As told to BC Pires

My name is Si­mone Tal­ma Flow­ers and I am the chief op­er­a­tions of­fi­cer of a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion cul­ti­vat­ing in­ter­faith di­a­logue, ser­vice and cel­e­bra­tion. I am a South girl. Deep, deep south. Pe­nal. I live in Austin, Texas, where iACT (In­ter­faith Ac­tion of Cen­tral Texas) is head­quar­tered.

I'm mar­ried to Wil­ford "Wil" Flow­ers but I have been Si­mone Tal­ma all my life. So I added my hus­band's name on­to mine. He's to­tal­ly cool with it! As a lit­tle girl in Pe­nal I was bare­foot­ed most of the time, or just wore my "Ba­ta slip­pers." In Pe­nal we played "Pelt De Pan!" (Pe­nal ver­sion of Hide and Seek). When I was "it," I would catch every­one fast.

My ear­li­est mem­o­ry is wak­ing up dur­ing the night and my big sis­ter com­fort­ing me un­til I re­turned to sleep. To this day, she still has that abil­i­ty to com­fort me. I went to San Fer­nan­do Girls' Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, Na­pari­ma Girls' High School. And St Ed­ward's Uni­ver­si­ty in Austin, Texas. The full ex­tent of my par­tic­i­pa­tion in sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties was Sport's Day.

I was raised in the An­gli­can Church. How­ev­er, I at­tend­ed many Catholic ser­vices be­cause many of my friends were Catholic. I have al­ways been and re­main a be­liev­er. It's what gives me strength. Af­ter set­tling in my young adult life in Austin, I did not have a church home. I start­ed to vis­it dif­fer­ent con­gre­ga­tions, un­til, as soon as I opened my mouth, a parish­ioner asked me if I was from Trinidad. When I went in, the con­gre­ga­tion was very di­verse and I felt as though I was in Trinidad.

The priest kept my at­ten­tion for the en­tire ser­mon. That was ab­solute­ly amaz­ing! Eigh­teen years lat­er, I am still at St. James' Epis­co­pal Church. A friend in­vit­ed me to join a book club and it has been a great ex­pe­ri­ence, read­ing books I would nev­er have cho­sen to read.

So, the last book I read that I could not put down was the Hunger Games tril­o­gy. I host­ed my book club and chose Monique Rof­fey's book, The White Woman on the Green Bi­cy­cle. So every­one could get a small taste of Trinidad.

There are days when eat­ing ice cream and watch­ing a "chick flick" is bet­ter than fin­ish­ing a re­port for work and vice ver­sa. It's hav­ing a good bal­ance that's im­por­tant. When I grad­u­at­ed from uni­ver­si­ty, I felt that, if I did not take the op­por­tu­ni­ty then to stay in the US to work, it would have been an op­por­tu­ni­ty lost for­ev­er. Al­so, I knew that home is al­ways there.

The sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween Trinidad and Texas is they both start with the let­ter "T." They are both bold and like to do things their own way. Both have very strong re­li­gious be­liefs. I see Texas' beau­ty in the di­ver­si­ty of its land­scape and Trinidad's in the di­ver­si­ty of its peo­ple. Even though Austin has be­come an in­ter­na­tion­al city, it still has it's "down home" feel. Just like Pe­nal!

I think I re­tained my ac­cent com­plete­ly. And so does my hus­band, who can bare­ly un­der­stand me once I start what he calls "talk­ing Trinida­di­an." I don't cook tra­di­tion­al Trinida­di­an food every­day - be­cause, as Wil is quick to point out, I don't cook every­day. But, when do I cook, I use lots of com­mon Trinida­di­an sea­son­ings.

iACT works on build­ing bridges across cul­tur­al and re­li­gious di­vides in three forms: ser­vice; di­a­logue; and cel­e­bra­tion. Ser­vice en­gages peo­ple of dif­fer­ent faiths to work to­geth­er as­sist­ing oth­ers in need, such as help­ing re­pair a low in­come-home­own­er's home. Di­a­logue has groups of sev­en to eight, on­ly one per­son speak­ing at a time, no in­ter­rup­tions.

This en­cour­ages lis­ten­ing, one of the first steps in try­ing to un­der­stand some­one dif­fer­ent. In cel­e­bra­tion, a large in­ter­faith ser­vice draw­ing hun­dreds of peo­ple [shows how] dif­fer­ent faiths give thanks. It's a very up­lift­ing and unit­ing ex­pe­ri­ence that lets you know peace is pos­si­ble.

We are very strict about not-pros­e­lytis­ing, so it re­al­ly helps that no one is go­ing to con­demn or con­vert you. Peo­ple ex­posed to oth­ers in a non-threat­en­ing en­vi­ron­ment are more open to see­ing the hu­man be­ing in front of them. Our work is not to judge, but to bring peo­ple to­geth­er.

I be­lieve all faiths have com­mon­al­i­ties in what we pray for: guid­ance; a good life; safe­ty for our­selves and loved ones, etc. I def­i­nite­ly feel my be­ing Trinida­di­an helps me in my job. Trinida­di­ans can ad­just to any sit­u­a­tion, yet stay true to who they are. The best thing about my job, is that I get to work with the most amaz­ing peo­ple and see how lives are touched dai­ly. The worst thing is I don't think of it as "work!"

A Tri­ni re­al­ly lives the ex­pres­sion that, "If all you have is lemons – make lemon­ade." Trinidad is a mod­el to the world of liv­ing in di­ver­si­ty. Yes there is con­flict, but know­ing you can work through it and live side-by-side is what "liv­ing in di­ver­si­ty" is about.

Read a longer ver­sion of this fea­ture at www.BCRaw.com.

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