Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/culture/empathy-culture/page/2/)
If we have a foundation of these communication practices, we have the potential to find commonalities while also honoring differences; we don’t have to have the same experiences or identities in order to work together to make social change.
Holding steady when the ground is moving is normally part of my stock-in-trade.People often ask me for something to help put their own fears into perspective. Usually I am willing and able to oblige. Mostly I try my best to see the bigger picture, and mostly that effort pays off. But not now. I was staying more or less centered until a few days ago when something caught me off-guard. In the middle of a conference call, I got a text message carrying information that turned out not to be true, that the Barcelona terrorist who mowed down 13 lives like grass had been heading for a kosher restaurant on Las Ramblas, hard by the assassin’s abandoned car.
The earth has yielded its harvest; God, our God, Blesses us.” Psalm 67:7
Today I return to writing about God’s gifts in our lives! It seemed to me that everywhere I turned this summer I heard retirement conversations going on and those same conversations caused me pause. My cousin Charlie, my brother in law Larry, my friend Herman all talked about the event with an excitement which made me stop and think. Questions surfaced, Do I want to retire? When? Why? What would I do if I didn’t go to work? Questions swirled through my mind, an endless and consuming battle raged inward.
Upon hearing news of the death of an older cousin, I immediately recalled times spent in the lakou (yard) of his late grandmother, whom everyone knew as Aunt Boots – the family matriarch and piercer. I call her that since she had done all our ears at the most tender age to assure the making of girls in Haiti. I remember running around freely with the scent of roasting coffee beans swarming us. She had a coffee and peanut butter business. On Saturday afternoons, grownups sat on wicker ladder-backed chairs, catching up on the latest news, and family matters.
We at Tikkun were glad to hear Senator Bernie Sanders unequivocally condemn the shooting by Bernie supporter, James Hodgkinson, who injured five Republicans, one of them a Congressman, who were part of the Republican Congressional group going to play a for fun annual baseball game with Democratic Congresspeople in Washington DC this morning, June 14th. In his statement, Senator Sanders said: “I am sickened by this despicable act. Violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society, and I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms. Real change can only be obtained through nonviolent action and anything else runs counter to our most deeply held American values.”
In short, the practice of vulnerability has given me peace and less helplessness; it has given me more freedom to be myself in a simple way; and it has made me more accessible.
If the goal is to change behavior and have people take responsibility, then we must change living conditions in order to change behavior. Some of the factors that can alter the environment are affordable housing, healthcare, prenatal care, day care, better education and a living wage, thereby changing the causes and conditions that result in crime, poverty, and addiction.
Following the now-famed Women’s March on the day after President Trump’s inauguration, speculation mounted about whether we were seeing a real “movement” or simply a “moment” of reaction from an outraged electorate. Since that day, there’s been no dearth of citizens speaking up, in town halls, airports and on city streets. People who never imagined themselves “protesters” have seized the reins of citizenship suggesting that surely something is galvanizing America. But the question is an important one, does this yet qualify as a movement?
On New Year’s Day, at home and abroad, Haitians and Haitiphiles are all about soup joumou. A squash based consommé laboriously made with chunks of beef, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, some kind of pasta, seasoned with epis-that concoction of Haitian spices, which was hopefully brought to perfection by an expert who uses enough scotch bonnet pepper without overshadowing the fragrant aroma. This soup is traditionally consumed to commemorate Jean-Jacques Dessalines’ proclamation of Haitian independence from France on January 1, 1804. Thirteen years after the only successful slave revolution started that abolished colonialism and slavery, Haiti became the first Black Republic in the world, second only to the United States. For many of us, the soup is as much about its gastronomic delight as it is about redressing history.
Trauma and Community in San Jose
Some drank. Some called in to work, sickened. Some wore black. Some sobbed. Some stayed up all night, unable to escape the pain and dread in their stomachs.