Respect: No Longer Frozen in Shame

In Krakow, Poland, as in many other big cities around the world, respectable people pretend the homeless person they pass on the street is invisible. There are, the respectable feel, so many reasons not to respect the man sleeping on the bench: alcoholism, lack of a job, grubbiness, asking for handouts. And if he doesn't seem to respect himself, why should they? So they pretend blindness... until it turns out that the man on the bench has frozen to death in the winter cold. In this episode (originally recorded in December 2020), we listen to a Christmas story from Krakow in which volunteers relate their experiences of deliberately seeing those who are usually invisible, and of how offering respect to those trapped in shame can change their lives. Many people living on the street exist cut off from their families, ashamed of what they have done or who they have become. As Brené Brown says, "Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.” But in these stories, plus another short anecdote from STC Brussels, we learn that shame can be abolished and relationships restored as people are given respect instead of judgment.