Thanksgiving on the Bayou
The Thanksgiving venue changed this year. We all have families, families have struggles, and one of those struggles meant that the Thanksgiving celebration would shift to another home. Same cast of characters, same fabulous food, just a different location.
The organization is superb. Everyone has a part to play. Nieces and nephews arrive to assist in preparations, clearing the grounds, putting out tables and chairs, helping wherever they can. Cousins get to spend time together, catching up, as they work together. The aunts are all busy in the kitchens, cutting, chopping, baking, cooking, stewing, putting their best efforts into making the dishes everyone loves.
The guys do the turkeys. They may have help, but the turkeys seem to be the guys prerogatives. They also carry in the hams.
There are so many desserts that they won’t fit on one table. They won’t fit on two tables! When all the desserts are put on the tables, there are still back-up pies and cakes in the pie-safe behind the table!
Cousins fill glasses with ice; guest can choose lemonade, sweet tea or “un”
The tables groan with turkeys, hams and side dishes – beans and peas from the garden, corn bread, sweet potato casseroles, and more, much, much more:
There is fun for everyone – kayak rides, tractor rides, and ring toss:
There’s always a special room where babies can nap – this is a very child friendly celebration. This family loves babies and little ones, and encourages all the cousins to stay close. It’s always a full day, Thanksgiving, with much for which to give thanks. 🙂 When the great meal is over, people play, visit, walk, chat . . . and then sneak back for another taste of their favorite dish!
The Power of Kindness to Change Lives
This week AdventureMan and I have been blessed, greatly blessed. We have met some wonderful people and heard some amazing things. Two stories in particular have shaken the earth for me.
“How It Happened for Me”
The first story is about a friend we met from the newest country on earth, South Sudan. A group of us were sitting together when one woman turned to this man from the South Sudan and asked “How did you find Jesus?”
This was not a religious gathering, so it is an unusual question on a social evening. But this quiet, modest man responded “I will tell you. It is a long story. It starts when I was only five months, not a baby, five months in my mother’s womb.”
He told us of a life with no security. His parents and family fled to the forest, and were on the run continually most of his life – until recently. He told of a life trying to find safe places, sometimes being separated from his parents.
He told of a priest who, when he and his brothers and sisters were very young, taught them to say “God bless Mother and God bless Father and God bless my brothers and sisters and watch over us always.” He was kind to the children, and taught them that God loves them, that God is kind. He said they did not know who this God was, but he and his brothers and sisters said this prayer every night, to keep his family safe. He said they learned other simple prayers. There would be rare times when someone would teach them a letter, or some numbers, drawing in the sand, or the floor of the forest, simple, quick lessons.
“So I don’t know all the stories you do,” he said. “I don’t even know the bible very well, we never had educated priests, just simple men who taught us simple prayers. Only later did we become more educated.”
As we listened, we had huge lumps in our throats. I could hear Jesus’ voice saying that we must believe as little children, and this man had the pure simple faith of a child, a memory from his earliest years, as he prayed for his family to be safe in a world where life was continual chaos and a struggle to survive.
“When I understood about God,” he went on, “there wasn’t even a church or a pastor-man who could baptize me; I had to believe for many years before I could become a Christian.”
As a footnote, he told us that somehow, most of his village managed to survive, helping one another. His entire family made it through, his parents are still alive. The village children little by little gained education, becoming doctors, lawyers, professionals of all kinds. His village now has a church, a simple church, not always staffed, but a church. The war is ended. For him, the simplicity of peace is all he ever wanted.
We will never forget his, and his story. We have met an extraordinary human being.
Today, we went to a lunch, invited by a friend, to raise funds for public education. LOL, this is what I used to do; I worked for an education foundation and raised money for public education. I love this kind of thing. I knew just what to expect – lots of success stories, stellar achievements, and a gentle pitch.
Whoa! Wrong! Darling kids – check. Recognition of important guests – check. Gentle pitch – no way! They got right to business; you will see this form, please take your pens RIGHT NOW and fill it out and give what you can, education funds seem to get cut more every year and we are trying to do more with less and less. Give NOW. CHECK!
The final speaker was a local businessman and patron-of-just-about-everything, a man who also brought baseball to Pensacola. He talked about his own public education. He talked about his speech impediment, and his deafness, he talked about his short stature and his inability to sit still and concentrate. He talked about teachers who identified him and instead of treating him as an obstacle, made him believe they were glad to have him in their class. He talked about teachers who gave him special assignments, who taught him math by having him calculate baseball averages. He knew their names, these saints who kept him in school, no matter how discouraged he might be.
He graduated with a 1.9 grade point, and had no intention of going to college, but ended up astonishing everyone by doing well on the ACT test and having a guidance counselor who found him just exactly the right environment where he could flourish on the college level.
Important people usually enjoy telling you the great things they have done. This man focused on his disabilities, his humiliations and his weaknesses, and how the kindness of educators had pulled him out of a very dark place and set him on the road for the success he is today.
I am willing to bet that the education foundation gained a lot of donors today. We were caught by surprise. We can defend against the powerful and successful, but when the heart speaks from vulnerability and failure, our hearts respond. This man is a success, but he gives credit to those who looked at him with caring eyes, with caring hearts, who lifted him and helped him on his way to the incredible (wealthy) success he is today, with a flourishing business and innumerable local charities who are grateful for his support.
What a week! And it’s only Tuesday! I wonder what the rest of the week will bring?
The End of Days
My good friend was visiting, and was late the first day of our visit, arriving breathless, and with her arms full of flowers.
“I am so sorry! I am late!” she apologized, “but I could not find a single florist!”
The truth is that she could arrive empty armed and I would love her as much. She doesn’t need to bring me anything, just her coming to see me is enough. It was a wonderful visit, full of laughter and shared moments, time with family and friends.
Florist shops have almost disappeared in Pensacola, and I suspect elsewhere, as hard times continue. Fresh cut flowers are such a luxury, and one of the first things to go when people start cutting back. Times are getting better, but slowly. Flowers are still a luxury. There are a couple shops I know still open, but not many.
Today’s reading is from Revelations, about the end of times, and set my mind adrift about the identity of Babylon (there are many ideas about this) and about God’s time. We may be in the end of times, I muse, but we don’t even know it because God’s time is so different from our earthly time. An instant can be a couple thousand years – we don’t know.
The author of Revelation uses symbolic language and can be a sort of Rohrshach test which tells more about the interpreter than the text interpreted.
Revelation 18:1-14
18After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority; and the earth was made bright with his splendour.2He called out with a mighty voice,
‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!
It has become a dwelling-place of demons,
a haunt of every foul spirit,
a haunt of every foul bird,
a haunt of every foul and hateful beast.*
3 For all the nations have drunk*
of the wine of the wrath of her fornication,
and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her,
and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power* of her luxury.’
4 Then I heard another voice from heaven saying,
‘Come out of her, my people,
so that you do not take part in her sins,
and so that you do not share in her plagues;
5 for her sins are heaped high as heaven,
and God has remembered her iniquities.
6 Render to her as she herself has rendered,
and repay her double for her deeds;
mix a double draught for her in the cup she mixed.
7 As she glorified herself and lived luxuriously,
so give her a like measure of torment and grief.
Since in her heart she says,
“I rule as a queen;
I am no widow,
and I will never see grief”,
8 therefore her plagues will come in a single day—
pestilence and mourning and famine—
and she will be burned with fire;
for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.’
9 And the kings of the earth, who committed fornication and lived in luxury with her, will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning; 10they will stand far off, in fear of her torment, and say,
‘Alas, alas, the great city,
Babylon, the mighty city!
For in one hour your judgement has come.’
11 And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo any more, 12cargo of gold, silver, jewels and pearls, fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet, all kinds of scented wood, all articles of ivory, all articles of costly wood, bronze, iron, and marble, 13cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, olive oil, choice flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, slaves—and human lives.*
14 ‘The fruit for which your soul longed
has gone from you,
and all your dainties and your splendour
are lost to you,
never to be found again!’
Daily Readings on Gossip
I grew up in a culture that thrives on gossip and speculation. Today’s reading from The Lectionary reminds me to gurd my tongue; never to repeat a conversation, unless not to repeat it would be a sin, as in murder or abuse.
Sirach 19:4-17
4 One who trusts others too quickly has a shallow mind,
and one who sins does wrong to himself.
5 One who rejoices in wickedness* will be condemned,*
6 but one who hates gossip has less evil.
7 Never repeat a conversation,
and you will lose nothing at all.
8 With friend or foe do not report it,
and unless it would be a sin for you, do not reveal it;
9 for someone may have heard you and watched you,
and in time will hate you.
10 Have you heard something? Let it die with you.
Be brave, it will not make you burst!
11 Having heard something, the fool suffers birth-pangs
like a woman in labour with a child.
12 Like an arrow stuck in a person’s thigh,
so is gossip inside a fool.
13 Question a friend; perhaps he did not do it;
or if he did, so that he may not do it again.
14 Question a neighbour; perhaps he did not say it;
or if he said it, so that he may not repeat it.
15 Question a friend, for often it is slander;
so do not believe everything you hear.
16 A person may make a slip without intending it.
Who has not sinned with his tongue?
17 Question your neighbour before you threaten him;
and let the law of the Most High take its course.*
My Wealth and My Treasure . . .
Blessings abound when you have faithful friends! Blessings on my friends, and know I am thinking of you as I write this, each and every one-in-a-thousand 🙂 From today’s readings in The Lectionary:
Sirach 6:5-17
5 Pleasant speech multiplies friends,
and a gracious tongue multiplies courtesies.
6 Let those who are friendly with you be many,
but let your advisers be one in a thousand.
7 When you gain friends, gain them through testing,
and do not trust them hastily.
8 For there are friends who are such when it suits them,
but they will not stand by you in time of trouble.
9 And there are friends who change into enemies,
and tell of the quarrel to your disgrace.
10 And there are friends who sit at your table,
but they will not stand by you in time of trouble.
11 When you are prosperous, they become your second self,
and lord it over your servants;
12 but if you are brought low, they turn against you,
and hide themselves from you.
13 Keep away from your enemies,
and be on guard with your friends.
14 Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter:
whoever finds one has found a treasure.
15 Faithful friends are beyond price;
no amount can balance their worth.
16 Faithful friends are life-saving medicine;
and those who fear the Lord will find them.
17 Those who fear the Lord direct their friendship aright,
for as they are, so are their neighbours also.
Libyans Say “Sorry” In Counter-Protests
I was living in Qatar, and the Libyan ambassador’s wife had invited me, along with several other women, to morning coffee. It’s what people did. I was sitting between one of my Libyan friends and my good Iranian friend, and I started laughing. I said “Oh, what is this good little American girl doing sitting between a Libyan and an Iranian?” and then we all laughed. We weren’t Libyan, or American, or Iranian, we were just women who liked each other; we got along.
We were all religious women. Not the same religion, but all believers in the Abrahamic tradition. I felt more comfortable with them than I felt around non-religious women. We had a lot of fun together, and we liked each other.
It breaks my heart when bad things happen, and I know how good these people are, and that the people on the attack have their own agenda which has nothing to do with Islam, or Christianity, and everything to do with power. If they prevail, I fear for my good friends.
This article from USA Today made me cry this morning. Ambassador Stevens was loved, and these brave people are risking their futures to tell us so.
Libyans express sorrow over killing of Americans
by Donna Leinwand Leger, USA TODAY
Hours after learning of Ambassador Chris Stevens’ death, the Libyan Youth Movement transformed its Facebook page into a tribute to the slain diplomat. It changed its cover photo from “Free Libya” graffiti sprayed on a Tripoli wall to a somber photo of Stevens with the tag “RIP Christopher Stevens1960-2012.”
“As North America wakes up, dread washes over me. What a rough night. I’m sorry for the horrible day the world is about to face,” the administrator of the Shabab Libya page wrote. “We are sorry.”
As anti-American protests swept across North Africa and the Persian Gulf, a counter-protest of apology emerged. Photos of Libyans carrying hand-lettered signs condemning the violence and expressing contrition for their countrymen appeared on Facebook. “Sorry” became the trending mantra of Libyans on Twitter.
At one counter-protest, an unidentified man carried a crude sign phonetically written in English with blue marker on lined notebook paper, “Sorry People of America this not the Pehavior of our ISLAM and Profit.”
Another sign in red, white and blue read: “Chris Stevens wasa friend to all Libyans.”
On Facebook, one group formed The Sorry Project, designed to collect thousands of personal, written apologies from Libyans. Its profile photo is a man holding a sign, “USA. We are sorry. We are sad.”
“We Are Sorry,” the group wrote on the page created Sept.11. “We would like show that as Libyans we do not support on the actions committed by these criminals. USA, we are sorry and we will say it one thousand times over. Our apologies will never be enough, but the Libyan people will always be grateful for you since you were the first to stand by us in our fight for freedom and hopefully you will continue supporting us.”
One commenter, Hajer Sharief, vowed to avenge Stevens’ death by rebuilding a “new civilized democratic Libya.”
“We promise, we will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail,” Sharief wrote. “This is the way real Libyans will pay you back Mr. Ambassador Chris Stevens.”
At the ceremony Friday outside Washington to repatriate the remains of the four American victims, President Obama acknowledged Libya’s internal conflict.
“I know that this awful loss, the terrible images of recent days, the pictures we’re seeing again today, have caused some to question this work. And there is no doubt these are difficult days. In moments such as this — so much anger and violence — even the most hopeful among us must wonder,” Obama said. “But amid all of the images of this week, I also think of the Libyans who took to the streets with homemade signs expressing their gratitude to an American who believed in what we could achieve together. I think of the man in Benghazi with his sign in English, a message he wanted all of us to hear that said, ‘Chris Stevens was a friend to all Libyans.’ “
Addicted to Change?
Today I attended a meeting at which there was a program on surviving change and thriving through it. The speaker described change as that which happens outside your control, and transition as that which you do to adapt to the change that is happening. A change can be positive if you have chosen it, or negative, if someone else has made a choice, or something has happened, over which you have no control or input, but it impacts on you.
Interesting, huh?
I’m not all that good at listening for very long, so my mind drifted to all the moves I’ve made (31) and all the adapting I’ve done. I didn’t mind the moving so much; I was good at it. Toward the end, the packing up became oppressive as I took more and more of it into my own hands. I had my reasons, as I learned that no matter how ‘caring’ the movers are promoted as being, they don’t care about my things the way I do.
First bad surprise: my son’s engraved silver baby cup disappearing. Those packing ladies showed up with great big handbags. I should have known. Thirty years later I am still fuming over the loss of that cup.
Second major bad surprise: We watched everything carefully packed up and crated, but when we got to the next post we discovered someone had changed the orders and UNCRATED our goods so they could go by air, without re-packing all the fragile goods, so everything came loose. What a mess. Furniture cracked and broken, irreplaceable friable Tunisian pottery in pieces, broken, broken broken, good and bad alike. Oh aarrgh.
Third bad surprise – my riding boots thrown in on top of my formal gowns. Shock and horror.
Slowly, slowly I began packing up my precious things inside other things, so no-one would ever see them. I began packing up my own clothes, which made it a whole lot easier to unpack; like was together with like. Movers would sometimes take clothes to cushion things, so you’d find sweaters wrapped around dishware or decorative items.
Last really bad surprise: Everything was carefully packed, but one box didn’t make it. I had packed the box myself – it was full of quilting books, books I used to teach quilting in Qatar and Kuwait, books which had new ideas and techniques. I knew no one wanted those books, but someone had dumped the box because, I imagine, they didn’t want to carry it, or it didn’t fit in the crate, or . . . I will never know. Those books were worth thousands of dollars, and some were private issue or out of print and irreplaceable.
There is nothing you can do about human malice, or random bad luck.
It just made me more and more compulsive, as I tried to control more and more so as not to have damage or loss, or just to help the move be more organized. It was a choice. I knew I didn’t have to work that hard, but I chose it, to have more control over what got lost or damaged. There is always a point, though, where you realize you don’t ever, not ever, have perfect control, and if you try, you can just make yourself crazy. You have to let it go.
Then, there is the moving in.
I was good at it. When it came to putting things away, it was always get the beds set up first, and made up. Everything was carefully labeled. Put the flatware in the flatware drawer, have a couple pots and pans and a few time-tested utensils. All the boxes are marked for the right room, and then – it’s just one box at a time, one room at a time, and you just stick at it until it’s finished.
Except for the move to Qatar, when I got sick and my angel friend came and unpacked my quilt room and put everything away. If you are a quilter, you will know what kind of effort that was, LOL! I also had a maid who was more like a friend. She was always doing more than I told her to do, God just made her heart that way, and she took care of tearing down all the boxes and saving all the paper, a task that makes me crazy, and as she did it she showed so much grace.
But now, it’s been two years since my last move. The possibility of Hurricane Isaac helped me deal with some of the time-to-move heebie-jeebies. AdventureMan asked if he needed to buy me a new house. (Our joke was always that I was low maintenance; I didn’t want big jewels or high end clothing, just buy me a house now and then, LOL!) No, I don’t need a new house. I need to handle this cold turkey; I’ve become so addicted to change that I’m not very good at settling down. The only way you can get good at something is to practice it. I need to more practice at this being settled, but oh, it is so uncomfortable for me.
Here are some rolling stone kind of songs, no not Rolling Stones, but rolling stone, as in Mama was a Rolling Stone, LOL.
God Speaking – Are You Listening?
Last week I read an article about a correlation between having more friends and social connections and living a long life. Part of me thought “but what if you are sort of stuck in one place and some of those relationships are toxic?” Doesn’t the nature of the relationship matter? But the study didn’t comment on unhealthy relationships, just that having long standing relationships with people you could go to and trust was a healthy thing.
Then I started to feel a little sad, thinking how many times I have moved and how hard it is to build long-lasting healthy relationships. I thought of how little I participate with the social networking sites, and how my preference for privacy impacts on my socializing. Would this have an impact on how long I will live?
Then, some surprising things started happening. One far-away friend called, just to hear my voice. She had broken her leg, just after unpacking from yet another move, and had been incapacitated. Very shortly, I got a call from another Doha friend, and a chatty e-mail from another. We all lead busy lives; how was it they all thought of me the same week?
My best friend from college e-mailed me, and a friend from long-ago times in Germany e-mailed me to set up a telephone date. A newer friend called to ask us if we’d like to hit the Shakespeare Fest with them. I started to realize that I DO have a lot of healthy, loving, long-term relationships, some with people a lot like me, who have moved a lot and not lived too long in any one spot, and some just the opposite, with people who have lived lives entirely unlike mine, in one spot most their lives.
It made me laugh. Sometimes, God answers prayers you don’t even know you’ve prayed. If you keep your eyes open, if you pay attention, you can see the pattern. It’s one good reason to keep a prayer journal, because so many times our prayers are answered and we forget even to say thank-you; once the prayer is answered, we move on, forgetting even how important our request once was. God spotted my little pity-party and gave me the gift of a little shift in perspective. Thanks be to God.
On a similar train of thought, as I read recently a book on Eleanor of Aquitaine, I think of how incredibly wealthy we all are, living in this day and age, and we live blithely on, unaware how very blessed we are. We worry about having ‘enough’ in terms of material comforts and goods, and never give a second thought to how good we have it.
I think of growing up in Alaska, where my Mother always had to order our annual snowsuits from the catalog so that they would arrive before the last boat could get through. I remember the pipes freezing up, and being sent to the creek to haul water into the house. I remember going with my Dad to the cold-storage locker, where they kept the frozen fish and meats from fishing and hunting season. (I also remember hating Moose-burgers, they were so game-y, but it was what was for dinner.)
AdventureMan laughs and says people were never intended to live in Florida, that Florida is a swamp, but with air-conditioning, it is bearable.
So you think of how the kings and emirs and caliphs and chieftans of old – even a hundred years ago – lived, and you look at how we live, and take it all the way down to border-line poverty. What I’m about to say does not apply to the homeless, or the transient homeless, sleeping in family basements or on friend’s couches. There is a strata of the poorest poor to whom this does not apply.
For the most part, we all have shelter, and most of it is climate controlled. We have some heat for when the temperatures are chilly, and some kind of fan or air conditioning to mitigate hot weather. We have windows with glass that can be opened and shut, and we have coverings for those windows. We have multiple changes of clothing that we can wear in various combinations.
We have toilets, and running water. We have ways to heat that water and to chill it. We have ways to heat food, and to keep it from spoiling. We have entertainment, books, televisions, phones and tablets to amuse us. We have exposure to places and ideas without ever leaving our homes. We can experience the athletes ordeals, frustrations and exaltations in London as they compete for medals. Ordinary people can train and compete on the world stage for these medals.
We have roads which stay stable in rain and heat, not bogging us down in mud and muck or snow, becoming impassable for months at a time. We can speak to friends and family anywhere in the world for a pittance. Anyone can; it’s affordable.
We have, most of us, enough to eat. Our problems are more those of excess than of want.
If Eleanor of Aquitaine were to come visit me, the Duchess of Aquitaine, the wife of the King of France and then wife of the King of England, she would be open-mouthed with astonishment at the luxury of our lives. She lived in palaces, places of great luxury for the times – for a very few. Even so, the palaces had no running water, nor bathrooms. No electricity, no heating other than fires in hearths or stoves. She would think our modest houses with our indoor bathrooms and cooking facilities and gathering spaces were miraculous, and she would be even more astonished that we common folk had such amenities. She would marvel at the privacy we have, rooms in which only one or two people sleep. She would look in our closets and be boggled at the amount of clothing we own which we never even wear, and the quality of the seams and stitching. She would look in wonder at our transport, and how the most common of people have cars, can fly to another city, or across the wide oceans.
She would be astonished that even the very poor and us commoners have rights, and judicial procedures protecting our rights against the rapacity of the nobles. She would marvel at our medical care, and that so many have access to it. I’m certain she would find us cheeky, and lacking in a humble acceptance of our station in life. I suspect she would be appalled at the idea of a person having the freedom to pursue an education and an idea, to create their own wealth by the work of their minds and hands.
She was an enormously capable and talented woman, Eleanor of Aquitaine, but once married, while she maintained ownership of her lands, her husbands controlled their use and revenues. If she could see women today, able to choose their husbands, able to attain an education and earn a living wage, supporting children, sometimes parents, and saving for retirement, controlling their own wealth and choosing their own destiny, she would blink in disbelief.
I would enjoy showing her modern life, the bad along with the good, and telling her about our trips to Africa, and our life lived in many countries in the world. I would show her my treasures gathered from here and there (and everywhere! 😉 ) and maybe take her to Pier 1 or World Market where she could pick up a treasure or two for herself. I would show her my fabric collection and watch her swoon with pleasure, and some of my perfume bottle collection, collected with glee from tiny stores in the Middle East. I’d take her to church with me, and out to lunch at Five Sisters. She could sleep in the guest suite, in a great big bed with soft covers and a walk-in closet and her own private bathroom with hot and cold running water and a jacuzzi tub and a shower. I would show her how the refrigerator works, and the microwave, and the oven, and the outdoor sprinkling system. She would absorb it all, and be full of wonder.
And yet every day, we get up and we live our lives oblivious to our riches . . .
Storm Blues for Hayfa
My quilting friend Hayfa hand-dyed the most gorgeous blues I have ever seen. A storm is rolling in tonight, and the blues of the storm remind me of Hayfa’s blues:
🙂
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