The Power of Reciprocity

Well, reading this blog I can understand that I learn an almost daily life lesson from my daughters, and that's great, I have two good teachers.
Today, due to lack of time, I asker them to shower together so that we could save some time end not to miss their favourite cartoon.
Since they are 6 and 7, I am beginning to show them how to shower without my help. I simply give them shampoo and soap because they still cannot read.
One of them asked me if she could wash her hair alone, I said yes, she tried but had problems, so I said: I put some shampoo in your hands, L will wash K's hair and K will wash Leila's.
The did a great job and each of them made a very good shampooing to her sister.
They were very very happy about this.
While I was helping them to put on their pyjamas I asked:
"Did you succeed in shampooing alone?", and they both replied "No".
"Did you succeed in shampooing your sister?" and they laughed and said "Yes".
And I tried to explain that this is the reason why you never should refuse to help someone, because you may be the one in need someday and you may need help yourself, and it will be very good if you find someone who helps.

Points of View

Yesterday, after coming back home with my girls, I had to return to their school to meet my youngest daughter's teachers.

As soon as I entered the room I found all the four teachers (four women, a big problem for me :P ). They welcomed me and we all sat and began to talk.

The Math teacher started to say that K is scatterbrained, that she often uses with no care at all pens, pencils scissors and so on and often loses them. And that's "a big problem that may impair her school career".

I lost my entire pencil case when I was attending my 1st year of primary school. My parents still accuse me of having lost this damn pencil case and yes, I am 41 now... According to her, I would probably deserve to be illiterate. I am planning to get in touch with the University I attended to check the possibility of having my degree revoked for having lost a pencil case while 6 years old. 

Her Italian Language teacher told me that I may use a strategy telling her that I will punish her if she will come back from school having lost something. Well, I have to say that one of my many defects is judging people at first sight. If I don't like you the first time I see you, I will probably won't ever like you, and all that you may say or do will most surely be used against you... I know it's not the best way to deal with people, but alas, that's how I am. I never liked this woman. And yesterday I came out from the school liking her even less.

I never believed in such a kind of education.

I don't have to threaten a kid of punishment if I want him to do something. He won't learn the value of the thing I am asking him to do and the only result I will have will be his being scared of me. 

If I want a kid to learn something that is useful for his life, the only way is doing it using a motivation process.

I will have to teach him to appreciate the positive value of the thing I want him to learn.

Is it difficult? Yes, absolutely yes. 

But it's the only strategy I can use if I want a kid to really grow and not just to develop an automatized behaviour driven by fear.

I will tell K that having all the pencils and school things in her pencil case will allow her not to have to worry if one night I will forget to check it.

I will tell her that putting her pencils in the place they belong will leave much more space on her desk.

I will tell her that if she does what I ask her to do she won't have to pick up her pencils from the floor.

I don't think I will obtain a good result if tonight something is missing again and I will start screaming, or telling her that I will punish her. 

Thanks teacher for having reminded that, once again, even about this issue, I am different!

Hadiths and Islamic Fundamentalism

I just read an article on a website. I guy I know has been sued for Islamic terrorism. He's an Italian convert living in my city.
I cannot understand how a somewhat intelligent and cultured young man can change so much, throw his culture in the garbage bin and decide to embrace the most intolerant, racist, hateful and misogynist kind of religion I have met so far.
I mean: culture should make you open minded.
If your mind becomes narrow... well, something went wrong. Very wrong.
I don't blame Islam as such for this. Islam is basically a peaceful religion even if it doesn't stand out as to religious tolerance. Or better, it does, when muslims want their religion to be accepted and respected. Not the same when it's their turn to respect others.
I am not blaming Islam in general. I have a lot of muslim friends, the father of my girls is a muslim too, and most of them are peaceful and kind people I like spending my time with. I also have to say I have received a great help from them. But unfortunately muslims have their fundamentalist wing. And this is the Islam I won't ever respect.

If you rely on the Quran alone, you can see that it is a book for open minded people. A book designed to regulate human life and to protect the environment. If you want to read a wonderful book about this, you can check this link.
The real problem of Islam is that most of its followers rely on a huge and despicable pile of sayings attributed to Prophet Muhammad and called the hadith. This is the source of: discrimination, hate, misogyny, ignorance, bad habits, and I could go on for weeks...
NO ONE of these sayings can be attributed to Muhammad with certainty.
More so if - as the same Muslims affirm - Muhammad was the perfect man.
Here you can find a detailed and clear explanation of the reason why all this crap should be forgotten and deleted from human history.

The Quran does not promote violence. Hadiths do.
The Quran teaches not to disrespect other human beings, whatever their faith may be. Hadiths do not show the same level of tolerance and respect for other faiths.
The Quran does not desrespect, isolate, humiliate women. Hadiths do.
The Quran does not contain stupid, insane or meaningless practices. 90% of the Hadiths is made by them.
The Quran teaches men how to live a happy life in harmony between themselves and with the environment. Hadiths enslave men to a long and sometimes funny series of debatable practices that should help them to reach the Garden. Well, if I have to live like an robot to reach that Garden, then I am quite sure it's a place I wouldn't like to live in.
The Quran doesn't depict religion as an accumulation of points at the end of which you win a place in Paradise. Hadiths base their "authority" exactly on this: if you don't act as prescribed, you don't get a point. That's all.

Thinking with my head is a rule I cannot fail to follow.
I cannot follow any rule or commandment that asks me to behave in a way that doesn't agree with my reason and with my feelings.
I guess that love and respect towards other human beings is the very fundamental religion we have.
Everything else is a detail.
Ignore details when they would make you act as a non-human being.

IKEA

This morning we went to Ikea for shopping. Or better, we went to Ikea to let my girls play for an hour in the kids playground space while I was looking for some things.

We came there before the opening, and as soon as Ikea officially opened I went to speak with the woman working at playground space. I was strolling my eldest daughter in her wheelchair.

That woman started looking at Leila with worrysome eyes and said: "Madam, I am alone this morning and...".

Usually I get upset at this. Often people creates problem if you are speaking about a disabled kid. Probably for fear of responsibilities. 

The committee of negative voices in my head started screaming this reply:

"Ok, you are alone, but since nothing in your rules say DISABLED KIDS ARE NOT ACCEPTED, my girl can play here with her sister. And yes, democracy is not one of my best abilities :)"

I counted to ten and the committee left the room.

I decided to talk positively.

"I understand, but you don't have to worry. Yes, I know you are alone, but believe me, if she could be in danger here I wouldn't have tried to take her here. In addition, my girl can walk although not so well, she's independent and her younger sister promised to take a look at her from time to time... "

She replied positively.

"Ok, I will take an extra look to her. Please don't leave the building, if I will be in need I will call you using the speakers".

Years ago, just the expression on her face would have prompted me to a bad attitude.

But I understood that if you have a positive attitude, most of the people you meet will be positive towards you too.

Try to be positive.

I learned that positivity attracts positivity.

I swear, it works.

You must keep moving

Today Facebook prompted this image to me when I was surfing the net, bored and a little worried because my eldest daughter seems to be sick :/

I spent my day with the kids and my ex husband at the playground near the sea in my city.

If I didn't keep moving in my life, I definitely wouldn't be there today. And if life didn't force me to act quite contrarily respect to what I would have behaved if I was the only one to decide what to do with my girls, they wouldn't have been there with him either.

I have been married for 11 years with M. When we me he was a handsome guy, nice and polite. Or at least this is what I thought at the moment. My marriage taught me at least not to judge a book by its cover.

We almost immediately started to quarrel. I loved him but everything was wrong with us. Probably it has been a matter of culture. He's a sunni muslim. I define myself a stray dog.

My family taught me the importance of respect for other people's life and freedom. I have a university degree and I am a free thinker, outspoken and very keen to friendship with people of different cultures, sex and religion.

His culture - and his dad, sad but true - taught him to find a woman who could wash his clothes, cook him meals and have sex on request. 

Obviously it couldn't last long. Sometimes I ask myself how we managed to live in the same flat for eleven years without stabbing each other.

Our marriage had a sad ending. One day he came home from another city and found our house empty. I fled with the girls. Well, if an unemployed woman flees with two baby girls, the eldest one disabled  and just some more than two years old, she has a very very good reason to do it, considering the fact that Social Services here in Italy are quick to take away kids in this kind of situation.

After we have been forced to cooperate for the kids, we spent years screaming on the phone for the most stupid reason. I don't regret for this, I had my reasons and maybe I still have, but I am really sure that if a marriage fails both spouses have their share of fault. And I am sure I have mine.

Then something happened. One day we simply found ourselves talking like two normal friends. I don't know if we managed to do this for the sake of our kids. I can't tell what prompted him to change his attitude. But I know what changed mine.

Living in rage is very, very tiring.

I had two options. 

#1, going on hating him as long as I lived. 

#2, checking if there was a chance to save something. I chosen the second, and I was right. Or lucky. I can't say.

M has changed a lot in the last two years. I don't know why. And I really don't want to know. He's a good dad, with his many limitations, but I know he acts the best he can. 

I tried to forget our problems and to go on. 

Once he asked me if I have forgiven him for the way he treated the girls and me when we were married.

I think that forgiving him was really the only one option I had.

Ok, some lines ago I wrote I had two, but I really felt I had just one.

Rage and hatred are destructive feelings. You can't hate someone without somewhat hating yourself too. Hate hurts. Hate burns. Hate uses your energies and in the end it becomes an obsession.

I felt it myself and I found myself trying to shape my life in the way to hurt him as much as I could. And one day I understand I was hurting myself too. Yes, I guess I had my reason to complain about his behavior, but one day I understood that this hate was ruining my life too, using my energies I could have best used to do something better. 

I am happy I decided to keep moving. And I hope my girls will learn this too.

Punch him back!

Today I went with my kids to playground. They were playing with a big group of other kids and I was relaxing sitting on a bench and reading a book.
When I was there I overheard a conversation between a father and his son, who could have been about 4 years old.
I didn't hear what the child say, but he was crying and his father replied sayin: "How many times do I have to tell you that you have to defend yourself? Did that kid punch you? Ok, punch him back! Hurt him! So he won't touch you again".
I had to light a cigarette because this thing made me feel very uncomfortable.
We have the chance, as parents, to give to our kids a better world. We can teach them how to live together, how to respect others, how to behave when someone shows using violence his disagreement.
We have a responsability towards future generations, towards the environment our kids will inherit, towards what they will make of their lives as free men and woman.
I wouldn't ever say such a thing to my daughters. 
Instead, I am try to make them understand that there's no use in behaving unpolitely towards people, even if they make us get angry. I would like them to learn that disagreement is a natural condition in man, and that there are some people that cannot handle stress properly. I always tell them that peace is something we can create if we reflect and try to understand what is really important in life. 
I hope my girls will learn what respect means and will behave accordingly.

Intolerance, again

Today, one of the Facebook pages I follow, "I am UU", showed this news on my wall.
Since I am translating a book whose main theme is so far religious intolerance and its often deadly consequences on the growth of the Unitarian Church in Europe, I have been very upset by it.
These guys entered into the Church while a burial service was being held.
So, they don't even show respect towards a dead person and to all the people who where there to remember him.
As this article says: The organization framed their action as simply an effort to “present the truth of the Gospel in this synagogue of Satan”.
What does it mean?
It means that if I don't share your religious ideas, I am a worshipper of Satan, with Jew tendencies (maybe as a bonus, I can't say with certainty).
It means that these people don't even know what free thought is.
I feel pity for them.
I have friends who belong to many religious confessions: buddhists, catholics, muslims, unitarians, kabbalists, a Jehova's Witness, even atheists.
I strongly defend the right of each man and woman on this Earth to have his/her personal relation with the Divine, in the terms they prefer.
Diversity is the second most powerful weapon God granted us.
The first is Love.
Be yourself, love and respect one another.
I guess that just respecting our differences and loving each other exactly for what we are - as a certain guy calle Jesus told us to do - we have a chance to grow and reach the Kingdom he said we can reach. Here, on this planet. 
I am confident that this is possible. 
I hope that a growing number of people will understand that hate and divisions are leading us straightforward to a Hell that is not waiting for us after our death. 

Religion of the Spirit

Thanks Rob for having published this on Facebook tonight :)

I completely endorse this view of Religion - all the more, of Prayer - as a spontaneous act that cannot be limited by fixed rules or words.

When I was at school, as most of the kids of my age, I've been sent to attend Catechism in my local (Catholic) church. Once I asked our priest to explain me the reason why I was supposed to recite all nights and mornings every time the same three prayers with the same words and I couldn't directly talk to the Boss asking for what I needed or giving thanks for what I had.

This guy told me these exact words: "Because God will understand what you need or wanna say without you even having to ask. Say these prayers and trust me".

I don't remember how old I was, I suppose around 10. I'm almost 41 and I still cannot understand if he was kidding me or just believed in magic formulas. 

A forgotten history

Well, these days I am working on a translation of a book into Italian. Actually it's several months, I underestimated the time I would have needed to complete this task, but this is another story.
I didn't know anything about the history of Unitarianism before, mainly because at school this part of the history has been carefully cut out of the books you keep in your backpack. 
I am amazed by the persistence of these men and women who lost everything more than once thanks to lack of tolerance, to bigotism, to an insane sense of superiority whose meaning I still can't understand even if I have translated more than 190 pages by now.
If you ask me about my relation with religion in my life, I can say I've always been a stray dog, and maybe I still am. I never liked boundaries, cages, labels, ready-made concepts and prayers that ask me to turn my brain off and just obey and/or repeat.
I always say I prefer spirituality, because it's a personal research and not something you are taught and you have to reproduce in the same form you have received it.
I left the Catholic Christianity because every time I entered a church I have been told that God has mercy on me but I make him get angry because I am a faulty creature who has to pay for the sin committed by a couple of guys I'm not even certain have really existed - provided theirs has really be a sin. Well, couldn't he have created me in a better version? I firmly believe that God created each one of us exactly as we are because this is the best version we could have been created in.
This is the reason why I refused to have my girls baptized (my mum still didn't forgive this offence): I don't think they have to be cleaned from anything. One of them has been about to die once, her doctors told me that there was probably nothing to do for her. And I asked the friar to go away and let my girl alone: if his God wasn't ready to accept my girl because "her sins" (which ones? She was 17 months old, damn, she could barely call mum and eat using a spoon) haven't been "washed", well, he could well have kept that kind of God for himself and going on living in fear and in self-despise.

Yes, reading this book I understand I would have probably been burned at the stake.  

A laughing dentist

Today I had to accompany my youngest daughter to the dentist. My daughter had a cavity. 

We were 5: my father, my mother, my eldest daughter, my youngest and me. 

We are often all together when one of my daughters has to be examined by a doctor. I'm not married, and bringing my two children alone to a medical examination means that I have to split between the daughter who must be visited, the other who is bored or crying, and the doctor that I have to listen. I would need superpowers.  

When at last the dentist came calling my daughter, he saw 5 all of us there and laughed, saying: "All the family here? Ok guys, who's the first?".

Having a family who is ready to help you when 

All this may be considered "normal" by someone. Well, I don't think so. I am a lucky woman.

I am lucky because, although I live alone with my daughters, many people love us and check on us daily.

I am lucky because even if my eldest daughter has a disability, I don't consider it a misfortune. Ok, it didn't go as planned. Who cares. Let's try and see the best in what we have. 

I am lucky because even if I always have doubts about my way of raising my kids, they love me and they show it daily, and I can say that we have a unique bond.

I am lucky because maybe at least I found out what I wanna be when I'll grow up. And who cares if I found it now that I'm almost 41.

I am lucky because, all together, we all can share love and make it grow. 

I am lucky because today I succeeded in seeing the best part in the people I had around, and I hope they have been able to see my best part (provided I have one).

And if I succeed in remembering this every day, all the more when things won't be so good as they have been today, I'll be doubly lucky.

The magnet

This is a magnet.
You may say: no, this is a wheelchair for kids.
And I can ensure that this is a real magnet.
And it fatally attracts couples of smiling Jehova's Witnesses, wherever we may be.
Today, the wheelchair my eldest daughter uses to get around manifested its magical power attracting another smiling couple of Jehova's Witnesses, who happened to pass by when I was at the playground with my kids.
Don't misunderstand me. I don't have anything against JWs. I really admire people who have faith, and I guess that their "pioneers" (is this their exact term?) have it. The thing I don't like about them is their lack of dialogue. I sum their approach as such: I speak and you agree. This happened when I attended a Catholich Church too. Last time I entered in a church to attend a mass I was 23. And, since I came home again with that persistent feeling of having to fill my mind with ready-made and non-negotiable ideas, I didn't do it anymore.
Let's come back to my magic wheelchair. The two women come towards me smiling. I try my last resource before having to talk: I quickly roll a cigarette and light it. It doesn't work.
Their eyes point my daughter's wheelchair.
"Oh, sorry, so you have a disabled kid".
I bite my tongue and I succeed to keep my mouth shut. 
I suppose that should I have replied - as I would have gladly did - "Nah, using wheelchairs is fashionable this summer, didn't you know?" I would have sounded a little unpolite. 
"Yes".

They promptly show me a leaflet whose exact title I don't remember, but it had something to do with the reason why bad things happen to good people. As soon as they begin to quote Bible's passages like a parrot I quickly dismiss them saying I am not interested in the subject, but agree to keep their leaflet. I am not unpolite, believe me: just it never happened to me to have a real conversation with a JW. I don't like unidirectional talks. They smile and go away.

My younger daughter reaches me asking for water, I give her some and she asks me who those two women were.

I explain that they belong to a religion whose members call God Jehovah, they believe they will be saved when the end of the world will come because they live "according to biblical principles",  and have a particular lifestyle.

She asks what these women said. I tell her they tried to explain to me why bad things happen to good people and I didn't want to pay them heed.

She asks me why.

Me: because the answer I like most is "that's life", and they most likely wouldn't have listened to what I would have said. I think that when two people talk, each one of them has the right to expound his point of view and the other one should listen and reflect. This doesn't mean they have to agree. This means that sharing the respective points of view enriches both parts. Whatever the subject of the talk may be. And this is exactly what we UU do during liturgies. We share our experiences and nobody judges.

Some hours later we were on the bus, coming back home, and she looked at me and said: "So mum, next time someone wants to tell me something I have to listen, don't I?". "Yes". "And then I can say what I think". "Yes". "And doesn't he get offended if I don't agree?". "Well, maybe he does... But it's his problem, not yours. And... you are such a sweetie, did I tell you I love you, today?".

"My" Virtual Library

Well, this is my first post so I guess I should talk to you about one of the things I most love doing in my life. I love reading, studying, translating texts...

I got in touch with my Unitarian Universalists community here in Italy by chance at the end of 2013, and I suppose this is one of the best things ever happened to me.

I just became disappointed for the lack of books in my language (Italian) about UU - CUI's website provides some books written by our ministers, but I was interested in something very old, just to understand what our history may have been.

I just took a look into archive and openlibrary... And look what I found! 

66 old and free books about Unitarian Universalism.

I just collected the URLs and my mate posted the result of my research on our website.

Enjoy these books here!

I hope I'll be able to make it grow :)

Sara

PS: If you know about other free e-books available on the net, just comment this post. Thanks a lot!