A Voice is a Human Gift

The Season of Hope:  A Community Day Center Blog on Food, Gardening and the Human Spirit

A Voice is a Human Gift

April 22, 2012

     I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees.  I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues

                                                                 --     The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss, 1971.

On Earth Day, the students from Brandeis University came to our garden and did hard labor.  They moved and shoveled soil, they dug, they raked, and they got on hands and knees to plant seedlings of kale, chard, marigold and more herbs.  Then, when they were done, they said they had fun because they felt closer to nature, they were with Mother Earth, their family.   Such was their sense of joy and community, deeply felt and freely given.   No doubt, they are good guests who walk lightly on earth. (See,  Only One Earth by Barbara Ward) 

                                                                   

 On the first Earth Day in 1970, students were everywhere to provide the energy, labor, and voice of concern for the deteriorating environment.  They helped to organize over 20 million Americans to take the streets, parks, community centers, and university campuses to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife realized they shared common values.   (For more information, see, http://www.earthday.org/earth-day-history-movement).  Gaylord Nelson, the U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, who conceived this event, said “Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level…. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself.” (See, http://earthday.envirolink.org/history.html). 

Human voice was needed on that first Earth Day, because we had forgotten how to listen to nature.  We forgot that, in the words of the poet Tangore, “trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.”  Or, in the words of the artist Van Gogh, “it is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to.”   Perhaps, we needed to be reminded by the writer George Elliot that “nature has her language, …. but we don't know all the intricacies of her syntax just yet, and in a hasty reading we may happen to extract the very opposite of her real meaning.”   But, on that first Earth Day, we listened even as we found our voice to speak for nature.   In the ensuing decade, we found a ways to give voice to nature – albeit, a voice that still trembles and is often interrupted by or drowned out in the cacophony of industrial societies.  On this 42^nd Earth Day anniversary, a group of student volunteers at the Community Day Center listened and spoke to nature. 

Perhaps we should not be surprised by their accomplishment.  All year, these students and other students from local colleges have come to the Community Day Center to serve our guests.   They know, first hand, individuals who spoke up but were shouted down by our society, individuals who lost faith in their own voices, and individuals who slipped into silence.   They have learned to hear voices where others find only silence and responded to what our guests have to say.

           

    

                                           Brandeis University: Be Our Guests Club

Margaret Atwood, poet, novelist, environmental activist, wrote:  A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used to utter fully human speech as possible.  Powerlessness and silence go together.  A central mission of the Community Day Center is to give voice to our guests. We do so,by means of not only the services we provide everyday, but also the special projects we undertake.

   

Telling stories is how we process the world around us.  Every time we have an experience we are telling a story. “Homelessness is dire. It is not a comfortable situation.  It is frustrating”, said Ron, a guest.  Jeanne, who became homeless because of domestic violence, said,“When I first became homeless, I actually had a habit of staring down. I had trouble even looking up. But I’d see my feet all the time on different kinds of terrain. Remembering all the places I’ve walked, and how different the terrain is, and how sometimes, it’s really not that easy to keep putting one foot in front of the other. There are different struggles, different obstacles. There are just times when it feels too much. By putting one foot in front of the other, it’s the only way to get back on track.”

 Each person who comes to the Day Center has stories of hardships, survival, tenacity and hope. How do we capture these life stories- through their eyes and in their own voices? Last year, we launched a unique exhibit featuring photography by homeless and near-homeless guests. Guests were given cameras and asked to document their personal experiences with homelessness. Their photographs in “Homelessness From Our Eyes” capture the hardships and hope of life on the streets, in the woods and in shelters. Check out Day Center's Facebook page at  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Community-Day-Center-of-Waltham/101497966605739 to find out where Homelessness From Our Eyes is showing, as well as, the Homelessness video to hear directly from Jeanne and the other photographers. By telling their own stories, our guests stripped away the shroud of silence and gave us the gift of their voices.  At the Center, we cherish these voices because they are also a gift of courage -a courage to step away from the insular, protective cocoon of silence, to speak plainly about the truth of their existence.

 In a new art installation, FACES: What People Don’t Know about Me, portrays the many faces of the local homelessness and poverty; and presents more than just the challenges our guests are encountering. One guest said that she was homeless, but she was more than the state she was in.  There is so much that is not known about their lives and, through FACES, we are surprisingly exposed to the multiple talents, dreams and contributions of these vulnerable individuals.  FACES is exhibited, for the first time in Waltham, at the Boston University Center for Digital Imaging Arts. Patrons are able to reach out and touch the faces on the computer screens in order find the unique characteristics that make each of our guests special.

We encourage you to come see our exhibits. See below for details.  If you are unable to go, but would like to learn more about the exhibition, please go to www.communitydaycenter.org/Faces/. Through touch, patrons are able to experience the common bond we share with the guests of the Community Day Center. Through sharing the stories of our guests, we receive the gift of the human voice.

When: April 19, 2012 until May 31, 2012

Where: Boston University Center for Digital Imaging Arts, 274 Moody Street, Waltham, MA 02453

Reception:  Wednesday, May 9, 6PM-8PM

Admission: free

 
FACES: What People Don't Know About Me 

At the Community Day Center, we strive to speak for and in unison with our guests. Cogently and eloquently, when we can.  Searchingly and haltingly, if we must.  Every day, we listen, and then we speak.  We speak for the day when our guests’ voices will break the bound between powerlessness and silence.  We speak for the hope that when we listen single mindedly, we will hear that nature- and humanity, which is but a small part of nature- has to say.