BRATTLEBORO — Most of us know that Brattleboro voted overwhelmingly in March to join the international Charter for Compassion - as have more than 400 cities and towns around the world - and that a resolution to that effect was passed by the Selectboard in May.
Since that time, most of the follow-up attention has focused on questions facing our own town. Initiatives are in the works, for example, to increase the number of police cases referred to the restorative justice process, to work with the United Way to upgrade its volunteer portal, and to relate our experiences through the “Compassion Story of the Month” in The Commons and the Reformer.
There is, however, a second dimension to our focus on compassion: Brattleboro's compassion toward those outside our town facing difficulties.
In this regard, it's interesting to note that many cities and towns in New England have sister communities, the majority of them located in Europe. Is it time for Brattleboro to have a sister community - and could doing so relate to our now-enhanced commitment to compassion?
One suggestion put forward is that we link with the village in Kenya that was the home of Wangari Matthai, the Nobel Prize–winning environmentalist who had a special relationship with Brattleboro and planted trees here.
The village of Kaiguchu, which already has a relationship with the Guilford Community Church, has a population only slightly smaller than Brattleboro's: about 9,000. Both communities have a commitment to ecology; both face increasing challenges with drugs.
With Kaiguchu as our sister community, we could help support, for example, vocational training for AIDS orphans, perhaps creating the first solar-powered school in the country. And our teenagers could join theirs in so-called “green safaris,” tree planting along with wild-animal adventures. Kaiguchu's primary school is ranked highest in its county and one of the top 100 out of Kenya's 7,000 schools.
Some in Brattleboro, however, are making the case that our sister community should be one facing challenges in our own country - perhaps one hit hard by recent hurricanes or flooding.
Psychologist Paul Rodrigue suggests the possibility of an indigenous community on a reservation. Or, Rodrigue writes, we could select a community with views radically different from our own and challenge ourselves to some serious mutual listening, recognizing that our current political situation “exposes the failures of communication of both the left and the right. We're not listening to each other, and the divide only grows bigger.” But we could break from this pattern and start listening to one another's stories.
What do we think? Such a rich and important question takes us further down the path of compassion.