I have family visiting right now, and with ten people in the house, six of us within a very close age range, I'm thinking alot about the importance of humility, patience, detachment, service...not just as words but putting them into action from moment to moment - in this case with people I know better than my own siblings and who know me so well they can guess my next move. It's harder than I thought and I hope I don't end up learning nothing because of ego. I have never needed to reflect on my actions and level of sincerity so frequently before.
It's been fun having so many people I love and care deeply about around, and at the same time it's been hard to face my own imperfections. I am learning alot from these guys!
My dear cousin at Denny's, 3am
Barnes&Noble and Borders have begun carrying books published by the Baha'i Publishing Trust. I found a description of the book "Marriage Beyond Black and White" at the back of another book called "Advancement of Women", and I was interested because I've really been craving meaningful discourse on this topic. The book isn't really about marriage - the focus is on the experience of a whole family growing up in the midwest.
When I found this book, I realized that interracial families still aren't discussed in the media. As far as I can tell, it's still a pretty taboo subject. This book and a newspaper article that listed some statistics about interracial families in DC and the Twin Cities were about the only examples I can think of. There's alot of eagerness for dialogue about healing racism, inequality, etc. but I am excited to read more about the experiences of mixed kids growing up in this country. All of the awkward identity crises, the way this society places you into categories, forcing you to choose between black/white/hispanic/asian/arab, and where people land in adulthood with their racial identity - I want to know what other people's experiences have been like. I am looking forward to watching a change as these generations of multiracial children start to get old enough to talk about their experiences. Children in my sisters' generation (4yrs and 9yrs) are SO mixed, and I'm eager to find out how this will play out when they are adults.
Of course, I hesitate to put too much focus on race. I work at the Multicultural Center on campus, and I hear alot about how bad racism is and how we have to eradicate it, but the action is often missing. Or the action is there but without any reflection. My guess is that a balance between dialogue and action would be effective. Think about the effect of people visiting each other in their homes and connecting at a spiritual level rather than keeping the discourse intellectual.
A friend of mine has been getting together with some of her friends for a study circle of a book called "Reflections on the life of the spirit". This is a chance to read and discuss Baha'i Writings and talk about things like prayer, the life of the soul, and the nature of spiritual growth. Two of them have children, so at the same time I've been doing a little children's class. I am amazed at the effect this has on the kids, who are doing new things, like praying, for the first time in their lives. We do some memorization, play, color, tell stories, and talk about how what we've memorized applies to our lives. I often find that I'm skeptical going into the class, thinking that there's no way this will have an effect on the kids, but it does. I'm realizing that this is something that anyone can do - I've seen it! People who have no children and really don't know how to relate to kids have been learning how to teach children's classes and they've done a fantastic job. I think I'm learning as much from the experience as the children are.
pretending to be a stuffed toy
This song seems to fit:
Allow myself to introduce...myself.
Actually, allow myself to bring up something that I have wanted to articulate for several months. Where do you draw the line with 'easy familiarity' when it comes to communicating through the internet? This includes Facebook, Flickr, emails, instant messaging, blogs, myspace, and all of the other wonderful services that enable us to stay connected.
There is a certain sense of anonymity, which may make it seem innocent, but I don't know that it is. In North America youth culture is being shaped so heavily by interactions over the internet. There is no precedent for a lot of what we're seeing, like recruiters looking through profiles on Facebook before deciding to hire and people posting pictures of others without their permission (which I just did below).
Maybe this is just developmental - characteristic of the stage of growth that mankind is at. A 'netiquette' is emerging, but when I look around it seems like there is a general lack of maturity in the way we use the internet as a society to communicate with each other - and the way the internet has been set up to enable this communication is reflective of our being at this stage of maturity. Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing how we'll use it in the years to come!
