{"id":509,"date":"2009-11-26T17:38:20","date_gmt":"2009-11-27T00:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/?p=509"},"modified":"2009-11-26T17:38:20","modified_gmt":"2009-11-27T00:38:20","slug":"think-thank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/11\/think-thank\/","title":{"rendered":"Think Thank"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am home today waiting for dinner.\u00a0 I spent last night making pumpkin pie from scratch and was very proud of myself – it was the first time I ever made a pie.\u00a0 This morning I finished the pumpkin puree by making two more pumpkin pies!\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Homemade

Homemade Pumpkin Pie<\/p><\/div>\n

Then I made a middle eastern rice stuffing that I grew up eating and stuffed a 15 lb turkey with it, and put it in the oven to roast.\u00a0 I needed some whipping cream for the pies later tonight and headed over to my local Whole Foods market to buy a pint only to find they were completely sold out!\u00a0 I then made a 10 mile trek to the next nearest Whole Foods to get my pint of organic cream.\u00a0 Along the way I started to think.<\/p>\n

This year the holiday season here in the United States begins with Thanksgiving\u00a0as the holiday season for the Muslim world comes to its end with Eid al-Adha, or the Festival of Sacrifice, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.\u00a0 For me It will be five days of holiday starting with Thanksgiving and culminating with Eid.\u00a0 And yet when thinking about these two holidays they seem so diametrically opposed, not in spirit but in practice.\u00a0 In spirit Thanksgiving is about showing thanks for the blessings and bounty that we have.\u00a0 I am sure originally thanks was given to God, but today I don’t know who exactly people thank.\u00a0 Folks today in the U.S. believe in so many different things or in nothing at all\u00a0that I have given up on trying to understand who thanks what anymore.\u00a0 Growing up, Thanksgiving was always a strange holiday.\u00a0 People cooked more food than they could possibly eat, then ate more then is healthy.\u00a0 Someone, either a guest or neighbor, always consumed to much alcohol, became intoxicated and then spoiled the day with some boisterous diatribe about how the world was all wrong and he never got a fair shake.\u00a0 The very act of giving thanks on that day seemed so contrived and disingenuous.\u00a0 All the while there was the guy on the street corner, like today as I left Whole Foods,\u00a0with a sign in his hand that read “hungry”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the same time this year, 2 million humans converged on Mecca in the Arabian Peninsula, for the annual Islamic Pilgrimage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Mecca

Mecca at Hajj<\/p><\/div>\n

From all over the world and from every walk of life these people make a sacrifice to get there, and in some cases their entire life savings, and seek out forgiveness for the wrongs they committed in their life so far.\u00a0 They sacrifice their time, leaving family behind in some cases, and make a trek into and through the desert for a glimmering hope of starting life a new without any mistakes to account for.\u00a0 After 9 days of slogging through the desert these 2 million people make one more sacrifice.\u00a0 They purchase an animal; lamb, goat, cow or camel, they have it slaughtered and the meat is given away to those hungry people in the world, wherever they might be.\u00a0 The meat is processed there in Mecca, flash frozen and then distributed worldwide to those who need food.\u00a0 After all the Eid that follows the pilgrimage is called the Festival of Sacrifice.\u00a0 But\u00a0all is not roses there during the Hajj.\u00a0 There is wasted food, more waste\u00a0than I think I have ever seen in my life when\u00a0I made my Hajj 11 years ago.\u00a0 Leftover food, half eaten loaves of bread, plastic bags filled with uneaten cooked rice and curry litter the pathways.\u00a0 For a spectacle like no other where sacrifice and giving are the hallmark, it is\u00a0utterly embarrasing\u00a0and repugnant to see so much food discarded.\u00a0 All the while beggars are every where asking for help.<\/p>\n

Growing up in my home\u00a0these two\u00a0holidays were about feeding other people rather than feeding ourselves.\u00a0 Each year my aunt calls me about a week or so before Eid and asks are you going to hold Eid this year?\u00a0 What she means is – are you going to feed people?\u00a0 This year she also asked if I and my family were going to spend Thanksgiving with her.\u00a0 Like my dear departed mother, she has a\u00a0obsession of generosity that is only placated by feeding people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is said that it is always better to give than to receive.\u00a0 Thankfulness for something given is expected.\u00a0 Being thankful for the ability to give is another matter all together.\u00a0 The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said ‘charity does not diminish wealth’.\u00a0 What ever one gives out will return ten fold.\u00a0 The ability to give to and sacrifice for others is deserving of thanks.\u00a0 It is a state of well being that marks independence and fortune.\u00a0 It pains me when those that have the ability to give hoard what they have for themselves and leave others to pine for what should be enjoyed by all.<\/p>\n

This year my wife and\u00a0I have the good fortune of hosting our extended family at our home for Thanksgiving.\u00a0 It was a sacrifice for us as well as times are tough and we have had to tighten our belts a bit.\u00a0 But the joy we feel in giving out, and receiving the blessings of family in our home is more than we could ever ask for.\u00a0 This year, think about thanks and what you are thankful for and who you are thankful to for what you have and for what you have the ability to do.<\/p>\n

Peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This year the holiday season here in the United States begins with Thanksgiving as the holiday season for the Muslim world comes to its end with Eid al-Adha, or the Festival of Sacrifice, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[4,10],"tags":[229,230,216,217,227,232,231,228],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":512,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509\/revisions\/512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.organiclightphoto.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}