Stories from my neighborhood

A timely story of friendship, creativity and generosity of spirit right in our neighborhoods. Start where you are. We can make a difference. We are energy. Energy matters.

The first story in this collection occurred last summer.

It can feel so overwhelming when we don’t feel like there is anything we can do. I am half Jewish, half Euromutt when it comes to my genes. My parents met in a Sufi bookstore in San Francisco. Before I was born, they used to do Dances for Universal Peace in the Holy Land.

I’m sharing this story, which took place over the summer, because it shows that while we can’t prevent every catastrophe, we can build a world of peace, one loving step at a time, right where we are. When the old world falls, a new one will rise. What world are you enlarging, building, inviting, expressing, co-creating?

In the summer of 2023, when the warmth of the later part of August was just building its momentum, I took a walk that culminated in sitting on the steps of my friend, we’ll call her Janell, who lives a few doors down. Janell has an archetypally Irish mom who loves donuts, an autistic son who gave me the best hug on Halloween one year, and a daughter who is strong and sensitive and artistic, who has a bearded bearded dragon to match her fiery, beautifully red hair. Janell’s husband is a kind man who does something related the analyzing data. Janell was the first person whose shoulder I cried on at the beginning of one of the pandemic, when we ran into each other one day I just burst into tears over censorship of the truth as a I understood it. Only one other shoulder has been wet with my tears in these years, outside of my family.

On that early summer morning, with the trees fanning out from their buds into their full leafy-iness, we sat chatting on her step and among other topics, we were discussing how great it would be to get more of the neighborhood together. Janell mentioned having had a sudden inspiration this past winter to give her across the street neighbors a Christmas card, even though she wasn’t planning on doing the holiday card thing that year, she had one on hand, and of all people, felt to give it to an Iranian family across the street. She learned in the course of that gift that the flag they have up in their yard represents Iran befor the dictatorship. And this is key: so many people live in a dictatorship, and whatever the wars of the heads of state and the terrorists and whoever you think is behind it, the truth is, there are good people everywhere. Some are unduly influenced the propaganda that is used against them so they will be willing to fight their nation-state or other group identity’s enemies. But minus the programming, most people are anywhere from okay, to decent, to good, to awesome. This is what I truly believe. It is a very small minority of people who are truly evil. Most people who do very bad things are some combination of wounded, disconnected and programmed and exploited in their areas of vulnerability. A wounded or disconnected person is an easy target to manipulate and exploit. Unprocessed grief, rage, shock or feeling disenfranchised over time can all lead an otherwise decent or even brilliant and loving person becoming the aid to a truly evil person, such as in Star Wars we see with Anakin Skywalker. But don’t get my started on how they ruined star wars. Lets just focus on creating Star Peace.

Janell’s gesture of friendship, an invitation to maybe get to know one another was reciprocated, and a connection was formed! It is amazing how people can live their lives so close together and not know one another. It has always seemed counterintuitive to me that people who live in close proximity are often strangers to one another. I think Janell felt the same as a way of saying hello, I’m sending you good wishes, it would be nice to be acquainted. The Iranian family welcomed her kindness and shared with her that they celebrate Nature Day on that very December day when my friend had dropped off the Christmas card. The Iranian woman subsequently, a few days later dropped off a casserole at my friends as a reciprocal gesture of kindness.

Not long after I heard about this brilliant, small exchange of kindness, at a moment I was already thinking about love among people, about building bridges, and about the different linages that have informed who I am, including both Sufism (the mystical side of Islam, albeit in its Westernized form brough by Hazrat Inayat Khan,) and my Judiasm from dad’s side, I found myself in front of the Iranian family’s home, singing Salaam Alekum, Shalom Alehem, Salaam Alekum, Shalom Alehem. A Jewish woman with whom I am quite friendly, along with her dog, Motek, happened along and paused exactly across the street. “I was wondering where that angelic singing was coming from,” she said with a smile. I explained to her the song, and about the Iranian family across from her, about how I am half Jewish and was born into Sufism. She grinned and said, “Shalom Alehim, this I know. What is the other one?” “It’s Salam Alekum,” I replied. It means the same thing, in Arabic.

In the middle of the summer I once, briefly, met the daughter of the Iranian family a short while after that and told her about the song and the Jewish woman who loved it, and we briefly chatted about building peace, one little jigsaw piece at a time.

Then one day later in the summer, I saw from my back porch, a u-haul truck in front of the Iranian family’s home. I walked over and I asked their young adult daughter if they were moving and she said yes. After expressign I wish we’d gotten to know their family better and that we wished them every happines in their move, I told her how their family had inspired the song because Janell, and how, as I’d been singing it one day in front of their home, it led to a bridge being built when Jewish woman I know was walking her dog directly across from their home paused because she heard me sing. I told the young woman, whose name I learned I was Zara - that although I was sorry we were only learning names now, I was grateful they inspired the song and wished them so much peace. I returned home and got the nudge to invite my son to go over and play their family the song as a blessing. He was game, so I pulled a sprig of mint and he got his ukulele and we headed over. The daughter got her mother. I began singing very very off key, but my son was patient with me as I found my voice and soon we were singing our prayer. The mom filmed it. And as I looked in their eyes it was so beautiful, so much soul, so much sacred and we just met! And then the mom said, "Wait here while I get something." She came back with a huge, gorgeous canvas. It was a painting her husband made that has gold paint swirling the Arabic scrip of a line from Hafiz. I was in awe. She giving me this amazing gift! WOW! I love Hafiz. I was just thinking of Hafiz the last few days quite frequently. I asked her to translate and the daughter said "Hafiz is speaking to his lover/beloved: "I do not see only your features, but in your reflection I see the sun and moon." I thanked her profusely and told her that every time I look at it I will pray for their family and for peace for our world. The mom had tears in her eyes. We shared a long hug. Later I left a bundle of fresh sage and a unicorn I painted on their windshield.

In times we are facing traumatic things, it can help to re-focus on what is within our power to do to add more light, more stillness, more peace, more joy and more creativity to our lives and to open ourselves up to say, “Source, I am available to be a vessel of love, compassion and creativity. I am available to see from more than one perspective with empathy. I am ready to be a healer, rather than add logs to the fire.”

Unlessless we need to take immediate aligned action for our wellbeing or the wellbeing of another. We choose our focus, choose what we feed, amplify and what we nurture and co-create within the womb space we do our best to protect for what we want to birth into the world beyond this present devastation.

A few gratitudes (and please share your own, if you feel led to)

1. My son and I started composing music together, and my husband, son and I started playing out in nature. Our music may only have reached a few people, but it has touched lives.

2. I know there are beautiful human divine beings everywhere who are praying the prayer of peace with me

3. I brought my baby sunflower inside and it is doing well!

In the house where the Iranian family lived, new neighborhood have moved in. And I think we will be friends.

Another neighbor has a painting I made, which I gave to her after she expressed her horror that someone she knew had been censored for her art in an extremist Muslim country. I shared with her that I have had experiences of being threatened as well as censored, right here in the US of A. Back when I had a passion for patents.

At least, however, I am not killed or threatened or stalked for being a heretic, or for not being religious at all. My husband’s co-worker shared what it is like for her being an Irani-American who cannot be honest about her lack of religion when she goes home, or she would be killed. I write about that story in this post:

In a world where we can all tell the truth, no one will be censored for it. But we can tell it with compassion for all. We are all have an infinite journey ahead of us - why not take it as family and friends rather than foes and frenemies? Of Course, deep down even those who play those roles are only nurturing our growth. May we grow beyond the need for learning about peace through suffering, beyond the compulsion to learn about clarity through distortion or freedom through oppression.

What if we could learn about peace through peace and love through love?

What if we could laugh our way to liberation?

And co-create with our brothers and sisters outside of party lines

Throughing a party where our shared divinity is the common ground

The rigpa

Our earthen bodies

Are of soil and stardust and water and light

And our souls know we are Sophia’s

Delight

To embody as the stars

And invisible

Presence

Within form

To help sovereignty create a new norm

Where heaven on earth is born

The limitless space

In which Divine Soulutions and Soilutions

Can download

And help us elevate

To our sovereign divine potential

As Source emanations

Here to experience ourselves

As both the One and the many

Faces of God

What if we didn’t need to plod

We could simply allow, open, receive

Gestate

Conceive

Divinity as what we are

Birthed into here in this world

That is so beautiful

And in so much need of

Harmony

Freedom

Peace

You

Me

Our whole Inter Universal

Sovereign Divine

Family