It's Only December--Let's Talk About Thanksgiving

So, the Reverb10 prompt yesterday gave me a lovely gift. The prompt was: Party. What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010? Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, shenanigans.

Awesome. This means that even though I procrastinated sharing Thanksgiving pictures with you for weeks, now I can! And I even have a great excuse for doing so today, of all days!

Thanksgiving has been truly great in Saudi, both this year and last. I love all the history and meaning behind Thanksgiving--giving thanks, obviously, but I also just love that originally, Thanksgiving was about cultures coming together and finding a bond of gratitude. Here, we really get to experience that in a unique way, as people from about 10 different countries showed up to partake in our feast! Everyone ate until they could do nothing but groan and call for stretch pants and a nap. Everyone laughed and enjoyed each other. And I loved every second!

Here are the pictures!

Look at that beautiful bird! My part in that was staying out of the kitchen while Husband cooked the turkey. He's an expert. (I made the stuffing and also opened up two cans of cranberry sauce.)

People pretty much lined up all the way out of the kitchen for the amazing food. We had maybe 40-ish people show up. All the Americans were instructed to bring a dish, and the end result was too much food for all the counter space in the kitchen. We ended up piling plates of rolls and drinks on every available surface--and that didn't even include dessert!

Does that not look amazingly Thanksgiving-y? (P.S.--The sweet potatoes in the upper-left-hand corner? I literally licked those off the plate.)

Lookit this artsy shot Husband got of people picking up dessert. We had so many options; again the counters were full.
I had some apple pie and also some chocolate mousse pie that pretty much met my year's quota for chocolate. Which is a lot. 

I am not kidding.

Wall of thankfulness. Not everyone contributed, but still, it was nice to be able to share with each other.

This is how all Thanksgivings should end. :)

Reverb10

So I recently found out about something called Reverb10--a blog project to spark introspection about the past year and--I hope, anyway--intentionality for the coming year. I like the idea of thinking deeply about this past year; a lot has happened for me. Plus, writing prompts are helpful.

Today's prompt: Community. Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011?

I've had really great community this year; I lovingly call them the Magnificent Seven. Specifically this has worked because my close community is a small group of people who are working toward the same goal and meeting regularly. This is the year I began to think of my community as my actual brothers and sisters, in the sense of how I feel about them, and not just simply in the sense that I should treat them that way.

I wouldn't be sure that this was true except that I've had conflict--at least some--with most of these people over the past year. Once the newness of a relationship rubs off and the cracks begin to show, you find out what the relationship is really made of. Coming through conflict in one piece, closer than ever, reassures me that this community isn't just something I'm imagining, like a game of make-pretend-to-be-friends.

These are the people who've seen me at my worst, who've not walked away or gotten scared or given up.

The rich should worry

So maybe you didn't get that money so you can have a better "standard of living."

That's what's been bouncing around my mind the last couple of days. It's been about a month since Husband was offered a job with a non-profit company in the U.S. that provides clean water for the world's poor. His dream job. With a great salary.

Any time you have a great salary--and let's use the world's standards of "great salary," here, meaning, "more than $2 a day"--some alarm bells should be going off in your head. That's right--if you're rich, maybe you should start worrying.

You know what you find out when you meet the poor? Like, I mean the real, my-kids-are-very-sick-and-may-die-because-I-don't-have-money-for-anti-diarrheal-medicine sick? You find out that they pray like nobody's business. They feel the wings of the Lord covering them, brushing up against their skin, all the time. They taste His name on their tongues every time they open their mouths.

Imagine filling your mouth with sand and sitting in the sun all day. The way you'd want a drink is the way they want heaven.

But me? I dunno, my life is pretty comfortable, you know? Maybe it'd be nice to get published first. Have some kids before I go. I really wanna grow old with my husband.

See, that's the thing; that's why it's so dang hard for rich people to get into the Kingdom. Maybe we've got other priorities.

Okay, I just terrified myself with my own thoughts. The rich should worry, with thoughts like that.

Okay, reminder: This isn't impossible. There are rich people who did it--Lydia and Zaccheus come to mind--but it isn't easy. Something about a camel and the eye of a needle. (The image of him trying to squeeze through is much funnier once you've lived in the Middle East and ridden a stubborn, knee-locking camel. And now that I'm thinking of it: Have you tried just getting thread through the eye of a needle? Not like even that is easy...I digress.)

So let's say someone hands you a check, I dunno, for $1,000. Rich people always, in my experience, think about what they could buy for themselves with that. You know what I could get for $1,000? A really nice set of dishes. A beautiful hand-woven rug to sink my toes into. A mahogany bed frame with a canopy. (Can you tell yet that all my temptations center on making my house pretty?)

But the thing that I have been challenged with is that question: What if you didn't get that money so you could have a better 'standard of living?' Or, um, a nicer set of dishes?

God forbid I should have wonderful flatware outside the kingdom of God.

New Age in the Middle East

For all their crackdowns on religions other than Sunni Islam, it seems to me like the Saudis have a huge blind spot toward one: New Age.

So while Bibles are illegal, I can run down to Jarir bookstore and pick up a copy of "The Secret" any old time I want. They put people to death for witchcraft, but always ask you about your astrological sign. It's not weird to find out people practice new-age-tinged yoga or meditation (focusing on emptying one's mind, as opposed to a monotheistic view of meditation that focuses on filling one's mind with the Word of God).

I find it creeping into the conversation here and there. People telling you to look inside your heart and do what seems right to you. A leaning toward the subjective and universalism. People who are mostly seeking self-actualization, not submission.

So, the odd thing is obviously that this is in contradiction to what I know of Islam--but it's totally socially acceptable, while other things in contradiction to Islam are completely unacceptable.

I blame this partially on the phenomenon I call "Sounds True." Telling a Muslim there are more than 3,000 gods is going to be rejected pretty quickly. But New Age beliefs are way more subtle than something like that. They don't slap Islam in the face. They just quietly nudge it in the ribs 'til it moves over.

The other thing, I think, is a propensity for the education system in the Middle East not to teach people to think and analyze, but to memorize and believe. For example, young people have been taught for ages that the Qu'ran is true, while the Bible is riddled with errors. And in these school systems, you are absolutely trained just to accept whatever your teachers tell you as truth--as opposed to how I was trained in the West to think, analyze, and compare with criticism. When an old religion like Christianity comes 'round, they slap it down fast. But when New Age pops up, I don't think people have been given the tools for critiquing it and judging whether it's true.

And it "sounds true."

Oh Saudi. You never fail to surprise me.

The Whirlwind Woman

Today I taught Um Zara a new verb: Inspire. I only wanted to teach it so I could tell her that she inspires me.

The woman's got a husband, five kids, and a grandson. She's got a big house to take care of and plenty of cooking to do to feed everyone. But somehow--somehow!--she still manages to always have some project going on. Learning English, studying the Qu'ran, learning how to use the computer...she never stops. On top of which, she's not one of those mothers who just let the television be the babysitter. Or hires someone else to clean her house, even. I just can't figure out how this whirlwind of a woman does it.

It brings up a need that I see in America these days: Awesome role models. One thing I've noticed about Americans is that they tend to hang out with people in their own age bracket. College students hang out with other college students; young marrieds chill with young marrieds; people with kids are friends with people with kids.

That's all well and good--it's a little bit harder to find topics of conversation when you're in a completely different place in life. But one thing we might be missing is the ability to find older women who have done things you aspire to do--and who did it well. I want to know what it takes to have a successful marriage, raise kids well, and manage to have time for my own projects, too. But I don't have too many friends in the States who are older and have done it already. Maybe that's part of the reason we have so many self-help books in America--instead of friends, we get literature to teach us how to do it all.

Lots of Saudis study in the U.S.

According to a new report by the International Institute of Education, Saudi Arabia sends more international students to the United States than any other Middle-Eastern country.

China sends the most students to study in the States, followed by India. Saudi Arabia is seventh in the pack.

All that to say, I'm feeling hopeful that I'll find an Arabic partner in CO next year.

Hajj time

I'm posting this at 3 a.m. cuz I can't sleep. Thank you, insomnia. Let's see if I'm a little more off my rocker than usual.

Well, it's time for Hajj, aka time to educate my readers about the tiny bit I've learned while living so close to Mecca. So, Hajj is basically the pilgrimage that's required for all Muslims. It's such a big deal that they've made it a pillar. (So, Islam has five "pillars"--statement of faith, prayers, giving, fasting, and pilgrimage. No other religion as far as I know refers to its most important duties as "pillars"--one more linguistic mystery for me to solve one day.) Last year during Hajj, about 2.5 million non-Saudis flooded into Jeddah donning this one-piece white towel-y-looking garment, which always for some reason reminds me of Gandhi. (p.s.--Gandhi? Not a Muslim. Don't get confused here.)

My first awareness of the Hajj-phenomenon came through an essay I read in college, which of course I now can't remember the name of, but which was a personal memoir of attending Hajj. All I remember of the essay is how crowded Hajj seemed. You've got 2.5 million foreigners, plus Saudi pilgrims, plus Mecca's actual inhabits, crowded into one city that normally holds 1.7 million people. It's got to be one of the worst places in the world to bring a bunch of small children--imagine trying to hold on to a three-year-old in that kind of crowd.

I can't say I've learned a whole lot since then. There's something about running between two mountains to symbolize Hagar's search for water for her son. People pelt pebbles at some columns that represent the devil. They circle a black box and pray. I think there might be some sheep sacrificed. Everybody is required to do every thing in the same exact order at the same exact time, which means that enormous crowd follows you everywhere. Or maybe you follow them?

All this ignorance of mine just highlights the fact that pilgrimages are sort of lost on Westerners. We don't really have a concept for the kind of preparation you'd do to make a trip like that, or the kind of importance it would have to you.

Instead, we have retreats. Ah, the phenomenon of the personal retreat--it's not about going anyplace special; no, it's about getting away from everything normal. Get out into nature, particularly. (Well, in my crowd anyway.) Have a mountaintop experience. Connect.

Why does humankind need to get away from the normal to feel as though they are really connecting with God?

My brain is fuzzy. I can't think about theology at this time of the night.