Elizabeth Keating

“People use spatial metaphors to describe human experience, such as being “trapped” in a relationship, or “running away from truth,” as if truth were a physical place. People grow up in different moral spaces (for example, the community where everyone goes to Bible study). In northern Canada, the Athabaskan and Tlingit people, who are surrounded by glaciers, believe that the glaciers “listen, pay attention, and respond to human behavior—especially to indiscretion.” [4] The spaces in which we live contribute to our sense of the world. Conversely, people also shape space, as evidenced in the wide variety of houses that people build around the world. Asking your parent or grandparent to describe their childhood home and neighborhood can open up many conversations about what growing up was like for them.”
― Elizabeth Keating, The Essential Questions: Interview Your Family to Uncover Stories and Bridge Generations