to a new appreciation for the margins. The journey began as I was reading Jung Yung Lee's book, Marginality: The Key to Multicultural Theology. Lee describes his experience as a Korean American as being on the margins, being in-both as well as in-between his Korean and American cultures. Then he takes an interesting turn... he goes on to argue for a definition of marginality that is no longer defined by the center. Rather, marginality is the intersection of all of his experiences. No longer revolving around a single center, marginality is the living space of existence. Roberto Goizueta, in his book Caminemos con Jesus: Toward a Hispanic/Latino Theology of Accompaniment writes of the margins as both/and. In a world where we are so often forced to choose either/or, these two writers force us to move beyond such dichotomies to something more complex and, in many ways, more true to human experience.

Perhaps I need to reconsider my own feelings of being on the margins... perhaps all of life is lived on the margins between various cultures, communites, relationships... Perhaps I am not alone on the margins, but rather the whole world is here with me. What then is in the center? If I can claim my place on the margins, perhaps there is hope of truly centering my life on something other than myself. Perhaps living on the margins will allow me to reconstruct the world with God at the center.

Welcome to marginal thoughts...