EDGE is Culture

What is culture?

What is EDGE?

EDGE is Culture. But what is culture?

That’s actually a really good question. I’m going to have to think about it for a minute. Had to look it up, because really, there are lots of meanings to it.

I’m choosing to embrace the anthropological definition for our context:

The sum total of ways of living, built up by a group of human beings and passed down from one generation to the next.

Now that I look at it, that seems so vague, so colorless, so anti-culture.

Let’s go deeper.

The sum total (every single aspect) of the ways of living (language, art, writing, architecture, cuisine, transportation, religious beliefs, family dynamics, parenting, history, convictions, appreciations, mentality, education…of a group of human beings (created ones, God’s creation, loved ones, you) and passed down (taught, written about, painted, sung, copied, memorized, cherished) from one generation to the next (and varied within that journey, morphed, bent, multiplied, exaggerated, diminished, forgotten).

Culture lays the foundation for who we are, who we become and who are offspring will be. But yet, once you experience a culture other than your own, you learn that is varied in a million different ways. What my Sicilian grandparents cooked is different from what their neighbors cooked. Culture can’t be defined and every house holds its own history and traditions.

This is just a glimpse of what we want you to experience at EDGE. Yes, we want you to experience what it means to live in another country, speak another language, eat foreign foods, meet people and try to find commonalities, but what do we really hope you’ll grasp? The common thread that links us all.

We were all created by God, with purpose, for His delight.

Step out, onto the EDGE and live a little.

Photo: http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/06/18/us-hongkong-spain-culture-idUSSP4785320080618