"a context other than one's own"

Today I got feedback from my Senior Synthesis Paper - an attempt to distill all of my 4 years of learning into a response to a case study about United Methodist pastors risking their ordination status to preside over same-sex marriages in California (in the UMC, it is not allowed to be "a self-avowed, practicing homosexual" clergyperson, nor is it allowed to preside over same-sex marriages).
My feedback was accurate, though a bit disheartening. It certainly reflects the areas where I have developed: my vision for a better world, my ability to articulate that vision in theological, Biblical, and traditional language that comes from my historical and current religious perspectives (Christian & Religious Science), and a stronger grounding in my perspective. But I also do not have a well-developed sense of spiritual practice, nor am I able to articulate an understanding of others' contexts without reference to my own. This last one is a particular conundrum for me.
On the one hand: I live in an individualistic society, and I understand myself with my experience at the center (which is not to say that I am the center of THE world, but I experience myself at the center of MY world). I have learned, in many ways, including CPE, to reflect on what others' experience touches upon in myself -- as a way of empathy. Further, I learned how my experience limits how I can see - so this practice was a way to enlarge my perspective, and at the same time maintain awareness of the limits of that perspective. As a result of my training (and I realized this as I wrote my paper), I cannot imagine a way of discussing someone else's experience without (explicit or implicit) reference to my own.
On the other hand: I am a formation of my communities. I learned from them how to categorize and place values in the world. I see myself as intimately interconnected with all other life in the universe (as in, we co-exist, and without each other, we could not be -- sometimes in ways that are mutually supportive, and sometimes in ways that are destructive . . . and thus mutually destructive, even if the short-term gains seem to be on one side). In this way, there is no context other than (our) own.

I worked hard in this paper to understand the contexts of Methodist bishops charged with enforcing their church's law, whether or not they personally agreed with it. And in doing so - complexifying my own judgment against them - I came to see how their contexts diverged and intersected with my own. I understood their context a little better, but not without reference to my own. In fact, how could I have anything to say if I didn't have reference to my own?
This touches on some of my own limits. I used to believe (because it worked for me) that social justice is about linking personal experiences of being oppressed with experiences of being the oppressor, and then uniting under a common goal to fight for a better world for all. This is profoundly upended by racist actions and organizing among white LGBT people.
It also exposes the fact that I don't have a systematic way of understanding my relationship to the world. I understand the dangers of the me-centered universe, but have yet to figure out how to shift that any more than I already have, in recognizing the threads that connect me (hamstring me, trap me in a web, and precisely place me like a marionette) in the sweep of existence. Spirituality is at the same time as vague (and gassy) as a nebulous and as precise as a GPS device. It can be elemental and atmospheric while also supremely helpful in showing me where I am and helping me navigate where I want to go.

PS - The larger theme of my paper was a plea to move from marriage morality to sexual ethics. My argument is that spiritual traditions open pathways to understanding values about ourselves and our existence. Marriage morality puts a cap on that by declaring what is and is not within the bounds of acceptance. Sexual ethics opens it up to questions about how we treat each other, and how we promote intimate and romantic habits & attitudes that tie into larger values of humanity and relationships. The focus is on values rather than rules - without losing the exactness of the spiritual & theological grounds we stand on. Try it out.