Reframing the Story

September 18, 2020 / Laura Grace Weldon / 8 Comments

Dr. Bertice Berry is a sociologist, author, storyteller, and inveterate volunteer who is currently devoting herself to making and donating masks. She and her family have made 9,000 so far. She also records a daily story each morning, sharing it both on YouTube and Facebook.

In this recent story she talks about reframing the negative narratives we carry, which can change what we see in others and what we see in ourselves. It’s a way of making peace in our lives, but it takes practice.

That video brought to mind something my family used to do years ago, when the kids were little. If someone cut us off in traffic or was rude in public we’d say, “What is her story?” and then everyone would volunteer random possibilities. Her baby was up all night or a stone was stuck in her shoe or she’s late for work (or as one of my sons liked to contribute) “her butt itches but she can’t scratch it.” It didn’t just distract us from our annoyance, it was a playful way to consider other people’s perspectives. I hoped this practice let us feel closer, for a moment, to the oneness underlying all life on this planet.

We need to remember to apply empathy to our own troubles too. The stories we hold about ourselves and the world around us, often subconsciously, can drag us down. These tend to be stories about unworthiness. We live in a culture where worth has to do with wealth, status, followers, beauty, youth, and power. We live in a culture where the worth of others is denied by those who benefit from us versus them thinking. Get enough people to believe less of those who don’t share their skin color, religion, ethnic background, or political leaning and you’ve got a powerful diversion from real issues that affect us all. Instead of acting on climate, healthcare reform, systemic racism, and public health we’re baited to fear and mistrust one another.

Which reminds me of another Dr. Berry story about comic books, old china, and a man’s insistence on acting with honor even while his family was being evicted. His plea, “Please don’t take my integrity,” will stay with me the way good stories often do. Give yourself a few minutes to listen.

When I make time to watch Dr. Berry’s daily story I am always improved by her wisdom, her smile, and her closing “I love you.” She says it like she means it. Is it hard to believe someone means “I love you” when they don’t know you? It’s not hard to believe some people hate people they don’t know, even express hate for every individual who looks, acts, believes, or votes differently than they do. Dr. Berry’s choice to love is so much better. So much healthier, wiser, and kinder. I love you all too.

Hospitality To Strangers

June 5, 2020 / Laura Grace Weldon / 7 Comments

Our home has never felt emptier. I’ve realized, over these months of isolation, just how much it means to me to welcome people here. What I miss most is family, especially our weekly Sunday family gatherings. I also miss out-of-town guests. And I miss old friends as well as new people we meet through house concerts, potlucks, and community meetings here. It feels as if we deny something intrinsically human when we shut others out, even though we’re doing it to protect one another from a deadly virus.

The importance of welcoming people, most especially the stranger, is emphasized by religious and cultural traditions around the world.

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” Christianity. Hebrews 13.1

“The husband and wife of the house should not turn away any who comes at eating time and asks for food. If food is not available, a place to rest, water for refreshing one’s self, a reed mat to lay one’s self on, and pleasing words entertaining the guest–these at least never fail in the houses of the good.” Hinduism. Apastamba Dharma Sutra 8.2

“One should give even from a scanty store to him who asks.” Buddhism. Dhammapada 224

“You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress them, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” Judaism, Exodus 22:20

“Serve Allah, and join not any partners with Him; and do good – to parents, kinsfolk, orphans, those in need, neighbors who are near, neighbors who are strangers, the companion by your side, the wayfarer (ye meet) and what your right hands possess: For Allah loveth not the arrogant, the vainglorious.” Islam. Quran 4:36

“Charity—to be moved at the sight of the thirsty, the hungry, and the miserable and to offer relief to them out of pity—is the spring of virtue.” Jainsim/Kundakunda, Pancastikaya 137

“The heavenly food is needed successively; be thou a server of the food and direct thou the people of the world to present themselves at that table and guide them to partake thereof.” Baha’I (Abdu’l-Baha)

“A traveler through a country would stop at a village and he didn’t have to ask for food or for water. Once he stops, the people give him food, entertain him.” Nelson Mandela, discussing the southern Africa tradition of Ubuntu

A divide between welcoming people in and shutting people out has been amplified to the extreme in the last few years here in the U.S.

The administration’s travel bans and immigration bans, particularly on people from Muslim-majority countries.
Human rights violations at the southern U.S. border, including the detention of children and families.
A growing threat from white supremacist violence and terrorism.
A continued emphasis on eliminating people from food assistance and healthcare coverage, plus threats to allocate aid based on whether a state is red or blue, all during a pandemic.
A nation seeing more clearly, due to cellphone evidence, the deadly impact of racism. Week after week, year after year, we witness the deaths of Black, Latino, and Native people murdered simply for living their lives. George Floyd’s execution by suffocation leads to mass protests, and again, to us versus them behavior from provocateurs who break windows, burn buildings, and otherwise do everything possible to discredit protesters’ anger, grief, and demand for solutions.

That’s why the open doors of Rahul Dubey’s home on Swann Street, in Washington, D.C. means so much. On Monday, before the curfew went into effect, shield-bearing riot officers and mounted police used smoke, flash grenades, and chemical spray to rout peaceful demonstrators from the area around St. John’s Church, even clergy from the church patio, clearing the way for a presidential photo opportunity. About an hour later police began boxing protesters into the residential area of Swann Street, making it impossible for people to leave.

Mr. Dubey heard clubs, screams, and chemical sprays going off outside his home. He flung his door open and urged people in, telling them to find refuge anywhere inside. Police shot pepper spray through the window and tried, throughout the night to gain access. Inside over 70 people rinsed their eyes, helped each other, cleaned up whatever messes they’d made, and tried to understand the situation.

As Mr. Dubey said in a video by HuffPost, “When they felt they were safe, I can tell you the pride and security and intellect of this group of people, ranging from 20 to 50 years old, shone over and over for the 10 hours they were held captive in this house — as my guests…. They all delegated to each other and self-managed beautifully.”

“Every square inch of this place had a person in it,” Mr. Dubey said in a BBC interview. “They were all strangers. That was amazing. They didn’t know each other… From age to race to ethnicity to sexual orientation, it was amazing. It was America. I just gave me a lot of hope.”

The next morning, as his guests left, Mr. Dubey stood on the steps of his home, surprised again, this time to receive applause from protesters and onlookers.

“It’s not something that should be celebrated,” Mr. Dubey said. “I shouldn’t be getting attention.” Asked whether he would do it all over again, he said of course he would. “I don’t think what I did was anything special,” he said. “If it is, we have a ton of work to do in this country.”

History shows us countless quiet heroes who reach out to help others, often endangering themselves in the process. They open their doors to shelter people from persecution, even genocide. What separates them from others?

People who have imperiled their lives for months or years to help others can give us some insight. Svetlana Broz, author of Good People in an Evil Time, says it requires at least three attributes.

The courage to think for oneself, resisting conformity even at the risk of one’s own safety.
A moral core that inspires action.
The capacity to empathize with those who are dissimilar.

In this spirit, try a thought exercise right now. Imagine as fully as possible that a crowd of desperate people are at your door. Their eyes and lungs are burning, they are afraid, angry, out of options. You have seconds to decide. Imagine you open the door and now your home is filled with these strangers, every available space taken up. They need food, water, aid. Can you do it?

Now imagine this. You are on the other side of a stranger’s door. You’re the one in pain, afraid and desperate. Will the door open for you?

Translating Intolerance

July 22, 2017 / Laura Grace Weldon / 7 Comments

Ceiling in Cardiff Castle (If Google translate is correct: Nenfwd yng Nghastell Caerdydd)

“This place tried to turn my words into stones,” Seren says. She moved to rural Ohio less than six months ago with her husband and three daughters. Her oldest is a college freshman, the younger girls are in 3rd and 5th grade.

Seren grew up in New York City, an only child of busy parents who traveled often for business. Her Welsh-speaking grandmother lived with them and raised Seren on the stories, songs, and traditions of her homeland. In her teens, Seren finally visited Wales with her grandmother. Soon after, her grandmother passed away but the language she imparted to her granddaughter thrived. Seren went on to get an undergraduate degree in history and a graduate degree in Welsh studies.

She and her husband agreed they would raise their children in a dual-language home. Seren speaks Welsh to her children exclusively, her husband speaks to them in English. This is true both at home and in public. They know the benefits of being bilingual. Here are just a few:

Bilingual kids have enhanced social skills and communication abilities. In part this has to do with more experience understanding the perspective of the person speaking. This involves determining social cues and what’s called “theory of mind” — the ability to recognize one’s own motivations (intentions, beliefs, desires, knowledge, etc) and the understanding that others have their own motivations.
Dual-language students, in one study, were a full grade level ahead of their monolingual peers in English-reading skills by the end of middle school. Some children in the study were just learning English, yet they outperformed monolingual native English speakers on tests. Chances are this has to do with the way learning two languages enhances executive function (working memory, impulse control, focus, and attention). Studies continue to show bilingual children have stronger executive function.
Early exposure to a second language affects how the brain organizes languages and improves its ability to learn a new language later in life, even if the first language is forgotten.
Bilingual people continue to benefit into old age if they continue to use both languages frequently. Brain scans indicate that bilingual people develop greater cognitive reserves. This extra gray matter makes a big difference. In people whose brains show similar levels of dementia, bilingual people show symptoms on average four years later than a monolingual person experiences them. This also may be true in stroke recovery. One study showed cognitive recovery was twice as likely for dual language speakers as for monolinguals after a stroke. Overall, using one’s brain to speak two languages actually delays cognitive decline.

Growing up, Seren says she remembers being a little worried each time a new friend met her grandmother because she and her grandmother spoke to each other in another language. But without fail her friends thought her grandmother was cool. Many of her friends incorporated a few Welsh words into their conversations in a way that became their own informal slang.

Seren’s older daughter also struggled a bit with a bilingual home when she was a teenager. But she’s also known from the time she was a small child that fewer and fewer people speak Welsh. Only 11 percent of people living in Wales speak it fluently, a little over 300,000 people in total. When their daughter is home, she quite naturally speaks in one language to her mother and another to her father.

Since moving to Ohio, however, this bilingual family met with difficulties they never expected. While at a school function for her younger daughter, a classmate’s mother overheard Seren speaking to her daughter in Welsh. That girl later spread the word that she wasn’t allowed to play with Seren’s child because she “wasn’t American.” (Every member of Seren’s family is an American-born citizen, although that’s not the point.)

Another time her middle daughter had a friend over. When Seren and her two younger daughters exchanged a few amused Welsh words about the snack being put on the table, the 10-year-old friend accused them of laughing about her and said she wanted to go home.

And waiting in line at a grocery store, Seren and her daughters spoke to each other in Welsh while the woman in front of them was being checked out. The woman said loudly to the cashier, “It’s disgusting the way people come to this country and can’t even learn the language. Makes me sick.”

Seren says she can’t imagine what other people must be enduring to keep their culture and language alive in a time when frightening acts of intolerance are on the rise.

After her daughters pleaded with her, she made a concession. For the first time in 18 years, Seren changed the way she speaks to her daughters. They now keep Welsh to themselves. Speaking only English around others, she says, “is like losing Nain all over again.”

But she hasn’t given up. She is working with the elementary school to put on an annual international fair where the world’s diversity will be celebrated in song, story, art, and food. She’s also planning to invite new friends and neighbors to a traditional Welsh Christmas party at her home this year.