Lesson 3

Lesson 3: The sounds on our lips and the sounds of our hearts

I grew up Catholic. This means that I went to a Catholic school. Yes, that one: the Catholic school with the nun and everything. Our nun, who was our principal, was named Sister Robert Anne. Although the school was Catholic, there were non-Catholics there, too, but we still had holy days of obligation and there were still prayers.

A madrassa is the same thing, except it is Muslim. They go through a normal day of school and learn language, mathematics, writing, and they even have physical education, where both boys and girls play equally. At the end of the day, they recite passages of the Koran. The sounds are actually quite beautiful. But basically, it is the same thing as a Catholic school. The sounds of the bells of the church are the same as the sound of the L-Ayden, the call to prayer here.

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I am the resident poet of our group.

I went to a wedding. It was wonderful, they took us all into the house and there were women celebrating. Besides the two men in our group, the only local men there were the groom and the father of the bride. The veils they wore and the dresses they had bought were filled with shimmering material. I didn’t take pictures, unfortunately, because I knew the women were modest, but it reminded me of my sisters dress for her wedding. The music may have been different, but the laughter and clapping and sound of dancing was the same.

The father took us to one of the rooms in the back where we had tea. I had wanted to congratulate the father on the wedding of his daughter, and that he must be very proud. Our teacher translated for us, because we still don’t know the language very well. He replied that one does not wear pride outwardly, because everything good is given by God, which is a good thing to say. I wanted to find a way to toast him, and so I asked if our teacher could translate something for me. I said,

“To you, I wish happiness.

Though the sounds of our lips may be different,

the sounds of our hearts are the same.”

***

I put in both of these stories to express a point. I remember during the last presidential campaign, some attention was paid to the fact that Obama went to a  “madrassa”, to try to paint him as a Manchurian candidate. This is a psychological tool - to use a foreign sounding word or phrase so as to paint somebody as so different than we are that they cannot possibly share the same values that we have.

This is a lie.

This is so important that I can already say with certainty that this is one of the most important lessons that I will learn here. Madrassa. Bible-thumper. L-Ayden, call to prayer. Luminous Mysteries. Sodomite. Godless heathen. So many words that carry within themselves images that have already been created for us. These are all tools that are used to keep us fighting each other so as to distract us from the true problems that we face.

We are human, after all. When you get down to it, we all have the same desires. In general, we wish to be good people. In general, we want those around us to be happy. In general, we want people to be free to find their own happiness. There is a passage in the Koran that even says, “You have your religion, and I have mine.” Another passage in the Koran says that “believers, and also Jews, Sabaeans (those who follow the Sabbath, and Christians will all make it into heaven.”

The issues with literacy and the rise of extremism is for another lesson, but lesson 3 is this: Though we may have different sounds for things, the sounds that they make in our hearts are the same. I must admit that I forget this lesson sometimes, but I want to keep it close to me. Don’t let people tell you what to believe about someone. Look at their actions, look at their hopes. There are so many things we do not know about people that it is foolish to begin with distrust. Look at the actions of another person and try to see it from their perspective.