Charlotte County Florida Weekly

Adventures await in our own backyards

THIS IS US



 

 

I often get asked, where have I been lately? Where am I going? Somehow friends, colleagues and acquaintances see me as always off on some kind of adventure, and they want to share and revel in these travels. It’s true that I do indeed flit about, but much of the time I am right here in Southwest Florida. Perhaps my posts on social media depicting me here and there make life seem all the more worldly and exotic. But what most are really seeing is the rich tapestry of friends and people I am blessed to know or get to meet. We don’t have to travel far to go far. There are so many people full of big ideas, stories, cultures brimming with yummy foods, inspiring religious rituals and histories waiting to be shared and learned from. Every day — whether shopping, waiting at an appointment, walking a brood of four dogs or heading out to lunch — is an adventure waiting to unfold.

In the past several months I had lunch with Rabbi Stephen Fuchs, who shared details of his new upcoming book “The First Jew,” a book detailing his and his wife Vickie Fuchs’ years of speaking engagements in Germany. During these trips in which Rabbi Stephen was invited by German church clergy to speak to their congregations about tolerance and acceptance he was in most cases the first time congregants saw a Jew since the decimation of the Jewish population in Europe during the Holocaust.

Being on the forefront of change and social progressiveness is nothing new for this Sanibel resident and religious leader of Bat Yam Temple of the Islands. Rabbi Stephen is a man of the cloth, but he is also a man of the people. During protests for Immokalee farmworkers’ rights, Rabbi Stephen, along with friend Imam Mohamed Al-Darsani of the Islamic Center for Peace in Fort Myers, are in the front waving signs and standing up for the rights of the voiceless.

Just a few months earlier my husband and I were chatting with some of our favorite servers at a local Asian restaurant when one of the servers, Bounlam, said her husband passed. Lam, as all her friends know her, has a smile and bubbly laugh for all she meets. But now she stood here holding a platter of some dish of sliced fish-shaped like roses, with tears glittering in her eyes. We spent some time speaking with Lam about her husband and the ensuing grief journey. She asked me if I saw the funeral pictures she had posted on social media. Lam and her family are Buddhist and as such there are rites and rituals that are performed to send a loved one away from this physical world and onto the spiritual realm. In the pictures, Lam’s departed husband was surrounded by flowers, and flanked by family and loved ones in robes of sunset orange and milky white. The love and devotion emanated off of the screen.

Last week another friend, Lubna Alam, shared the details of her family’s trip abroad. During their trip, the Muslim family grieved the loss of the 50 souls who perished in the massacres at the mosques in New Zealand in mid-March. We had just spent time at her home before their trip discussing how we could all bring more peace to each other and the world. Though disheartened and hurt, Lubna and her family visited mosques on their trip.

We met up when she and her family arrived back and hashed out ideas to work together to create more understanding and less fear in our world and each other. Lubna and I don’t always agree on issues due to cultural and faith differences, but we always see the big picture in front of us and that we can be much better as a human family and work toward a peaceful coexistence. We just have to be brave and want it enough to stand up to the injustices and suffering.

Friend Aubrey Vealey, who has been experiencing a medical challenge after a car crash last year, went to a Catholic healer who visited a large Catholic congregation in Melbourne a few weeks ago. Inside the sanctuary of the church, Aubrey felt nothing but pure love and vibrations as devoted parishioners prayed on their rosary and sang hymns. She felt healing inside of her before even meeting the gifted healer near the altar.

So be it Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, it matters not. They are all beautiful languages and ways of connecting with each other and the universe that brought us all together. So even if it seems scary or uncomfortable at first, venture out of your comfort zone and try to talk to someone, anyone, different than you are used to in your social circles. You will be surprised and not only learn about someone different than you, but you will learn about you. Take the journey for there is no end, only lots of exciting beginnings. For this is us. ¦

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