This is really an entry about sisters. Sorority. Women working together for the larger family good. A story told close to the anniversary of 9/11, an event in 2010 that seemed to focus more on burning a Quran in Florida and preventing a Muslim community center from being built two blocks from Ground Zero than the annual remembrance of that epic 2001 event that changed the landscape of New York City and apparently the hearts of many Americans.
I realize I’m a gender-outsider telling this story, but I am nonetheless an interested observer. My lovely Cindy Lou is one of those sisters involved in this story.
It all began in November 1995, I suppose, when the world turned its attention to the Hope Hotel at Wright Patterson AF Base for what would be known as the Dayton Peace Accords. A three+ year ethnic bloodbath was put to an end after leaders from all sides of the Bosnian conflict came to Dayton to talk and work out a peace agreement.
In the spring of 1996, my downtown church decided one of the things we could do to make the world a better place was to take on a refugee family from Bosnia and get them resettled in our fair city. Church World Services approved our request and we were told we would have three to four weeks to prepare to receive our guests.
One week later we got word that a Muslim refugee family was in flight and was expected to reach us within twenty-four hours. A housing arrangement was in the works, but not yet confirmed. Cindy Lou and I decided the best thing to do was welcome this family into our home for the short term until permanent arrangements could be made, a decision that changed our lives.
Not knowing what to expect -- except that our Muslim guests numbered five: mom and dad with three kids -- I shopped at the Halal Meats & Grocery store on Wayne Avenue so we could have some food when they arrived that would not offend. As it turned out, our guest family wasn’t rigid in their eating habits, and besides their being stunned at the variety of food at the local Kroger, all worked out well for the week+ they stayed with us. By that time housing had been arranged through another church family and lots of local trips to doctors, dentists, and government offices were shared with still other church folk. I still think sponsoring a refugee family was one of the best things our congregation has ever done.
Lots of water has gone under the bridge since our relationship with our once-refugee friends began that spring. In the summer of 1998 Cindy Lou accompanied the mom back to Bosnia to visit her own ailing mother. The kids have grown up, the older boy a Wayne High School graduate now serving in the US Navy. The younger twins are currently high schoolers with one recently invited to a call-back with the Dayton Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. All family members have become US citizens and, unfortunately, mom and dad have since divorced. Stress has its fallout, I suppose.
The kernel of this blog today, though, is what I saw in Cindy Lou’s face last Friday evening after she came back from the mom’s house following a tutoring session. Besides working a couple of minimal-paying jobs to keep food on the table and clothes on her kids’ backs, the mom has determined it necessary to take some classes at Sinclair Community College to get prepared for better paying work. And since she has to take language and writing classes, Cindy -- a retired English teacher par excellence -- was asked if she could help not only her, but a couple other English-as-a-second-language girlfriends from the old country also back in school.
The language and writing classes these women are taking aren’t easy. Cindy is amazed at how hard the assignments are. Still, on occasion when she returns from her tutoring Fridays, Cindy tells me about how these women didn’t get that much school work done, but instead sat around the dining room table drinking coffee and talking about how hard life is in America. One of the women wept on Friday saying how the office manager at her job is impatient and flat out mean to her.
Such insecurity talk stops Cindy Lou in her tracks. Here she is conversing with Muslim women who were uprooted from their lives in another land, transplanted into this wonderful but business-brutal US of A, and continually struggle with language, culture, family, and customs. Cindy stands in awe of these women and tells them so. She often tells them that she could not have done what they have already accomplished.
It is plain to me that Cindy and her cadre of new American girlfriends are becoming soul sisters. They share life as they experience it and in so doing build bridges among each other. They laugh, they cry, they swear in Bosnian on occasion, they drink coffee in sorority. As a guy, I’m left to hear Cindy’s stories and encourage her to continue this valuable work.
At a time when so many Americans are wary of our Muslim brethren, it is refreshing to see real women helping each other build stronger relationships, enriching community, enriching America. God, or Allah, bless those girls.
Today’s elder idea: I am opposed to the building of the "mosque" two blocks from Ground Zero.
I want it built on Ground Zero.
Why? Because I believe in an America that protects those who are the victims of hate and prejudice. I believe in an America that says you have the right to worship whatever God you have, wherever you want to worship. And I believe in an America that says to the world that we are a loving and generous people and if a bunch of murderers steal your religion from you and use it as their excuse to kill 3,000 souls, then I want to help you get your religion back. And I want to put it at the spot where it was stolen from you.
Michael Moore
for the rest of Michael’s blog entry, see:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/if-mosque-isnt-built-no-longer-america
image: from michaelmoore.com
No comments:
Post a Comment