Member Columns

On March 22, a member of the LW community and your fellow shareholder received an anonymous letter of hate and discrimination. This crime is under full investigation. The GRF is committed to realizing the community’s vision of unity and the founding premise of neighbor helping neighbor. Its core purpose is to provide a welcoming, safe and inclusive community where every resident experiences a true sense of belonging. The Golden Rain Foundation states emphatically that acts of hate speech/bias will not be tolerated. There has been an outpouring of support for LW’s Asian American Pacific Islander community and the Choi family in particular, as expressed in the letters and columns printed here.

by Maureen Habel

Golden Age Foundation

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing, author unknown.

I am a member of the “silent generation.” Perhaps we were called that because we grew up in an era in which we were taught to be obedient, respectful and, most of all, polite. The recent incident at Leisure World is appalling to most of us. It is not who we are or who we wish to be.

We must confront evil by both saying something and doing something. The first thing we can do is to reach out directly and personally this week to our Asian-American neighbors to tell them that we support them as valuable members of our community. We need to find ways to connect with them and listen to their distress and their fears.

The second thing we can do is to confront ignorance and discrimination by speaking up. I know that I have heard comments that disparage others whose ethnicity or backgrounds differ from ours in our clubhouses and during other activities. Often it’s in the form of an off-the-cuff comment or what passes as a joke. Not responding to such comments isn’t a neutral act—it implies agreement and only encourages the person expressing the biased and ignorant view to continue.

We’re not too old to learn how to break our silence, but I for one need to learn a new skill set. There are lots of books for children about how to respond to bullying. Insulting and denigrating Asian –Americans, African-Americans or Hispanic-Americans is the adult form of bullying. The LW Weekly could do a great service by publishing resources that help us seniors learn how to confront discriminatory comments in a way that doesn’t fracture relationships or end in a call to Security.

Now is not the time to be silent. It’s time to speak up. LW Interfaith Council

Recent events worldwide have shown that prejudice and hate are prevalent in subtle and overt ways. You would think that in such a diverse and secluded neighborhood like Leisure World, it would not be so, but it is.

Threats made toward a community member because of his or her religion, race, country of origin or political leanings are abhorrent. Those who have been so threatened find it near impossible to know how to respond. Any one of us would be tempted to respond in kind. with equal anger, hatred or violence. But when we do, we become the thing we abhor.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness,” declared Martin Luther King Jr., “only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.” As a council of believers, the Leisure World Interfaith Council affirms that all human beings are the same species, children of a loving Creator. We declare that the only way to overcome hate is through love, compassion and unity within the community.

We invite all who live and work in Leisure World to join us on Friday, April 2, from noon-2 p.m. in the Amphitheater for a special outdoor Passover/Good Friday/Easter service. This special service is an opportunity to affirm the belief that only light and love can drive out darkness.

Rejecting hatred is only the start. The commandment to “love your enemies” is not an easy one to apply. There is no clear road map. But, in a Psychology Today article titled “From Hate to Love,” Robert W. Fuller, Ph.D., offers valuable advice: “First, we can cease to perpetrate indignities. In order to open the door to accommodation, we have to show our antagonists the dignity we want them to extend to others and ourselves.” Fuller continues, “We must be willing to meet indignity with dignity, for however long it takes. Maintaining civility doesn’t mean giving in to others’ demands, but it does mean dealing with them respectfully.”

Next, Fuller prescribes that we “recognize that when real indignities do occur, a flash of righteous anger or a sharp verbal riposte preempts the slow burn of hate.” When our mothers responded to our impertinence with “shame on you,” the rebuke served as an instant attitude adjustment. And immediately following that scolding came a show of motherly love that relieved the fear we felt.

Today, in our confrontations, “as fear subsides, and we gain confidence to protest against the indignities that befall us and to apologize for those we ourselves commit, we deny hate the hothouse required for its gestation.”

Once hate is absent from our interactions, dignity is restored, and victim and antagonist are freed from their burdens. This is loving your enemies, and there are no shortcuts.

Fuller concludes, “This procedure applies not only to relationships between persons, but also to those between groups and nations.”

For those living here in this loving community, the road to reconciliation, forgiveness and atonement is available to all. We challenge all who live and serve within our walls to exercise respect for one another. Expect confrontation and disagreement, but see within each individual your mutual kinship as children of God. Never forget: “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”

Editor’s Note: The following column was submitted by a Sunshine Club officer, whose name cannot be printed because she is candidate for a Mutual board in upcoming elections. All GRF and Mutual candidates are subject to a news blackout during election season, per GRF guidelines.

Leisure World was saddened last week to witness how a meanspirited resident of our community deliberately caused pain to a grieving family simply because of a difference of racial background. It must be a huge burden to live with that much poisonous bias and such a hardened heart. May they know peace. For the rest of us, there is always hope.

Today the Sunshine Club would like to offer any who grieve a metaphor that has helped us understand the art of healing. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with lacquer dusted with gold or precious metals—built on the idea that in embracing flaws and imperfections, we create an even stronger, more beautiful object than the original piece.

So instead of our scars (our hurts) making us weak, the beautiful repair increases our value. Whatever tragedy we may experience, we get to reframe that hardship (fill that crack with gold, if you will) and emerge stronger on the other side of it.

Using this as a metaphor for healing ourselves teaches us an important lesson: Sometimes in the process of repairing things that have broken, we create something more resilient, unique and beautiful.

Lastly, every Friday morning, there is a gathering via Zoom of lively LW Sunshine Club members ( see page 15 for more information). The Sunshine Club was started by our own Anna Derby to help our Korean residents assimilate and enjoy this lovely community. Her effort quickly morphed into friends and neighbors who recognized a good topic and an opportunity to gather in fellowship. Today the club shares a lovely tossed-salad collection of neighbors representing a rainbow of colors and stations of life. There are no dues, fees, religion or politics.

Please accept this invitation to come and see for yourself.