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.