Dear Friends,
With Thanksgiving behind us, we all face the coming month with an intense desire to visit the Gym and exercise off all that stuffing, not to mention the Pumpkin Pie you just “had” to eat since it was brought by a guest. Indeed, the second helping of pie you also ate was to ensure that the person who brought it knew you appreciated the gift a lot. You persuaded yourself that this was the most courteous thing to do, and courtesy is a virtue as you know. ;-)
We will be having dinner on December 7th at 6:00 PM. Please RSVP so we may have sufficient food. After dinner, the program will begin around 7:15 with Nicholas Mentha talking about Baha’i principles and concepts. I am told there will again be a visual element to the presentation. Afterwards people will join in general discussion and questions and responses. Often a good deal of wisdom and laughter surfaces from everybody during this time. After a bit we will break around 8:30 for dessert and more conversation. Dress is casual, the food is free, and nobody is obliged to speak if they do not wish. Please advise if you have food restrictions. We will do our best to accommodate.
Although eel pudding was a tasty treat from the food vendors in London at the time of the Pilgrims, we will not be having it since eel pudding did not make it successfully across the pond. But many other foods have traveled across the oceans causing many Europeans to believe New World food to be European and the Americans to believe some European food is American. The same is true for many Asian foods.
Italians love pasta originally from China, and Persians love rice originally from India. Italians like New World tomatoes. Irish love their South American potatoes. Mexicans love beans, which originated in the Amazon, and Japanese love Portuguese-invented Tempura. The entire world loves a fruit from Venezuela called the banana. German Chocolate Cake originated in Massachusetts from a baker named German. Chocolate itself is a New World species but do not tell the Belgians or the Swiss.
The point is that the world has long been traveling, moving people, animals, and plants around (Palm trees, for example, are not native to Arizona.), and generally buying and selling products between nation states and continents. Often the foreign product becomes embedded into the culture where it landed. When the Last Old-One Dies who remembers how it was before the foreign food arrived, people feel it has always been in their diet and they had Tacos forever.
Thus, we have been led to believe that global travel and trade is somehow new. People, plants, and animals have been moving around since the ancient Sumerians built their extensive shipping business about 5,000 years ago between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, an area called the “cradle of civilization” by those who like to say these profound things. The Sumerians also divided the circle into 360 degrees but did not tell us why.
Likewise, very few of the problems we now face are totally new. While humanity has the power to live peaceably, productively, ecologically with shared resources, we choose to remain selfish, nationalistic, prejudiced, and warlike. These, as you see, are spiritual problems not problems with nature. The goal of this era is to bring our inner spiritual maturity up to match our technical maturity. I believe it was Mahatma Gandhi who said. “There is more to advancing civilization than simply making things happen faster”
Hope to see you for a slow-cooked meal at 6:00 PM on Saturday December 7th, a presentation on the Baha’i Faith, and a time to ask and share ideas with the group.
Please RSVP (This is French and means in English: Text us that you are coming!”)
With warm regards,
Peggy & David
602-697-1099