Where To Draw The Line

Last week’s post about my brother’s Awanas Club got me thinking about how we choose to describe our religious identities. The generally accepted categories usually run along the lines of “Judaism”, “Christianity”, “Islam” etc – but it’s been my observation that these descriptions do almost nothing for me in terms of identifying whom I will experience as my spiritual kith & kin, versus whom I will find to be on a completely different page than me.

My inclination is to take a giant pink eraser and scrub away the commonly accepted dividing lines, and then, if lines still do need to exist (and perhaps they don’t), I would suggest drawing them elsewhere.

It would be far more useful for me to know who is interested in championing unity, who believes their spiritual witnessing must take place through the heart as well as the intellect, who judges first by their own discernment and moral compass and not by what a religious leader tells them is right or highest, who prefers to consult directly with the Source (whatever they name it) without intermediary & who may seek guidance in this but does not make idols out of their leaders, who can witness the Source at work when made manifest in different forms at different times for different people… Versus those who, well, have the opposite priorities.

I’m coming to believe this is the real distinction between people of faith, and although I am conscious of the need to be humble and trust that each person is called to witness their Creator in the way the Creator chooses for them, frankly I am fearful of the consequences the latter mentality can (however inadvertently) bring about… And if I am going to be honest, I also have to admit I think it is the former approach that’s going to be responsible for bringing real healing and progress into the world.

The question then becomes, how should I be with those people who fall into the latter camp, in a way that is respectful of their beliefs and free of my own ego, but which also opens the door to another way of experiencing faith? This is tricky ground here. I also think it was the real issue at play in last week’s Awanas moment, and sorting it out will potentially change the way I react to my mother’s spiritual path and values, hopefully for the better.

Falling Short Of My Interfaith Ideals

The unity of God is abundantly clear to me, and what I want to believe should naturally follow is unity between the people who love and worship God. Interfaith efforts of all kind make my heart smile, and I blithely overlook differences in doctrine in order to find common ground and keep the peace.

Tonight I fell sadly short of my best intentions… Or perhaps it’s more that, in spite of my tendency to focus on unity, there are some real differences that just can’t be overlooked, which need to be navigated with great care.

My mom and her husband attend the First Baptist Church in their town, where they send my nine year old brother to Awanas Club on Wednesday nights. I was helping my brother learn his weekly two Bible verses before tonight’s Awanas, and was shocked by the content of the second verse he was asked to learn:

The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?
~Jeremiah 17:9

Excuse me, the heart is “deceitful” and “beyond cure”?

This is in stark contrast to the teachings I cherish, which tell me that the that the heart is a holy temple of God:

“The heavens and the earth cannot contain Me,
but the heart of my faithful believer contains Me.”
~Hadith Qudsi

I was so triggered by the verse that I was unable to slow down my reaction time, and (astaghfirallah) I just shoved the Awanas book away from me and exclaimed in exasperation, “Really? The Bible says that? Allah!”… Then I promptly walked into the kitchen to keep my mouth from firing off any sharper words.

My brother’s response to my reaction was to say, “That’s not what the Bible really says, it’s just that they keep changing it.”

Cross my heart, hope to die, that’s really what he said. Out of the mouths of babes!

Then my mom came to the table and tried to “rescue” the situation, and she said to my brother, “Change the Bible? Of course not, don’t be silly!”. She proceeded to repeat the verse and direct my brother’s attention back to memorizing it. She repeated those horrible words, “The heart is deceitful above all things…” with complete reverence in her voice, like she was reciting a love poem, which made my stomach turn even further.

The thing that kills me is that my brother’s reaction was spot on, in general and with this verse in particular. The quote in the Awanas handbook was from the New International Version. I went to Bible Gateway and looked up the same verse in multiple other translations. Each one is more than slightly different, some could be unrecognizable as the same verse.

Compare:

The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?
~Jeremiah 17:9 (New International Version)

You people of Judah are so deceitful
that you even fool yourselves,
and you can’t change.
~Jeremiah 17:9 (Contemporary English Version)

The most cunning heart—
it’s beyond help.
Who can figure it out?
~Jeremiah 17:9 (Common English Bible)

So, three different translations, three vastly different messages. Not to mention that all of them, when taught as a standalone verse, are taken completely out of context and therefore easily warped. To be honest, I am woefully ignorant of the New Testament, but the Jesus I believe in would never teach that any person’s heart was beyond help or cure.

I believe, on a fundamental level, that God chooses our parents for us with great care, and that each parent is entrusted to give their children the spiritual upbringing they see fit, and I don’t think it is my place to interfere with that. What I wanted to say tonight was, “Don’t believe it, that’s a lie! Your heart is a holy jewel!” But it’s not my place to contradict what my mom decides to teach as truth in front of my nine year old brother. When he’s older, maybe, but not at this age, not at the expense of causing a family uproar just days before Christmas.

Nonetheless, it’s a stinging pain to me that my brother was taught such an ugly lie about his own beautiful heart tonight, at such a formative age.

In closing, a little memo to Awanas: For teaching lies to my brother and to countless scores of other young hearts, you are totally on my $#^% list.

Kayak.com and the “Newer Americans”

Dear Kayak.com,

I recently learned about your decision to pull advertising from All American Muslim, and read your half-baked non-apology. Of the many points I could address, there was one line that stood out to me as particularly odious: “Our team includes people who are descended from early Europeans who came here escaping religious intolerance, and newer Americans who include many religions.” Ironically, the very next claim you made was that you “get what America is all about”.

Do you? Because when I think about the highest ideals of our country and what makes us Americans, I think of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, that declares that all Americans born or naturalized are equal citizens, which by extension, I think, means not putting them into meaningless categories as “older” or “newer” Americans. I wonder, if you were born in this country and I was born in this country, how are we going to figure out which one of us is a “newer” American when we’ve both been Americans all our lives? It seems to me a fundamentally American value to understand each person as an individual to be judged on the merits of their choices, and not to make distinctions between them based on the actions or identities of their parents, relatives or ancestors.

I’d also like to point out that, in addition to being a rather dangerous distinction that reinforces the baser structures of privilege and exclusion in our country which we should all be trying to dismantle, this “early Europeans” and “newer Americans who include many religions” dichotomy is sloppy thinking that does not reflect the complex realities of ancestry, identity and faith in the 21st Century.

Take myself as an example: many of my ancestors were among the first English to settle the Virginia and Massachusetts colonies, as well as the Dutch and French Huguenots who settled the Northeast back when old New York was still called New Amsterdam. I was raised Protestant, but in my mid-20s my heart settled on the path of Sufism.

Many of my ancestors did come here escaping religious intolerance, and when I partake in the many Sufi practices that fill me with peace, I think I’m not very different than my Puritan ancestors, or my Huguenot ancestors, who pursued God in the way that their hearts called them to, in spite of the intolerance that was much more dangerous for them in 17th Century Europe than modern Islamophobia has proven to be for me.

Although my main point has been made, I also just want to comment on the claim both you & Lowe’s are making, that you aren’t caving to Islamaphobia, just trying to avoid controversy, which is not only a specious but also a spineless argument. I understand that some companies prefer a safe neutrality, but the brave ones trust their consumers to be intelligent enough to understand the difference between supporting creative expression and endorsing the views of the creators they’re funding.

I have the privilege of working for a youth arts program funded by Adobe. When it comes to creative expression, the youth in this program are fearless. They take on Islamophobia, homophobia, racism and global poverty, just to name a few of the many controversial topics addressed in their art. Adobe’s stated policy is to give youth a voice, and they don’t base their funding decisions on how the public is going to feel about what these young artists have to say. That’s an example, to me, of corporate courage, which I think in the long term will be rewarded. What you did is a little like defunding the Cosby Show because it didn’t portray black people as gangsters and drug addicts. Our society continues on a slow but steady march towards tolerance, inclusiveness, and understanding, and eventually the “safe” path you took will leave you high & dry.

Ma salaam,
Amber Safa

September 11th: Some Thoughts On Healing

A few months ago I was listening to a program on NPR in which a man told a story of his trip to Rwanda after the genocide.

The man on NPR, an American, was relating a conversation he’d had with a Rwandan leader about the psychological after effects of the genocide and the various efforts in his country to help genocide survivors to move on with their lives.

The Rwandan leader said that in his country, it was relatively well known what people need to recover from trauma and depression:

1-They need to go outside
2-They need to feel the sunlight on their skin
3-They need to breathe the fresh air
4-They need to move their bodies
5-They need to see that their friends, family, and their entire village love them and care about them

Breathe, move, love, repeat, until you’ve recovered.

The Rwandan leader then compared these needs to the “treatment” provided by Western psychologists who volunteered their services in his country after the genocide:

“They just wanted to take people into dark rooms without their families around, and make them talk about all the bad things that happened to them. They couldn’t be persuaded to stop doing this. Eventually we had to ask them to leave.”

Today, ten years after 9/11/2001, with every imaginable media outlet in America trotting out alarm clock nostalgia, I can’t help comparing the Rwandan attitude towards recovery to the American one.

As a person who lived in New York before, during and after 9/11, I feel like I have some ground to stand on when I say, yes it was a terrible day, but people, it’s time to move on. Go outside, feel the sunlight on your face, be with the people who love you, and please don’t allow the media to hijack your emotions today or any day.

Open Letter To Mona Eltahawy

Mona, I am disappointed in you.

Given your long history of standing up for women’s rights, your recent public statements on CNN in support of France’s recent ban on the niqab surprised me.

It’s not that I disagree with some of your beliefs: I, too, don’t believe that wearing a niqab is a requirement of Islam, I agree that the face is central to communication, and I am concerned about a woman’s ability to work or participate in society if she chooses to veil her face. But the operative word here is “choose” – and no one can claim to be a feminist while arguing that a woman is not capable of making her own choices.

In the course of your arguments, you basically implied that women who choose to cover their faces are doing so because they are oppressed. So in other words, if only these women would do what YOU want them to do, then they can be more autonomous? It doesn’t work that way.

Your arguments remind me of several conversations I’ve had with Muslim women friends who choose to wear hijab.

One friend of mine is fluent in four languages, has a Ph.D. in engineering, and has a demanding career with more than 50 men reporting to her. She is as worldly, educated and empowered as any woman I know, and yet she is constantly fielding comments from women who want to “help” her to know that “she doesn’t have to” wear her hijab. The conversations are usually framed as “let me enlighten you about your choices”. Can you appreciate the irony of being saved from your ignorant decisions by people with only a fraction of your education?

Another friend, an engineer who happens to also hold a law degree, recently commented about how, when she goes to work at Intel each day, she is treated as an intelligent and valued colleague, but when she leaves her office and goes out on the street, she’s just another brown woman with a scarf on her head. It’s hard to take seriously the claims that Western cultural mores support & empower women when you’re on the receiving end of daily condescension.

After sharing these two anecdotes, I feel like I should be clear about one thing: I don’t believe that the decision to pursue a demanding career is the only mark of a woman’s intellect or empowerment.

In the course of your debate with Hebah Ahmed, you asked with more than a small dose of judgment in your voice if Hebah “even works”. You then elaborated on this question by saying you knew from previous conversations with Hebah that she had chosen to stop working, using this knowledge as some kind of proof of Hebah’s disempowerment.

People choose not to work for any number of reasons. Maybe Hebah decided to stop working because she wanted to stay home to care for and educate her children. Maybe she decided to sacrifice a steady income in order to pursue her writing. Who knows, maybe she has a way to support herself without working, be it by marriage, inheritance or early retirement, and now she simply doesn’t feel compelled to pursue a career.

But more to the point, why does it matter whether Hebah works? Since when does a person’s economic status determine their ability to dress themselves without legislative guidance, or to make valid intellectual arguments in a debate? More than a non-sequitur, I fear your comment reveals an underlying belief that when a woman makes a lifestyle choice that is different than your own, it’s an indication that her intellect can’t be trusted, and that she needs to be saved from her own bad decisions. Ironically, in the name of feminism, you’ve taken a classically chauvinist position.

You say that you are concerned about an Islamic value system in which women who choose to cover their faces are considered “the pinnacle of piety”, holier and closer to God than women who don’t cover, and that women will be influenced or coerced by these values into wearing something they don’t want to wear. This may be an understandable concern, but I’d like you to show me a woman anywhere on this planet whose decisions about what to wear have not been influenced by the culture around her.

There is a reason why I like to wear blue jeans and cardigans instead of going topless and wearing a grass skirt. Where is the line between culture and freedom? Perhaps my wardrobe is informed more by societal norms than by personal choice, but I really don’t want to be liberated out of my blue jeans.

I’d also like to add, as a woman of faith, I choose each day how to negotiate between modesty and personal style. I’ve often felt pressure from both ends: to wear more and to wear less, to care more about fashion and appearances or to care less. Any woman of faith in a plural society is going to feel this ambivalence, no matter where on the spectrum they find themselves. You can’t legislate this pressure away, nor should you, because to do so is to eliminate a conversation with God, to eliminate a woman’s opportunity to discover her own truth and to stand in that truth in the face of judgement or peer pressure, which is an extremely empowering and holy experience.

Lastly – and I realize this may be a little too esoteric for you, Mona – but lastly, I agree with you when you say that wearing the niqab represents the belief that “the closer you want to become to God, the less of you… the more you disappear.” But I have to add that this disappearance of the self is exactly the objective for many people, and not just Muslims. It’s the reason Buddhist monks shave their heads and wear identical orange robes, it’s the reason Catholic priests wear vestments and nuns wear habits. By removing individual expression on the outer, it reinforces the annihilation of the ego on the inner, which is the objective of many spiritual paths.

If we are going to protect the right of any person to pursue God by submitting themselves to structured religious orders, we also have to protect the right of any person who wishes to pursue God in a similar manner outside the walls of a monastery. Islam is, by nature, an inherently non-hierarchical religion. There is no centralized priesthood, there’s no Pope or Dalai Lama of Islam, everyone’s salvation is in their own hands. If an Islamic woman wants to pursue God by means of self-annihilation, and if that woman believes self-annihilation requires her to wear niqab, her choice to cover her face is no different than a woman who chooses to take vows at a convent: she is merely pursuing the same objective in a manner consistent with the ethos of her faith.

Lesson Learned: It’s Okay To Ask For What You Want

I’m realizing that allowing myself to write a self-pitying blog post earlier this week, and then actually pushing the “publish” button, was a huge step for me.

For one thing, publishing my true experience and not censoring my less-than-polite cultural observations a few days ago sent me spinning into self-consciousness. Thoughts like, “What if everyone thinks I am a manic depressive spoiled brat?” and “What if I offend someone?” went racing through my head, and I found myself fighting the compulsion to make everything appear cheerful and polite on the outside in spite of my bad mood on the inside.

Secondly, it gave me the chance to really experience Allah’s bountiful generosity towards me, even down to the smallest details.

I spent the rest of that day and most of the next morning struggling with how to handle my cultural disconnect and lack of camaraderie in Sevilla, tiptoeing in circles around questions such as “What is the matter with me for being grumpy & disappointed in this moment when I ‘should’ be nothing but grateful to be here?” and “How much can I really ask for and how much should I just surrender to and try to learn from?” etc etc …

Then, a good 24 hours from my initial moment of bank teller humiliation, I finally let my heart break open to the bittersweet feeling of “always having to face life’s adventures alone” (that’s “my story” so to speak). No matter how amazing the adventure is, the experience of aloneness does sit like a stone in my heart.

In a moment of sobbing tears, I gave myself permission to ask Allah for exactly what I wanted: a travel buddy to roam around Spain with, someone with as much enthusiasm as myself for devouring every sight and experience possible while abroad, and someone I can be friends with long after this adventure has concluded, so I have someone to laugh and reminisce with.

Literally within a few hours of praying this prayer, I received an email from someone who had found my post on an expat message board. Allah Kareem! Her name is Amanda, she is just about the same age as me, and she is a Ph.D. candidate in history here to do research for her dissertation. I love history. Amanda loves travel. We’re going to have a lot to talk about!

We met for tapas that very evening in the historic Santa Cruz district of Sevilla, a neighborhood where the streets are so narrow that in some places you can reach out and touch the buildings on both sides of the street at once. After tapas, we went to see an amazing flamenco performance, and then walked through Santa Cruz some more until we arrived at the Cathedral, a truly unforgettable sight all lit up in the dark. Although I found the Cathedral drab and underwhelming in the afternoon sun, you can’t deny its creepy Gothic charm at night, replete with bats circling the belltower:

Today my prayers were answered further when Amanda not only joined me on a day trip to Córdoba, but she brought her Italian roommate Andrea, and the three of us hopped on a train and met up with Andrea’s friend Julia, also from Italy, who is currently on exchange in Córdoba. Julia was an amazing tour guide, and the four of us took a power walking tour of the historic quarter of the city, followed by more tapas and cold drinks in a side street near the Mezquita, a leisurely meal filled with multilingual storytelling and cross-cultural laughter – my perfect “Eat, Pray, Love” moment!

Travel review of Córdoba to follow soon, but the moral of today’s blog post is this: People, it’s okay to be honest about what you’re feeling, and even better to just come out and ask for what you want! Allah is the Most Generous, and you may be surprised by how He answers your prayers when you’re straightforward and clear about what you need.

Under A Cloud In Sunny Sevilla

Caveat dear readers: I’m in a shitty mood.

Frankly, it is nothing short of amazing that after years of trying to get my act together and get over to Europe, I have finally made it. Here I am, living in Sevilla. I should be jumping up and clicking my heels together in joy, right?

Make no mistake about it – I am certainly appreciating the miracle. I am also extremely grateful that the family I am living with (something between roommates and a host family) is AMAZING and I am so happy to be living with them.

Other things to be grateful for: this apartment is comfortable and close to the metro, my bedroom is adorable, I am already understanding Spanish better than I anticipated, the sun is shining and the birds are chirping, and I generally have everything I need.

Plus, I’ve lost three kilos (however much that is) in the one week I have been here. Talk about frosting on the cake!

So why the shitty mood? I guess it just happens when you find yourself adrift in a foreign city, that you’re going to have a few moments of “What the bleep am I doing here?”…

Today’s bleep moment was precipitated by a trip to the bank, where I tried to exchange dollars for euros. I was treated so rudely by the bank tellers, it actually blew my mind.

I approached the first teller, and said in what I thought was relatively clear Spanish, “Buenas dias, necessito cambiar dinero.” Maybe someone who speaks Spanish fluently can tell me if I made some glaring grammatical error?

I am not sure if it was my botched Spanish, or maybe I had lipstick smeared all over my teeth or a giant booger hanging out of my nose, but the response I received somewhat floored me.

First the teller spoke back to me in a mocking baby voice, telling me to speak to a woman at another counter. I walked over to the woman, who was on the phone, and waited for what seemed like ages at the counter, while the first teller and every other teller in the bank broke out in laughter.

At first the laughs were stifled snickers, then whatever was so hilarious became impossible to contain, with all the tellers glancing furtively at me, and then looking significantly at each other, and laughing some more, barely bothering to hide it. Meanwhile the one woman I was waiting for yacked away on the phone, and I stood there trying to remain as dignified as possible.

Incredibly immature, unprofessional and downright rude behavior, right? Well, it’s not the first time it has happened to me here in Sevilla in the last week.

This kind of “laughing in your face” behavior happened somewhat frequently when I lived in Kiev, Ukraine in 1997, and I attributed it to the fact that the country was so recently post-Soviet that no one knew how to handle themselves around foreigners, so I just considered it bit of forgivable nervousness.

To my surprise it happened again when I lived in St. Petersburg, Russia in 2002, and I wasn’t sure in that somewhat more cosmopolitan circumstance whether I should attribute it to the same nervousness around foreigners, or if people were just being rude.

Call me naïve, but I never, never expected to experience this in Western Europe, especially in Spain, a country with an incredible number of foreign visitors, and especially not when I was doing my level best to be polite, assimilate and speak the language.

Of course, I am making assumptions here that I was being laughed at for being foreign or for not speaking Spanish well – but maybe there was some other explanation. Whatever the reason, it is mean spirited to laugh in someone’s face, and with no good excuses I can think of, I am inclined to blame it on, well, just plain rudeness.

Again, I am so grateful to be living abroad at all, and to be living with my particular roommates/host family, but I am second guessing my decision to come to Sevilla. I guess I should have done my homework better, or thought things through a little more.

I came to Sevilla knowing that there would not be a large expat community here, specifically because I wanted to immerse myself in Spanish culture. I have no interest in being the typical obnoxious foreigner coming to Spain to get drunk on the beach.

Still, I am doubting the wisdom of that choice now. My plan when I came here was to go on craigslist.org or meetup.com and connect with foreigners who might want to “see the sights” together, and also to look for locals who might want to practice English in exchange for helping me practice Spanish. I had dreamed up a fantasy of meeting a nice mix of locals and fellow travelers who would all pal around together, eat delicious foods and enjoy the local happenings – “Eat, Pray, Love” meets “L’Auberge Espagnole”.

As it turns out, there is absolutely no activity on Sevilla’s craigslist, no meetup groups of any kind, and I’ve gotten no replies from any of the posts I’ve made on the expat message boards. Oh, there’s plenty happening in Madrid and Barcelona and on the coast, but Sevilla? Nada. Sevilla is apparently a city where foreigners come to see the sights and then promptly leave.

So, my two plans of action are this: for one, I need to keep trying to go out and meet people, find a local hot spot, read a book in a cafe, something… and hope that I will meet some interesting people who don’t want to laugh in my face. It seems awkward and lonely to go out to tapas by yourself, but what’s a girl to do, stay home and read a book while in Spain?

Secondly, I need to lose my attachment to what this trip ends up looking like. If I just spend the next three months seeing the sites by myself, then so be it. Whatever this adventure ends up being, I am glad for the opportunity to see more of the world. I know I would go to my grave with regrets if I didn’t take this trip and make the best of things while I was here.

Attempts At Photography

I have always loved photography, but apart from a few lucky shots, I have for the most part taken some very, very boring photographs.

Usually I take well-centered photos from straight in front of my subject matter, and I usually take photos of classical subjects, like landmark buildings or beautiful panoramas.

In other words, I have no idea how to work a camera or how to frame a photograph.

In an attempt at finding an interesting way to document my adventures, I have started playing with the Hipstamatic application on my iPhone. Hipstamatic allows me to play with different lenses and colors, and is an easy way to add a little panache to my photos.

I am also making a point to take photos of more interesting subjects, simple or imperfect things I would have overlooked in the past. Lastly, I am trying to look at things from different angles and pay more attention to how I compose the photos.

Here are a few of my favorite photos so far, taken in Manhattan and Hudson, New York:

I love the way the yellow and red stand out in this photo, and also the juxtaposition of beautiful church and boring building with industrial looking water towers. I also like the cracks in the pavement in the foreground – this is a new look for me in that usually I would have avoided taking a picture of so much street, and instead would have tried to get the whole church tower in the photo. If I’d done the usual thing this time, I would have failed to capture the “moment in time” feeling this photograph has.

I love the different textures in the walkway in this photograph – who knew a dirty sidewalk could be so interesting?

The lobby of the Empire Hotel - labyrinthine floor tiles and heinous zebra print pillows actually tickle the eyes from this angle…

Another unusual (for me) photo of a church – this extreme closeup reveals so many interesting textures.

This is a classic example of something I never would have thought was photograph worthy – a falling apart old wooden gate. I love the colors in this photo.

Another unlikely subject matter, and more great colors and textures. I love the reflections in the windows, and the crumbling bricks, and how strange it is to see this doorway with no front stairs.

The owners of this antique shop did the artistic “heavy lifting” by how they arranged their shop windows. I love the aging brick and the reflections of trees in the windows, too. The cat in the window is the perfect finishing touch.

And here’s a closeup of the cat – he even posed nicely for me when I came up to the window.

Let me know what you think. Be honest, but please don’t be mean, my fragile ego can only take so much!

Hunting For Dead Ancestors

Today I went with Becky on a small adventure to find the graves of my ancestors who lived & died in the Hudson Valley. We didn’t have too much time, so we limited our search to the area between Hudson & Kingston, even though my Hudson Valley ancestors stretched from Albany / Schenectady to New York City.

I really should have done more research online for graveyard records & locations, because our search really didn’t turn up much. Most of the relatives I was looking for lived in the 17th Century, and most of the graveyards we found contained graves dating to the 18th & 19th Centuries, long after my direct ancestors left the area.

Our first stop was the graveyard in Germantown, based solely on some weird internal calling for me to go there. When I lived in Germantown in 2003-2005, I used to go on walks that often led me there, long before I knew I had ancestors from this area. I didn’t find any amazing discoveries at the graveyard today, but I still feel a strange tug to go back.

Our next stop was Church Avenue in Germantown, epicenter of my college years – I lived there for two years with a bunch of good friends (including Becky), and it was a central hangout spot for me even before I moved into the house.

While driving past to say hello to the old house, I made something of an interesting discovery…

Some of my ancestors were French Huguenot refugees. What I know of their history is that during the 17th Century, Huguenots fled religious persecution in France, traveling east to the Rhineland Palatinate. There, the German speaking natives and French speaking refugees lived harmoniously together, even compromising in church by holding services in French during spring and autumn, and in German in winter and summer. Eventually both French Huguenot & German Palatine religious minorities immigrated to the Hudson Valley, then known as New Netherlands.

As you can see, this spot on Church Avenue was where Palatines built the first schoolhouse in Germantown. The house where I used to live is just two houses down the street from the white church you see in the background. I never realized what ties I had to the history of that location while I lived there.

Our next stop was the Dutch Reformed Church in the Stockade District of Kingston. Several of my ancestors lived and died in Wiltwyck, the Dutch name of Kingston, and I had a feeling I would find some ancestors in the graveyard that surrounds this church.

Unfortunately, so many of the oldest gravestones were crumbling or worn down, and I couldn’t read them.

Also, apparently many graves have been moved to accomodate the building of the roads around the churchyard, as well as the church itself, which burned down and was rebuilt several times. I will need to look into the church records to know for sure if I have any ancestors in the churchyard, but I did find two distant relatives – one who is for sure my distant uncle, and another who is likely a distant cousin.

Getting back to my Huguenot ancestors… Chretien DuBois, born in Artois in 1597, is my grandfather from 13 generations back. I am descended from Chretien’s daughter Francoise, who died on Staten Island in 1695.

Louis DuBois, memorialized below, was one of the Huguenot founders of New Paltz and a merchant in Wiltwyck (Kingston). Louis was the son of Chretien, brother of Francoise, and so he is my distant uncle.

I also have an ancestor named Lysbeth Oosterhoudt, born in Wiltwyck (Kingston) in 1663. Lysbeth is my grandmother from 11 generations back. This W. Oosterhoudt was buried in Kingston in 1772, and is probably a distant cousin of mine.

After our adventures in Kingston, Becky & I drove back up to Hudson through Saugerties, where another ancestor of mine died in the 17th Century. Alas, all the graveyards we passed were too new.

We did, however, get to see many fun & funky farm houses that Becky has scoped out in her quest to find a home to buy.

Thank you, Becky, for a fun adventure, I am glad to have a friend who is as much as history nerd as I am and who doesn’t mind hanging out in graveyards all day!

Crying On A Plane

After several years of flying in and out of Bend in airplanes scarcely more substantial than soda cans, I’ve toughened up a bit in terms of how much bump & free fall I can handle.

Flying out of Redding this afternoon, however, I cried like a baby, seriously believing I might die. We took off through a crazy windstorm, and our winky little plane was sliding left and right like a toy between cosmic cat paws.

I did the only thing I know how to do when fearing for my life: I started chanting. Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah, I don’t want to die, I’m not ready to die yet! Allah, Allah, Allah, Ya Rahman, please save me!

As fate would have it, I was sitting right across the aisle from a soldier making his way to Kandahar. A little ironic voice in the back of my mind wondered what he thought of my chanting. The soldier and the Sufi, an awkward pairing, but when you believe you’re in mortal danger there’s really nothing else to do but to call on God in whatever way feels most authentic to you.

Before taking off, I’d said the Fatiha under my breath for this soldier, soon to be in real mortal danger. It was an honor to be able to pray for him and to witness his sendoff in the airport. Soldier whose name I don’t know, I pray that you stay safe in body, mind & spirit!