#ROW80 WEDNESDAY CHECK IN – FRIENDSHIP

Wha? I been looking all over for this file?

I am such a squirrel. I found some posts tucked away in a WINDOWS system folder. For those playing along at home, I don’t use any of my system folders normally. And so forth. Anyway, during some of my derangement, I must have thought that was a swell place to hide things or something, so I found some pretty hilarious posts there. I’m actually rather peeved that I had not put them where they should have been all along. Who knows what treasures will be found, hmm?

Anyway, I am glad I found these posts; they will be part of a book I hope to publish as an e-book later this year, as I have enough material to do so, but today I wanted to reflect on something that has a rather broad meaning and really, I don’t think we can ever say enough about it. I’m talking about ‘friendship.’

When we make a friend, or establish a friend, or a friendship, we do so at so many different levels and I believe that there are times in all of our lives, when our definition of the word ‘friend’ may change, it may broaden, and take on a deeper meaning, as we grow and experience new things, meet new people and learn more. Conversely, as we discern and gain a broader understanding of situations, we also are able to put ourselves in other peoples’ places and see things through their eyes.

There, there... I sorry you haz no fur...

We see that they are us! I have friends from all over the world. I once had a woman who played viola and sat next to me in the symphony. She was from Kiev and her name was Rita. She spoke not a word of English, well, a ‘Yes’ and my Russian was ‘Nyet’ for a while; we drew strange hieroglyphs in our music margins and laughed a lot.

 We're playing backwards... A hee hee! I know!

But, I visited this page on Facebook, called Muslims for America a while back, I was feeling bad. The Muslims in the United States don’t have the best of publicity. I’m sorry, but this is not true, nor is it fair. Muslims and the Islamic community are great people. Like anybody else, we are talking about the Glittering Generalities. When everybody gets all worked up about it, it’s just plain wrong. I don’t like what the IRA do; plain and simple. I have lived in Dearborn, Michigan, within their rank and file and I know that the families are families. The people are kind, gracious and generous. Steve and his wife, Shira had a deli on Michigan Avenue and Oakwood. Awesome food and wonderful people.

I’ve met some of the people from the FB page and they have been very nice. Ya Rab in particular is just a sweetheart. She is very educated and is Egyptian. She’s answered my gazillion questions and asked me so many as well. The others I’ve met are as curious as she is; today she made me laugh with a video of a very poorly sung but superbly engineered song! I’m ashamed to say her written language is incomprehensible, although beautiful. Ya is a delightful woman and a wonderful friend; a friend for life. She made this for me and I think it is so beautiful and she spent so much time on it. It is my name. In Arabic; I want to share it with you; I am proud of this. It is priceless. From my heart, Sahla, thank you. Inshallah.