The heaviness of the world right now would have made it more than easy to not make a post this week but as I watched people sending aid, making poetry, and showing up in the ways they could, I was inspired to show up too. My words have been transformed a time or two to arrive at what you are actually going to read because it seemed bizarre to be writing a simple story on a blog. I read an artist's reflection on why we continue to make and create and she talked about how she paints to show compassion to herself and hope that it extends to others. I think when I write I feel empowered and I am comforted by the possibility of my words extending this to someone else.
In my small part of the world this week, we were taking part in an antibullying campaign, called Pink Shirt Day. This campaign began with a couple of students in Nova Scotia who wanted to raise awareness about bullying after a student had been bullied for wearing a pink shirt. The campaign grew and became acknowledged throughout Canada and other places in the world I am amazed every time I hear this story to think of just two young boys creating and making such a difference. Every year, in my school and classroom, I get to witness the sea of pink and how this story continues to have an impact. As a teacher, I try to think of new ways on this day and every day to empower students, teach compassion, acceptance, and offer strategies to deal with difficult people and interactions.
This year I was thinking of my own experience with bullying. Throughout elementary and junior high school some students seemed to target me for taunting. Having moved to a new school in grade two, I was one of the only students whose family had not always been part of this community. By grade 5 at this school, there were a group of girls who made it their mission to intimidate me daily. The washroom was in the basement of this little school and I would be afraid to go down there as that was their meeting place and between there and the playground would be where I was most vulnerable out of the teacher's view. I used to hear them talking about how their community was being changed by the new subdivisions being built and that they didn't need new people living there. These were not stories of eleven and twelve-year-olds, I realized later and it was a fear of change they may have been receiving from their families which were projected onto me. Bullying for me continued in junior high school, with a new group of girls, in many of my classes and outside on breaks. As it got more severe, I would receive phone calls, when caller ID was not a thing, they would call me derogatory names and give verbal threats to my safety if I were to go to concerts, the roller skating rink, or the neighborhood where my good friend lived at the time. My parents wanted to intervene on several occasions but I told them it would only make things worse. So I stopped sharing the details of what was happening. I won't ever know for sure why I was a target of these girls' anger but I do understand now that these young women had experienced extreme trauma in their lives, they didn't have a sense of safety outside of the walls of the school and maybe I was just the least vulnerable place for their anger to land.
These memories reminded me this week that the big issues don't just arrive on the world stage suddenly. They start small. Maybe with the dwindling away of compassion, the perceived widening of the gap in our similarities to each other, the growing fears of lack, and the imbalance of our needs and wants. Maybe they start in our homes, our schools and on our playgrounds.
A few years ago I was introduced to a beautiful story of a woman author, Amy Krause Rosenthal. She was deceased at the time I heard of her story but I was enthralled with what an amazing part of her legacy it was. I was so moved by how one person can be so powerful and reassured by the beauty of how she chose to use her power.
The story is called, "The Beckoning of Lovely". She had created a video of seventeen things she had made. Some of these included the children's and adult's books she had written but there were also her children, her bed, her sandwich, her wedding vows, and so on. Making the ordinary and extraordinary become one. The Beckoning of Lovely was the project name for making the eighteenth thing. She invited people through social media to meet with her on the eighth day of the eighth month at 8:08.. at a monument in the center of her city. Having no idea who or how many would show, she told them that they would know her by her yellow umbrella. She arrived to hundreds of people, children, parents, lovers, teenagers, and seniors all coming together as strangers. She gave them all tasks to make and separated them into groups as they volunteered for the task. Some made a grand entrance, others a friend, some made something pretty and others made someone's day. They made music, made do with what they had, made peace, made it up as they went, and made a splash. The eighteenth thing was the video of the making of all of these things coming together. It was humbling, ordinary, and extraordinary. It was compassion in the center of the city on a hot summer night because a group of people were committed to making and creating a story of compassion together.
In this world with bigotry, fear, greed, and disease, for me, there is always the making and creating of compassion, joy, and peace, through you, me, and our children. As I see our young people continue to wear their pink, orange, and rainbow shirts, another seed of hope is planted.
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