Dinner With Farzaneh

A gorgeous Persian feast. Delicious!

           

  

Last Sunday evening we were honored to be the guests of Farzaneh, a warm wonderful friend from Iran.  We got to know her through her tailoring business, where we take our clothes to get altered (I told her, it’s good I can’t sew, or we would have never become friends!).  We’ve spent a lot of time talking and getting to know each other over the years and thus have become special friends.  So last week she invited us to come for a fabulous Persian feast, much of it cooked by her mother who is visiting.

             Have you ever joined an international table?  It’s one of my favorite experiences.  Lots of beautiful, new foods laid out before us, different languages flying through the air, and lots of cross-cultural bridge-building.  Laughter comes easily as we are assured that our commonalities outweigh our differences by far. And the colorful diversity adds extra spice.
            This was a most eclectic crowd.  Farzaneh, a native Muslim, attends the Unity Church here in Wichita, which is part of an international religious movement. Their pastor was present and told me that their church “considers the Bible their text and Christianity their foundation, but adheres to the universal truths of all religions.”  So there are members that are Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu as well.  His wife is Colombian, and she was a most interesting woman.  She got her master’s in chemistry in Russia, so considers English her third language.  Of course, my husband got a kick out of visiting with her, being that he has studied Russian and enjoys meeting people who speak it.
             Again, I find it a rich experience to meet all kinds of people, and the past two days have been full of such experiences.  Saturday night we skyped some friends from China, last night we enjoyed a Persian feast, and tonight we will deliver a meal to a new Mexican-American family in town.  I’m grateful for these times.

For life is what you make it.  So make it good!

           

My caring friend Farzaneh and me.

Mike enjoyed speaking Russian with his new Colombian friend.

Fun with the group after our feast!  Good times.

New Beginnings

My daughter's school supplies neatly laid out on our table.

This week marks the beginning of a new school year – which around our house means my daughter starts fourth grade and I get back to teaching.  As for my husband, well, he continues to plug away in his cubicle at work, as always.  It’s been a fun summer, and I’m a bit winsome about it coming to an end – except for the heat!  But as my girl counts out her new pencils and other school supplies on our dining room table, and I start to get a peek inside the new textbook I will be using, I start turning my attention to the fall and the year ahead.

          Even if your life doesn’t revolve around the school calendar, what new beginnings are in store for you?  I’m not good at transitioning from one period of life to another (getting back home after vacations is always a welcome relief, but it takes awhile for me to feel comfortable in my old routine), but it’s important to be pulled into new adventures.  As I think about this coming year, I’m optimistic about the new experiences it can offer.
         Are you happy?  Are there ways that you can make yourself happier?  A strange segue I know, but I’m thinking about a book I read this summer and want to share some of its ideas with you.  It’s called The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin.  Now, I’m not one for self-help books – personally I think they’re pretty shallow, but this one intrigued me, and I wasn’t disappointed.  This author said she already felt she was reasonably happy in her life, but wondered if she could improve her situation by making specific resolutions each month (for instance, she found that by just getting to bed thirty minutes earlier each night, she felt much better and things went more smoothly the next day -- my goal would be to get up a bit earlier each morning).

            Anyway, here are a few of her thoughts:

• What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.
• Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
• “Happiness,” wrote Yeats, “is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth.  We are happy when we are growing.”
• You can’t change anyone but yourself.
• Work can be a source of many of the elements for a happy life: the atmosphere of growth, social contact, fun, a sense of purpose, self-esteem, recognition.
• Denying bad feelings intensifies them; acknowledging bad feelings allows good feelings to return.
• It’s important to keep happy memories vivid in your mind, so you can recall them when you’re discouraged.
• New experiences are an important source of happiness.
• Having strong social bonds is probably the most meaningful contributor to happiness.
• Don’t gossip.
• If you can find the time, making a new friend is extremely energizing. New friends expand your world by providing an entrance to new interests, and opportunities. And, you can play the same role for them.
• Actively invite others to join a conversation.
• Stop the venting and complaining.
• Give thanks: for the ordinary and the extraordinary.
• Stop buying useless crap.
• Shit happens – count on it.
• Choose not to take things personally.
• Play the hand you're dealt.
• Your physical state is crucial: getting enough sleep, exercise, nutritious food, etc.
• Indulge in a modest splurge.
• Money can buy happiness if it is used wisely.
• For many, fear of what might happen is a source of great unhappiness—yet they feel there’s a propitiatory virtue in fretting. Stop worrying.
• Cut people slack.
• When listening to other people speak, listen intently.
• Don’t eat fake food.
• Direct your thoughts away from subjects that make you angry or irritable.

        Please excuse the abundance of ideas here – I tried to list things that were provocative and not too cliché.  Take what you want from this list – I find it worth pondering.  For now, have a good week, and a good new year!

For life is what you make it. So make it good!

           

Connecting With Cousins

My cousin Ben, me, and his wife Vikki in Iowa.

 

 

 

I’ve had some fun in the past year or two getting together with first cousins that I haven’t seen in a long time.  As kids, even though we lived all over the country, our folks got us all together regularly for holidays and family reunions.  As we’ve grown, however, we’ve kind of gone our own way . . . attending college, getting married, raising families, etc.  So, it’s been fun for me to call cousins that I haven’t seen for years and stop to visit them as part of larger trips that I take.

            It kind of reminds me of seeing classmates at a class reunion (though much more fun). We know how squirrely we all were when we were little and we have similar memories of times spent together. And, it’s always interesting to share our different recollections of just what happened and why. But more than that, the family bond in today’s mobile society is important and it’s always good to reinforce that and enjoy our shared history.

            Another thing that’s interesting is that our age differences are so insignificant now. I just got to re-connect with my cousin Ben and meet his wife and kids up in Iowa on our way to Indiana.  I always thought of him as “Benji,” but now I realize that he is older than my husband! Ha.

Another layer of this re-connecting has to do with meeting each other’s spouses and having our kids meet.  What fun!  I told my daughter that I want her to meet as many of her second cousins as she can, and being that a lot of these kids are around her age, she’s had a ball.  Last year I visited a cousin in Baltimore who has three children, and my daughter fit right in as the fourth sibling (their mother, my cousin Ann, also remembered with me the silly skits we would perform for everyone at Thanksgiving). What fun to see the beautiful children my cousins have “produced” – to see how their looks and personality traits have been carried on.

My cousin Ann and I during a recent visit (we called her Annie!).

I hope that our re-connection keeps us in closer touch with each other as time goes on.  This has been a joy in life, and I plan to get in touch with more cousins in the future. Let’s see, I only have seventeen more to go  . . . 

For life is what you make it.  So make it good!

The Lost Art of Graciousness

Coneflowers bloom in my backyard perennial garden.



Graciousness. Not a word we hear or use much any more.  What comes to your mind when you think of this word?  Old ladies with pearls, serving cups of tea?  Actually, I think of these words:  humility, generosity, authenticity, servanthood.

            I think the fact that we don’t use the word very much is a telltale sign: we don’t place much value on that trait anymore.  Do young kids today even know what it means?  Now I’m not talking about grace, or being graceful.  No, I’m talking about behavior on the part of one person toward another that speaks of humble generosity.  In our fast-food, self-serve world, we don’t talk about this kind of behavior anymore, or at least we don’t seem to expect it.  But because we all run on the instant-gratification fast track these days, maybe we need it now more than ever.

            The best way I can describe what I mean is to give examples.  These people stood out to me for their graciousness, perhaps because their manner seemed so old-fashioned.  Yet, it was refreshing.

            When I worked as a newspaper advisor on a college campus that was a 40-minute commute from my home, I would get finished late into the night on deadline day.  I had already arranged with one of the faculty members who lived near the college for her house to be my “storm home.”  I took her up on it several times.  Whenever a blizzard hit, she would let me sneak into her house late at night and I could crawl into the quilt-covered guest bed and then head home in the morning to make it back for my afternoon classes.  But this alone wasn’t what impressed me.  She would personally serve me breakfast in the morning.  I don’t mean a fancy one, but she would put my bread in the toaster, spread the butter and jam for me, and fix my coffee just the way I liked it, all as I sat at the table visiting with her.  When I have guests on a busy morning at my house, I just put some boxes of cereal out on the table with some bowls and spoons, and tell them the night before where the milk is in the refrigerator.  “Help yourself!” I would probably say as we head to bed, and I’d likely be out the door before they even woke up.

            I remember another person who helped my family out after we were stranded in a little western Kansas town.  Our car was totaled after a teenager plowed into the back of it, and this man not only rented us a car from his car lot so that we could continue our trip, but towed our car three hours to our home when we came back through as we rode along in the cab with him. He belonged to the Brethren Church, which in that area meant the men wore beards without mustaches, dressed plainly, as did the women in his family, who wore simple dresses and head coverings.  He talked with us about his beliefs on the trip down, but not in a preachy way, and we shared about our family and our life.  When he dropped us off at the auto shop, he touched both our arms gently and said “Blessings to both of you, Ann and Mike.”  It was such an authentic and sincere thing to say, that I never forgot it.

            Is graciousness a lost art in our society?  I hope not.  I wonder how I can be more gracious toward others.

For life is what you make it.  So make it good!

The Power of Forgiveness



A beautiful lotus flower at Botanica: The Wichita Gardens

 
















By the time we are adults, we all know what it’s like to be hurt or offended.  Sometimes people do it to us intentionally; often people do it to us without even realizing it.  We hurt, then get angry, then resentful, even bitter.  We can hold onto that grudge for a long time as it festers and grows.  Hopefully we all know that learning to forgive not only lightens the load of resentment we’ve been carrying around, but it also can help heal us and allow us to move forward.

A question I always have is this:  Is it enough to forgive, or do we have to forget too?  It seems that it’s necessary to release our anger to move on, but in order to protect ourselves from being hurt again, we need to remember the situation, not constantly, but keep it in the back of our minds so that we don’t get hurt again. Yet can we let go if we still remember?

Also, do we need to confront the person who has hurt us, or can we just forgive them in our minds?  Sometimes the person isn’t available, but even if they are, it can bring up more trouble than it’s worth.  What if they don’t agree with our perspective on the situation?  What if the confrontation hurts us even more?  It seems like each case is different.  Would it help our relationship with that person if we confront them?  Or would it make it even more fragile?

In the end, though, we need to remind ourselves that the person who is able to forgive shows strength; conversely, the person who refuses to let go of their resentment is the weaker one.  It’s hard to forgive others, but in the end it’s what frees us to move forward.

I was inspired to write on this topic after watching a music video by Chris August, entitled “7 X 70.”  He writes about how he felt abandoned by his parents when he was little and was finally able to forgive them in his heart.  The title refers to Jesus' response to a disciple who asked: “If I am wronged by someone seven times, do I have to forgive them seven times?”  And Jesus replied: “You should forgive him 7 X 70 times.”

You can view this video by clicking on this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5-Q1zAhqpA&ob=av2e

For life is what you make it.  So make it good!