Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover This Halloween

We’ve all heard the saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”, and on a holiday like Halloween this adage seems to take on new meaning. Many Canadians will don a costume this Halloween to look funny, scary, or crazy. The guises we wear at Halloween remind me of the stereotypes that are often made about people experiencing homelessness because of the way they look. Visitors to The Mustard Seed often tell me that they are scared of the people on the streets because of the way they look. They take one look at someone and assume they know all about them: "They’re lazy”, “They’re an addict”, “They’re homeless”, “They’d hurt me if I stopped to talk to them”, and “They’re scary”.

Brené Brown, a social worker from the United States says, “In [our] culture of shame, we are constantly overwhelmed with feelings of fear, blame, and disconnection. This creates an ‘us and them’ world. There are people like us, and then there are ‘those other people’. And we normally work very hard to insulate ourselves from ‘those people’. As children, there were the people that we were allowed to hang out with and then there were the other kids…As adults, we live in the neighborhood where our kind live – the other neighborhoods are for the other folks. We emotionally and physically insulate ourselves from ‘the other’… We’ve developed language to describe others – sometimes we refer to them as ‘those people’, or the even more mysterious ‘people like that’… Sharing our shame with someone is painful… the natural tendency to avoid or reduce this pain is often why we start to judge and insulate ourselves using otherness. We basically blame them for their experience. We unconsciously divide people into two camps: worthy of our support and unworthy.”  I Thought it Was Just Me (But it Isn't) - Brené Brown

Homelessness is scary, and it’s painful, especially when we get to know someone who is experiencing homelessness and they share their story with us. When we hear someone’s story, we start to care about them and it hurts to see people we care about in bad situations. So instead of getting to know people, we give them a stereotype or a label that sums them up in one word so we don’t have to feel the pain of hearing their actual story.  

Last week a group of elementary students from a local school came to visit the Mustard Seed and they made sandwiches for our community. They bravely opened their minds and hearts to hear about “the other”. We gave them a tour and shared with them the stories of some of the folks we know that have been affected by poverty and homelessness. Sometimes I get discouraged and I wonder if these tours even do anything to help, but I was given some hope when I received a letter from the teacher of one student, who went back to his school and wrote about his experience in his journal. The student wrote:

“Today we went to The Mustard Seed... I learned that homeless people are not crazy drug addicts or bums, but people that have worth. I think that it is fitting that The Mustard Seed ended up in a church. The Mustard Seed is one of the best places I have seen in my life, and I am happy that we were able to go and make a difference in someone’s life, or at least a sandwich. I cannot believe that I used to think that these people were useless. I will try to donate to non-profit organizations, and make sure my donations are in good shape and can give hope to the people who receive them.” – Grade 6 Student

This Halloween, may we remember that beneath the clothes we wear, the ‘costumes’ we put on each day in our schools, our work places, and our cities, that each of us has a story, and that our stories matter, because we matter.

Let us remember that each of us has a name and we are so much more than stereotypes and labels from the way we look.

And may we have the courage to share our story with our whole heart and to hear the story of “the others” in our own communities.

Say "Hello" and Follow me on twitter @paulacornell5 or @mustardseedyeg

----- Subscribe to The Mustard Seed Blog via RSS