Making cranberry sauce for a Thanksgiving party
Month: November 2014
The Grove: Thank You
As a nation, we are more known for pointing out what is wrong than for expressing gratitude. Famous quote at the end of an international conference:”You put us Germans in a very uncomfortable position – there was nothing to complain about!” 🙂
So to see the whole country stop just to say thank you and to celebrate is quite something! Yet it is what happened earlier this month when Germany was marking 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. There was gratitude, there was joy, there was celebration.
As I was reflecting on the event, it struck me just how important it is even in the midst of challenges to stop and to remember all those reasons we have to be grateful. There were and there still are a lot of challenges that came out of the events of 9 November 1989, and they do need to be talked about. But this was not the time for that. This was the time to remember the miracle and to be thankful.
The question is: will I remember this lesson in everyday life or will the challenges again crowd out the gratitude?
Weekly Photo Challenge: Angular
The epitome of angular: statue of Pythagoras by the harbour in Pythagoreio on his home island of Samos/Greece
Weekly Photo Challenge: Achievement
What an achievement! The sun conquering the snow, spring triumphing over winter, daffodils surviving to continue “tossing their heads in sprightly dance“!
200 countries, 200 years
Heartbreaking and encouraging all at the same time.
Encouraging, because overall, people are living longer and healthier lives. In most places across the globe.
Heartbreaking, because there is and was so much that’s wrong. The wars that caused so much death. The selfishness that leaves others behind, across borders and within countries.
Encouraging because there is a lot of good that has come out of medical and technological advances that people have poured their hearts and energy into.
Heartbreaking because there also is a lot of bad.
Beyond all the numbers, there is so much that can never be measured, never be put into statistics – even snazzy ones like this. All the stories, all the individual lives. So much smaller and yet so much bigger than the whole.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Minimalist
Lichtgrenze: Balloons (lit up at night) marking the former border between East and West Berlin, commemorating the fall of the Wall 25 years ago.
Saturday Travel Quote
Hello from Turkey! Today’s travel quoteis contributed from Bayta. Bayta has been in my world almost since the beginning of blogging and I love her wisdom and her heart. In this one she borrows from St. Augustine – thank you Bayta!
This so beautifully captures the pain of “the long good bye”. The good bye that continues long after you moved away. Each time someone fails to realise (and how could they realise it?!) that in your heart you still belong in this place, the ties are severed a bit more. Or maybe just transformed to something else?
Today I am at the blog This.Is.Katha writing for Katha’s 31 Days in the Life of a TCKseries. Katha has written for me several times and I’m excited to guest post at her blog! You can find more info on the series here. For now I’ve started you off on this piece and link to the rest of it at the end. Enjoy!
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“So – are you visiting?”
The question took me completely by surprise. We had returned to Cairo for our first visit two years after leaving. Cairo had been our home for seven years.
It was in Cairo that we had watched three of our five children take their first steps. It was in Cairo where our youngest two were born, three years apart. It was our community in this city that had loved us and cared for us through pregnancies and sickness; through…
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Ain't Mine No More 