I know how you feel, John; Forgive me in advance for what I¹m going to express here. Blame it on a senior moment or two.
As for those chasing after the ³buy-buy² culture, ³ . . . Verily, they have their reward.² We do have enough money, if we struggle, to enjoy getting some good food and have friends or family with us even some of the time. Isn¹t that what Thanksgiving and the celebration of the birth of His Holiness Jesus is all about? We have to plan to eat with others, either at their place or ours, with some special foods, goose or duck, pork roast with yams and green beans, that sort of thing. It connects us with God and each other. I got some Indian corn and hung it on the door, as a celebration and a marking of getting the food into the barns and cellars and silos, even though I live in the Arabian desert. I celebrate having enough food, and having some good food with some friends over. Somehow, I try to get it done. One of these friends may have teen-aged girls who will help out in the kitchen because I can¹t even stand up for very long anymore, much less prepare food for guests. We say prayers of thanks, by our selves or with others out loud in a more formal way. For Catholics, it is a time that they can unabashedly carry and twiddle with a Rosary; for Orthodox, prayer beads, for Jews, same thing; and for Muslims, and even Baha¹is, prayer beads called mesbaha, or sebaha. We sit in our seats with a full stomachs and and a closeness to the friends we have gathered around us or who have graciously invited us to be around them, and a thankfulness to God we can still enjoy the company of others at a table full of food. I¹m sorry to sound so mushy and corny, but the commercialism of this time of year makes me totally sick! I want nothing to do with it! I just want to be with some friends, eat some food of the season and wash it down with cider. There¹s always some way to do that if we try. Companionship! That is what this time of year means to me. It is hard to get, but it is memorable and lasts a lot longer than a bought trinket which ends up in some old box before too long. As a kid I worked on farms owned by Polish immigrants. When the crops were coming in, the corn, potatoes and tobacco, I loved to go to their celebrations, listen to their polkas and enjoy how some of them had become so good on accordion, concertina, saxophone or piano. They had so much fun and made me feel very welcome even though I wasn¹t Polish, or Catholic, and didn¹t drink. I learned the lesson that food and people are all that is needed to lift the spirits. If I were back in the States, I would be getting myself to some Church, Temple or whatever, or calling up my Baha¹i associates for our own religious observances, and get with others who are praying to God. I would want to use this time of year to associate and befriend others. For us, who have been stripped of so much material capacity, we are the ones who really appreciate a nice afternoon with a few friends, just chatting. And joy upon joy if someone plays the piano, guitar, harmonica, mandolin or something! I¹m not just preaching or kidding about this. I do this stuff, and believe myself to be better off for it. Because we have been taken out of the daily working life, we need to work harder than most to stay in touch with others. But if we can get them to visit and sit around a table of food at our invitation, and we present a good mood to them, it will increase our own self-respect and their admiration and closeness to us. And if we can find ourselves inside a churchespecially for an evening service, when our thoughts usually center around our own troubleswe can do ourselves a lot of good and break out of the isolation imposed on us by this disease! I say, reject completely all that buying stuff! Send greetings of the seasons to some circle of associates we have been lucky enough to make. Light candles and place them in the windows. Ignore the chrome and shine and get to what will make us and others happy and content. Thanks, and sorry for the preachy letter. Dalton From: john snodgrass <[email protected]> Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2010 06:54:01 -0800 (PST) To: transverse myelitis <[email protected]> Subject: [TMIC] arghhh Resent-From: <[email protected]> Resent-Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2010 06:53:51 -0800 "one" of the most aggravating parts of this lifestyle for me is this season of commercialism,everything on tv or conversation is about having money to spend when i have not any. Im always having to come up with a topic that has meat without money.
