By: Rev. Katrena King
March 3, 2026
Rev. Katrena King reflects on her recent trip to Denmark, global tensions, and the importance of staring the hard things in the face.
I always wanted to be a diplomat. Ironically, I credit the itineracy system for this. My father is an elder in The United Methodist Church and has been for my entire life. That means I lived across Louisiana throughout my childhood—in Marksville, Kilbourne, Ringgold, Westlake, Shreveport, Franklin, and Franklinton. When I moved out for college, that extended the map to Slidell, Hammond, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Denham Springs, and eventually Lafayette. I suppose, I just kept on itinerating.
One thing I learned while moving around was the importance of friendships and commonalities. This was not only because I found them interesting, but because they were necessary for my own self-preservation. As a person often perceived as an ethnically ambiguous enigma, living in more rural areas was always culturally interesting. My mother is a Korean adoptee who was found on the doorsteps of City Hall in Seoul; she was raised on a farm in Oregon. My father, a white man of Scottish and Irish descent, spent his early days in Indiana, later settling in Louisiana for the remainder of his youth. As our genes would have it, my brothers and I are often seen as curious, with something about us that people can’t quite figure out. And honestly, on occasion, it feels like a superpower. I have comfortably been in spaces where others could not have tread because of how I present. I’ve learned that this too, is part of my own unique privilege.
In my college days, I studied anthropology, the study of those things that make us human, and found my passion in learning about people. I also spent several years volunteering with National Model United Nations (NMUN) as a staff person. This program is essentially a United Nations simulation, where we take hundreds of college students from across the globe, match them with real-world problems, and see how they propose to change the world in a finite amount of time. In New York, our closing ceremonies took place at the United Nations, where we heard from acting Secretaries-General like Ban Ki-moon. Those hallowed NMUN grounds are where I cut my teeth on diplomacy, international policymaking, and worldwide cultural nuances. My time with NMUN would later help connect me to the General Commission on the Status and Role of Women (GCSRW), based on my interest and experience with women’s topics at those conferences.
Fast-forward a decade, and in December 2025, I was asked by our General Secretary to attend the Standing Committee on Regional Conference Matters Outside the USA meeting (previously the Standing Committee on Central Conference Matters) in Copenhagen, Denmark. For a little while, my spirit was in shock as I’d never flown abroad solo before, but this was something I had always wanted to do, a dream realized. Truthfully, I couldn’t (and still can’t) believe that I get to travel and work with international folks as a part of my job! And yet my joy was dampened; Denmark had been at the top of my mind for another reason, a more contentious one.
I am based in Louisiana, and my governor had recently become the Special Envoy to Greenland with a focus on how to “make Greenland a part of the U.S.” Greenland is a part of the kingdom of Denmark, but to quote something I heard at the Standing Committee meeting: “Greenland belongs to themselves.” Therein lies the challenge with my governor’s task, and my own government’s intended goal. This is the kind of action that might come about as part of our NMUN simulation with college students, but I continue to be shocked that this deviation from traditional diplomacy norms is the reality of today.
Truly, I had a bit of anxiety leading up to the actual moment the Netherlands stamped my passport on my way to Denmark. These days and times were—and still are—unprecedented. I had seen news articles and social media posts sharing the horrors. Would I even make it into the country? What will these people think of me? Thoughts like these and more spun around in my head like an off-kilter merry-go-round. When I stepped off the train at København H (Copenhagen Central Station), I remember thinking that I had come to Denmark in a season of strife, and that I felt complicit and like an aggressor. There was a weight I brought with me that I didn’t understand how to process.
And then I began to hear stories from others. People had gathered from across four continents for this meeting and they were concerned about the United States. What completely took me aback, however, was their genuine concern for our well-being. I was overwhelmed by the care and intention they placed on asking how our people were. Shouldn’t we be worried about them? We are the ones doing harm. I continued to internalize this guilt by association, probably for too long. I realized that I had taken my own pre-conceived notions of others and assumed their intent—and I was wrong.
I later learned how tuned in the rest of the world is to the United States’ activities. People outside of our country wake up every morning and the first thing they do is read the news about us. Off-handedly, I remember saying to someone, “I know; it’s so awful that you just can’t look away.” It was difficult for me to sit with the thought of the terror that we might bring. For example, our friends in Europe have moved from language such as “if the United States invades” to “when the United States invades.” And all I could think was how little attention the people of the United States were paying.
We have a problem with not taking things seriously, because we are distracted. We have become desensitized, as humans, based on the constant barrage of social media and stimulation that is vying for our attention. These distractions also divide us. What we see and what reality is have become so far removed from one another, that if something isn’t impacting us directly, it’s as if it’s not happening at all. Maybe we don’t want to know, or maybe we find ourselves so overburdened by what we hear and see that we become paralyzed. Perhaps this is by design, or perhaps it is simply an unfortunate byproduct of technological advancement.
Either way, this is not who I want to be, and it is not who we are called to be as Christians. We are called to love. Even when it is hard, we are called to love. Even when we are dealing with difficult people whose actions challenge us, we are called to love. Jesus never said it would be easy to love others, or even ourselves. We aren’t perfect people and we aren’t going to be perfect in action. And sometimes others see what is best for us long before we’re ready to see it for ourselves. Now, I don’t claim to know what “best” is, or how to get us there quickly. What I do know, however, is that we cannot continue to ignore the harm and the hurt that is taking place all around us. We are called to love, and necessarily, that means we are called to pay attention. Love doesn’t mean acquiescing to unjust behaviors or pervading harm. Love means broaching difficult conversations and getting back to the basics.
When was the last time you sat down and had a face-to-face conversation with someone who disagreed with you? When it comes down to it, we often have more things in common than we realize. As someone who has spent her entire life searching for connection, you can trust me on that. It can be hard to be the first one to say something or do something, but for every person who does, others will see you and wish they’d been brave enough to act sooner. We can continue to hide behind screens and sweeping platitudes that no longer really mean anything, or we can be honest with ourselves that our world is broken and that we need a change. Pay attention. Don’t look away; look ahead. When we lose sight of what we have been called to do, we flounder. We must, instead, redirect our efforts toward what’s in front of us. The new vision of The United Methodist Church is to love boldly, serve joyfully, and lead courageously. Even if we take just one part of that work and give it our attention, we can make a lasting impact for the better.
Lord, grant us the curiosity to witness the world through others’ eyes, and may we not look away from what we see. Amen.
King is the director of monitoring & resource development for the General Commission on the Status and Role of Women.