I only gave a few clementines... or was it much more?

Today, I went to the market.  A head of me in the checkout lin stood a timid Somalian woman.  She placed her meager products on the conveyerbelt,  a few packages of halal bread, bananas, onions and clementines.  Her bill rang about 115 swedish crowns, 12 bucks.  She looked into her purse and asked the cashier with body language and the word 'orange', to deduct and return the clementines.

Me and my husband don't have much and we live a truly humble and meak life, but at this moment knew we have so much of worth.  I asked the cashier to please ring up the fruit and pass it onto the woman's side of the conveyer belt, and place the rest towards my side.

I stood next to this woman while packing my groceries.  When at last she only had the 'oranges' left to pack she turned towards me and could not find words.  Eventually the words that slipped across her lips was a swedish 'no, please'.  I just smiled and said with a silent firm 'please'. 

There was more silence and she uttered a humble thank you, also in swedish. I just smiled, and took my grocery bags and left the store.  I acted on an impulse, and I am very glad I did.  A bunch of fruit is nothing for me to give, however;  the gesture of caring is worth so much more.  I truly believe we all have a right to this earth.  We all are worth knowing, and we all truly come from the same family.  We all belong and have a place, no matter what country one has exiled to.

Two small and helpful hands

Xavier has found a new thing to do.  For the past week, he has picked up the school's random garbage bag they put outside of the entry hallway.  He finds it odd to see it there, and have for about a week now picked it up and tossed it outside of the school into its' proper disposal bin.  I let him go at it.  It is a kind gesture to help out, and I am sure to let him know.

Xavier sort of gets disapointed if no garbage bag is 'waiting' for him the days he is at preschool.

Here he is, wrestling with a huge garbage bin that had been blown to the ground by the wind.  We live on the east coast and it is real windy at times.

As I have much, I must give

This past weekend, I was in Stockholm Sweden, attending the Waldorf preschool teacher program.  In my heart and mind, this weekend, I felt especially blessed.  My loving husband Jeffrey works so hard to provide me with the means to travel there, stay there for a whole weekend and paying for this course episode.  How much I appreciate the sacrifice he makes for me is for me immeasurable.

I have had as a focus this past February to think about charity.  What I have come to learn, is that charity are all those small things and acts of self-sacrifice and can be as simple as exercising ones awareness of others.  When one is more aware of people around oneself, one tends to not crowd others, have more patience in thoughts and actions.  Most of all, one really starts to see people.  After a while, one notices their faces and expressions.  Then, one starts to care about them and begins to say hello.  Seeking, noticing people that perhaps have gone unseen for so long they have lost themselves on the way.
I stepped off the subway at Bromma central outside of Stockholm.  The incredible stress from people running past me, hitting me with their bags as they do – the perverted language use against one another when bumped into, cut off or having had a door slammed in their face.  I was happy.  I was really happy.  For to me this was a perfect place to see what the opposite of charity is.  This was also the perfect place to seek out faces and find those people that needed a smile, an acknowledgement, a vocal ‘hello’.

Next to a shopping plaza sat a very poor woman in her 50s on the ground.  She was poorly clad with a tattered and worn wool blanket wrapped around her.  To the immediate right was the line for the bank.  About 10 or so people stood there, looking in another direction, avoiding her gaze.  She had a small cardboard box, and was accepting donations.  I had nothing to give.  No money, no food or fruit.  As I rolled past her and a train of 20 or so preschool children with their 5 teachers, I spun around and came to a complete stop.  I looked at the woman again.  I had a very real sense of urgency to do something.  I just could not ignore this prompting in my heart.  I knew immediately what I had to do.  I walked up to her, rolling my loud luggage behind me.  I took off my very large shawl.  A shawl I hold so dear, that has been with me for a very long time.  I wrapped it around this woman and the gratitude lit a spark in her eyes and her face warmed up with a lasting smile.  Seeing this, it was easy to depart from the sorrow of departing from the finest shawl I have.

This was all a very small moment of 40 seconds.  But this woman’s face and thankfulness will carry with me always.  The children were asking their teachers how come I gave my ‘scarf’ away.  The people in the bank line saw… and hopefully one of them will have a small change of heart.  I kissed this woman’s right cheek and looked deep into her eyes with a smile.  To me, she is beautiful, and blessed me immensely with the feelings of gladness that came over me.

Charity is compassion, for oneself and others.  Through compassion one becomes a person that all of a sudden has countless family members to love.

All people we meet are our neighbors

All people around us are of worth. All people we meet are our neighbors.

Today, I decided for the first time in a years time now, to go downstairs to our laundry room that exist in our house to do some laundry.  We have been blessed with having a washer/dryer combo in our house, but for some reason I chose to use the landlords laundry facility.

Fokusskolans valentine's wall.

To my surprise, there was an opening first thing this morning although I knew I have my 'booking pin' in the first day/last laundry pass, of each month as a safeguard.  I got the laundry started and it was happily washing and drying itself while I got wrapped up in Indexing history work from the US 1800s.  Saving the records from the past.

This is what my son Anïas and I now love to do together.

 

I looked at the time and realized that I had gone past my allotted laundry time with 5 minutes and hurried down into the laundry room.  Outside of the door stood a beautiful, very colorful young woman in classic Muslim attire.  Next to her on the floor stood her detergents and a neatly sheet-wrapped bundle of clothes to wash. I came up next to her and smiled as I apologized for being tardy.  I gave an honest account for what I had been doing and picked up her detergents as I followed her inside.  She stopped for a moment and placed her things on the floor and smiled.  In a very broken Swedish she told me 'all is well' -- Ai-Shallah.

 We were both very cheerful that all is well and went on with our laundry, but as it turns out there was a third person in this drama.  Sitting far to the wall was another young Swedish woman.  She was noticeable frustrated at my laundry, and halted my company to stop with her laundry.

 The women sort out who is supposed to do the wash.  This Swedish woman spoke with a loud and stressed voice so the other woman had a hard time to follow her directions and understand what was going on.  This made this woman more frustrated and she spoke more feverishly and with arms and fingers articulating what was going on while the other woman shrunk down and backed off.

I calmly walked up behind the two, staring at the board.  Explaining that all is well, as I took out my ‘booking pin’ that had so selfishly been ‘pinned’ in a spot all these months but never used.

This other woman could take the spot over and wash her family’s clothes today as she had planned.  She did not know about the leap year, thus her time was yesterday.  She labored intensively in forming questions related to the booking board and laundry room.  I patiently waited for her to finish all she wanted to say and answered in a way which she would feel comfortable.
 As we were leaving, once again smiling, we both offered up our apologies to this other flustered woman.  We helped each other out of the laundry room and before we parted ways, she tugged me gently at the sleeve of my arm.
-Thank you, she said and tipped her head a bit.  Do you live here?
-I smiled back and nodded, pointing up at the ceiling with my finger. -On the first floor.

And there we were.  She is waiting for the elevator, me walking up the stairs.  All was well.

All the irritations in the world are unable to withstand acts of genuine friendliness and kind patience.  It undoubtedly spreads a feeling of cheer and awakes patience in those who partake of it.  All people around us are of worth. All people we meet are our neighbors.