Ep. 4: Celebrating While Social Distancing

Baha'i mom and poet Andrea Hope shares why and how you can celebrate during social distancing. This episode includes a reading of the poem Remember Who You Are from her upcoming book, TO MOTHER.
 

Naw-Ruz message from the Universal House of Justice: https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/the-universal-house-of-justice/messages

The Stage Tel Aviv: https://www.facebook.com/TheStageSlamSeries/

 The Tonight Show: At Home Edition (with Tina Fey): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8o85dhujQM

 Little Songs Music Makers: https://www.facebook.com/littlesongme/
 
Email: info@andreahope.org
Website: www.andreahope.org

Transcript

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I'm Andrea Hope, and this is To Mother. Episode 4:  Celebrating While Social Distancing. Hi, everyone. I'm Andrea Hope and I am a poet, a wife, a mother and a Baha'i, and this is my podcast To Mother where I share recommendations and insights about parenting with purpose in the modern world. So I share some quotes that inspire me some practical tips and resources and some of my poetry. And if you hear a little bit of noise in the background, it is because I am nursing my son while recording this podcast. So, yeah, I know that this title might sound a little bit odd, but stay with me. I'm gonna explain it totally. And hopefully we'll be on the same page. I thought that it's important to address the time that we are in, the circumstances in the world where a lot of us are social distancing. I live in Poland, and I thought, okay, maybe this will be over by the end of March, but we're hearing that schools are going to be closed at least until mid-April. There's some places that are saying schools are gonna be closed until May. My husband and I were planning to go to the United States for our five year anniversary in April and we were kind of waiting to see maybe we go in later April or in May. But right now it looks like the situation isn't going to change very soon. The feedback I'm getting from health organizations and from governments Is that this isn't gonna be over super soon. You know, it's not just gonna be a 14 day thing where anyone who had it has time to get over it and then we open things back up. So I think it's important for us to accept that this is, you know, our reality for the time being and to think about how to make it work. I'm gonna start with this quote and the quote that I chose is actually the quote that was chosen by the Universal House of Justice, which is the international governing body for the Baha'i Faith and in a letter that they wrote to the friends during Naw-Ruz, they ended with this quote from 'Abdu'l-Baha. The quote goes, "O Thou Provider! Assist Thou these noble friends to win Thy good pressure and make them well wishers of stranger and friend alike bring them into the world that abideth forever. Grant them a portion of heavenly grace, cause them to be true Baha'is sincerely of God. Save them from outward semblance is and establish them firmly in the truth. Make them signs and tokens of the kingdom, luminous stars above the horizons of this nether life. Make them to be a comfort and a solace to humankind and servants to the peace of the world."  And again, "O Thou Provider! Assist Thou these noble friends to win my good pressure and make them well wishers of stranger and friend alike. Bring them into the world that abideth forever. Grant them a portion of heavenly grace. Cause them to be true Baha'is sincerely of God. Save them from outward semblances and establish them firmly in the truth. Make them signs and tokens of the kingdom, luminous stars above the horizons of this nether life. Make them to be a comfort and a solace to humankind and servants to the peace of the world. Now, of course, we could spend a lot of time talking about the different parts of this quote because the writings are so rich but I'm just going to concentrate today on "Make them to be a comfort and a solace to humankind" and relate that to the title of this episode. So, as you know, I'm a poet and I have performed poetry in different places around the world. And how this came about is one of the organizations The Stage Tel Aviv contacted me to perform poetry at the beginning of a poetry slam. Because the whole thing was gonna be through a video chat anyway, it was an opportunity for them to contact me in Poland and have me come and do a guest performance. And when we were in this Zoom chat, some of the poets were talking about how oh, my family is watching from home or my friends are working from back home. My siblings, my parents, my grandparents and some of them were watching from Israel. But a lot of these participants were students who were studying abroad or who had moved. I'm to Israel from somewhere else. And so there are people watching from India and other countries as well, and I thought, Oh, this is really cool, actually, that people who you know you wouldn't video chat them to see the life slim because it's very noisy, and it would be kind of hard to set that up now because everyone is over video chat, close up, then you can invite a lot more people, people maybe you haven't seen in a while people maybe who have never seen you perform before to be a part of this experience with you. And then I was watching the Tonight Show Home Edition with Jimmy Fallon, and Tina Fey was talking about how their family had a group talent show with the kids. So she said it was really great, because even before the talent show, of course, it gave the kids an opportunity to have something to look forward to and to practice for, so she could tell them. Oh, you need to go in practice what you're gonna do and think about what you're gonna do for the talent show. So they had the families and their kids doing different talents, but then they awesome, but it all of the extended family and friends who could come and just watch in a pod and be a part of the experience. And I think of this as being a comfort and a solis to humankind through connection, because a lot of times, what happens when we get overwhelmed or we feel upset. We don't want to burn in other people with our problems or our emotions. We tend to isolate, and we tend to say, OK, it takes too much energy to reach out, or I'm just gonna take care of this myself or just concentrate on my family, where in actuality, the comfort comes from argument connections. You know where people and we crave each other on a very spiritually and emotional level. So even though it feels like maybe you want to just isolate in these tough times, the most therapeutic thing to do and the best thing for us to do is to continue to connect with each other and to continue to celebrate the good things while also like being aware of the challenges and trying to address them. So that's the second part of it that I wanted to talk about is that problems can seem really overwhelming when you're just looking at them as the problem. But when you start to break it down into, why is this a problem and what I do to address certain things, then you become much more empowered and confident that you can overcome. So that's something that my husband and I really try to do when we have an issue to be like Okay, what is really the underlying issue? Am I upset because I don't like being in the house, and I just miss being out in nature. Am I worried about whether we're going to make money to pay the rent in the next month? Am I concerned about the health care workers or other people who are putting themselves in harm's way in order to to serve People are my concern that there's not enough toilet paper. There's not enough medical masks like once you can break down well, what am I concerned about? Then you can start to think of concrete ways to address those. Can I so masks? Can I find out what resources are gonna be available for people who are out of work? Are there other ways right now that I can support first responders or truck drivers or grocery store owners? Are the people that I know personally that I could reach out to and just say, hey, what would be really helpful right now? Even teachers who are doing a lot of their classes online. Can I do a practice session with them to make sure everything's working so they're not stressed out? You know, these kind of concrete things can really make us feel like, Okay, I can help. Um, I can contribute to this, and I can be a source of comfort and solace to other people and then also to myself, because I don't feel powerless. So in addition to this portrait, Sam, I was thinking about celebrations in general. So feast. Maybe someone in your family is having a birthday during this time or their some gold that you achieved as a family. You're individually, like, for me. I'm gonna be publishing a book of poetry for Mother's Day. And so that's been a difficult thing for me to think. Okay. Am I gonna promote this book? Am I still gonna publish it? It's one of those things. If I don't do it, then I have to wait a whole other year. And, you know, I've been working towards doing this. So these are questions that come up for all of us. And so I thought these virtual gatherings can really be used to still celebrate these things in a way that brings comfort to people and has the sense of community. But maybe you might not know enough poet sound something like a poetry slam. But you could definitely have an open mic with your friends who have different kinds of talents, whether it's juggling or singing or telling a really great story that that's something I think that's really overlooked. Even if you don't have musical ability or you can't do any tricks, you just find a really great short story to share with people. That's a really wonderful talent. Or if you are able to do a little more planning, you could have an arts and crafts event where you send everyone the supplies that don't need or the directions instructions beforehand so that you make sure everyone has exactly what they need Before you start and then you have someone hosted on you do it all together and you can show each other what you're working on, and you can just still have that community feel even though you're doing it individually and then Another idea is to do exercise. So one of my closest friends, Marley, she's having a birthday during this time and she invited us to do Zumba. So there's an instructor and each person pays $5 you joined this group and you do Zumba together now in this group, I believe that you're just watching the Zumba teacher and your videos. Air turned off, but I think it would be really cool if you could try t o find a class where you're all exercising together and you can see each other. So it still feels like you know, you're connected and and you're together and you're having fun with one another. So you know, not to watch other people exercise and intimidate them or anything. But I think when you're all doing it together. You're all sweating and you're all trying to keep up, just like in person. You know, it's it just feels like maybe ah, a bit more connected on a bit more fun. So those were some different ways that you could celebrate special occasions virtually and then incorporating this idea of addressing issues. You can start with a prayer. I think everyone is really aware of what's going on right now, So this could be an opportunity to say, Hey, we're gonna start with a prayer for all of humanity. Um, or are there other ways that you can incorporate things that are helpful into your meeting? So maybe if you're doing arts and crafts, can you make cards for local health care workers? Or can you sew masks? If you're in a situation like me, we have two very young children, so just attending to the needs of our children keeps us quite busy during the day. So maybe if you're like me, you don't have time to plan out something too complicated. But you could at least set a theme. So you can say the theme of our open mic or talent show is going to be health or going to be unity or whatever you want to choose that would help people reflect on the situation and see what kind of lessons that we're learning from this and how we can empower each other and move forward. So that was my living the life tip to celebrate while social distancing to try and celebrate joyfully yet respectfully during social distancing, to not feel like you have to isolate if you have a birthday or you just had a child or you're getting married or whatever the circumstance, maybe that you can invite people into that space with you, virtually come and make it meaningful and make it a comfort other people and to yourselves in a respectful and a joyful manner. So speaking of joyful, my resource this week is actually called Little Song Music Makers, and it is this very joyful woman named Miss Vicky. I watched a couple of her videos very joyful, and she's giving free online music classes for kids right now. And she's really about empowering children through music and focusing on virtues and self esteem and things like that. So I just like to play a little clip of her class. "So this one is a song about friendship. We can ask ourselves, What does friendship look like? What does it look like to be a good friend? How can we be friends to each other? To our sisters, our brothers to our friends and how can we get in touch with people and be a good friend to them? So it goes like this. SONG So be sure to check out Little Songs. I'll leave the link to the Facebook page in the show notes. And this week I am gonna end with a poem. And I just wanted to remind you that if you have any thoughts or tips or resources that you would like to share, you can email me at info at Andrea Hope dot org. And you could even record yourself talking about a resource that you've created or a tip that you found really helpful. You could just record yourself on your phone or on your computer and send it over to me in an email. I hope that this poem will bring you some comfort. Remember Who You Are by Andrea Hope "Your papa gazed down alleyways and saw vibrant bazaars. Your thoughts can transform empty space. Remember who you are. Your mama gathered spice and herb to treat your every scar. Your heart does feel and hands do heal. Remember who you are. Your sister rose upon her toes. The wind song, her guitar. You know the dance of fireflies. Remember who you are. Your brother reached across a rail and caught a fallen star. You too can save a life tonight. Remember who you are. DING To Mother is an individual initiative and provides only the personal reflections and insights of its creator. That's me. For more information about the Baha'i faith, including access to the official writings and contacts for Baha'is in your community, please visit Bahai.org.