Dear friends,
Over the last ten years, according to a deep dive on Google’s Ngram Viewer, the language of we went down in their vast collection of digitized books, even as the language of commerce went way up.
I’m not knocking commerce, but I’m rooting for the word we. I still say all the we words—we, our, and us—when I refer to my house, my family, my life. I know this is an exercise in the slow reorientation of grief. But it’s also a statement about the collaborative nature of life. Yes, I’m an individual, but I am also a part of a bigger, continually operating unit of human beings.
This bond of “we-ness” is who Refuge is. We is a statement of belonging. It’s a tonic for aloneness. At Refuge we strive to be the whole we, not a goal, a values statement, or a mantra (we have all of those). Not a rant about inclusion or a rejection of those who exclude. Not a political platform.
We is the product—the golden egg—of welcome.
I don’t know about you, but I find that much of my life is a search for that golden egg. And, although I’m often as insecure as a middle schooler as I hunt for my own place among the crowd, I find we gleaming most brightly when I welcome others.
Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl said, “…being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself–be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself–by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love–the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.”
I’m not sure I had any of this in mind when, on New Year’s Eve, I walked up to Refuge in Clarkston. I’d been hiding out at home, exhausted, since the day after Christmas, and suddenly I’d had enough of just me. I walked up to Refuge with the vague notion that I’d somehow be reminded there that I belong in a wide circle of we. Now that I think of it, I hoped Refuge would be what we say it is, even on a slow day.
Sure enough, after I’d finished my cortado during a couple of deep, impromptu conversations, two former Refuge baristas, Mohamed and Ali (pictured with Leon below) , drove up within minutes of each other. Both young men fled their homelands, one all alone and one with a family who to this day depends on him.
Although Mohamed lived in a bordering country, his story of terror and loss was from the same playbook that made the Lost Boys of Sudan famous. By the time he arrived in the U.S., he was broken and alone. He started at Refuge not much later.
Ali has asked me many times over the years to write his story. It is harrowing, hilarious, and hopeful, so I keep saying he can write it one day. You can read one small chapter of it here.
Both men have their own successful businesses today, so stopping by for a visit isn’t something they do often. They are flourishing and, well, like most of us, busy.
Simone Weil said that attention is “the purest form of generosity.” That’s what the short visit I had with Mohamed and Ali felt like. After a few days of planned isolation, they drew me back into we. They offered me the gift of their full attention, which we all know is the best part of welcome.
I don’t want to live in a world where men like Mohamed and Ali are they, not us. Where commerce means more than we. I don’t want to live in a world where the contributions refugees make in love are dismissed or rejected. Where Ali and Mohamed are dismissed or rejected.
The trend away from we on Google was ten years in the making, which reminds me that this journey of welcome is a long game.
But maybe, just maybe, if we keep speaking the language of we, not ignoring the language of commerce (drink coffee with us!), we will move the trend up and to the right toward a more welcoming world.
We love you,
Kitti + Refuge
