Tina Whitehead Teaches: "Seeing the Other"

Tina Whitehead, “Seeing the Other”

2016 Spring Speaker Series, Association of Pittsburgh Priests (APP)

A review by Jim McCarville

December 25, 2016

Tina Whitehead has an interesting teaching technique, and an important message for us. Her topic, “Seeing the Other”, is a tool that she shared with attendees at the December 5, 2016, APP Speaker Series event.

Tina lives in Pittsburgh but spends half of her time each year in Palestine, where she works with Sabeel, a grassroots Palestinian-Christian movement with international support-friends around the world. Sabeel promotes spirituality based on peace, justice and reconciliation. It frequently includes pairing Palestinian victims with Israeli victims, and finding common ground.

There are a lot complex issues Tina could have chosen to talk about, she said “before I went to Palestine, I could never have imagined what was happening in this country, and what privileged ‘others’ I got to know”. In “Seeing the Other” she shared with us a tool anyone can use, any day. She called it “unwrapping lives”.

First Whitehead ran through a long series of photos of Arabs, Jews and Christians, with no initial commentary. She let us form our own opinions, frequently formed with negative media coverage. She then went back and told the story of each person: a doctor, a teacher, an orphan. “Seeing the other, recognizing the self in the other, is a long journey,” she said, “and the longest part of that journey is from our head to our heart.”

The most memorable photo was that of a young Israeli soldier. As he stands with his arms crossed, casually cradling his rifle, he doesn’t notice that his un-aimed rifle is pointing directly at Tina. But that is not the story Tina tells. Instead she talks about his family and his childhood. Underneath the soldier was a person. In one evening, Tina “unwrapped” a lot of lives and showed us how we can do it too.

Whitehead was the final speaker of APP’s 2016 Fall Speaker Series.

The APP (Association of Pittsburgh Priests) also sponsors a single Spring Speaker. This year the Spring speaker will be Father Dan Groody, on April 2, 2017. The APP Speaker Series is held at 7PM at the Kearns Spirituality Center.