This is our friend, Ali Khajavi, singing a Persian love song. Unfortunately, technical glitches keep me from getting sound and lips in synch. Anyway, it's lovely.

Our friends, Tracy and Ali, visited for a couple of days over Christmas. Ali had cooked an astonishing amount of Persian food to share, and he and David got the barbecue going after some encouragement, so we enjoyed kebab in addition to a dish made with beef loin. They had also brought an eggplant and lamb dish which we enjoyed the second night of their visit.

I took a couple of videos, one of their son Bijan singing a prayer, and one of Ali singing a prayer as well. I'm having a hard time loading things to YouTube today, but when I get them set up, I'll share them. The family joined Laurel's family, and my son, as well as Andrea and her son Mitchell and niece Emily, for a trek through the museum.

Good times.

My sister, Coral, sent a wonderful story to several members of the family. She superimposed it over a picture of her daughter, Sarah. I can't figure out how to upload it, so will share the text and the picture separately:

What Sarah Knows

One day Ovidio and Celeste were sitting on the couch talking about money, finances and budgeting. Sarah was sitting close by. Ovidio turned to her and said teasingly: “And you don’t know anything but Daddy get me beans, Daddy get me rice, Daddy get me food. You don’t know anything at all.”

Sarah looked up and whispered softly: “I know about love.”

Ovidio asked her: “What do you know about love?”

“I’m not going to tell you,” she teased but followed with “Love is kissing and hugging.” Then after a short pause she said: “Love is built on generosity.”

Celeste asked her then: “What is generosity?” “Generosity is inviting you to my picnic and sharing and playing.”

When I got home from work there was a picnic blanket on the living room floor and lots of love in my house.

This has been the year of the blog. Here is a picture my son took a couple of days while he and our extended family toured the new exhibits at the Museum of Science and Nature. Apparently there is a special exhibit...so he took me on a 'virtual walk' through the lens of my camera, while I went and did errands (there are always groceries needed with a houseful of family).

I am going to post a series, today, because there are some special photographs and I have still not mastered layout options on the blog. But I thought I'd start with this particular picture, for all of you science enthusiasts out there, and see if you could enjoy this view of Einstein.

It's all relative.

Tonight's devotional: Laurel & David, Bernie and I, nephew Rowan and friends Ali & Tracy gather for prayers in our living room. Ali chants in a voice so rich it sends shivers...Arabic, French, and leading into English: God is sufficient unto me, He verily is the All-Sufficing, in Him let the trusting trust. A chant used by Babis, back in 19th Century Persia, when the persecution of Babis and then Baha'is began...where Baha'u'llah and His fellow prisoners in the Siyah-Chal prison chanted their way heavenwards. Heavenwords.

David & Bernie: brothers-in-law, comrades in wacky endeavours, Christmas Day 2006

There is something satisfying about getting up early enough in the morning to get most of your tasks done before you really start the day...I haven't yet had a morning decaf and my pies are in the oven, my mince tarts, and two cheesecakes ready to bake for tomorrow. This year I am experimenting and I'll let you know how it goes: before pouring in the cheese mixture, I put mincemeat on a shortbread crust and cranberry on a graham crust. Once I made Eddy Lee a lychee cheesecake so why not experiment with the ingredients of the season?

Today is the arrival of my sister, Laurel, husband David and two of her five children, Rowan and Alyssa. Valerie arrives on the 27th. Audrey already lives in Ottawa. This means we'll only be missing Emily, who is in Australia at university. We also have my sister Andrea and her gang here, for the most part (missing son Evan and his wife Amanda who are due to have a baby soon), at least for dinner tomorrow. With these families, Bernie's sisters, cousin Jack and his wife, and my children's respective 'significant others', as well...we'll have good company.

No doubt I shall take a picture or two to share. In the meantime, safe and joyous celebrations to all, and a reading for your contemplation, shared the other day by my friend Kurt Hein in Oregon. I liked it so much I printed it and put it on the fridge in hope of memorizing. It's a good one to keep for any New Year's resolutions...yet to come.

'The Blessed Beauty often remarked;
"There are four qualities which I love to see manifested in people:
first, enthusiasm and courage;
second, a face wreathed in smiles and a radiant countenance;
third, that they see all things with their own eyes and not through the eyes of others;
fourth, the ability to carry a task once begun, through to its end.'
--Stories of Baha'u'llah, compiled by 'Ali'Akbar Furutan, page 51

I have just tried to upload a movie for you. If it worked, you will find a clip of Bruno and Allison singing at the recent Festival of the Covenant. If not, I'll go back and try again...but not until after breakfast. I am following Ailsa's instructions, since I noticed she had a few clips embedded in her blog. The learning curve continues...

As I was chopping food for dinner this evening, washing romaine, dicing fresh cilantro, squeezing lemon over the avocadoes, grilling the chicken breasts in fajita sauce....I could not get it out of my head: "It's not easy being green." Laughed at myself....tried to think of other, more esoteric things...tried to compose a poem. Thought about the wonderful talk I read today which was given by Peter Khan in San Francisco this summer, all kinds of uplifting thoughts about education, but persistently, my mind would drift away to..."It's not easy being green." Oi oi.

I painted (or rather, Bernie painted after we chose the colour together) the room which has been my parents' bedroom, and which will be the guest room for my sister and her husband when they arrive Christmas Day, but which will revert to being my office in early January, quite a bright green. I will line up my plants along its one window wall and watch the winter from a green and white glow. That's if winter ever comes. Apparently our continued double digit temperatures here are fooling plants and animals into thinking it's spring. Garlic farmers are worried, birds are still here which shouldn't be...and I have planted a lot of tulip bulbs, with my Dad, which will hopefully not think they're meant to be out of hibernation. I never thought I'd wish for cold, but we need at least below zero for the natural world to go about its business the way it's meant to. Seedlings emerging too early simply means they'll die off at the first harsh snow fall, which must come. On the other hand, I comfort myself by thinking that the tulips in places like the Niagara Peninsula, which have a usual shorter and warmer winter, still manage to come up at the right time. Puts a new spin on Kermit's refrain.

So I leave you with this thought: It's not easy being green.

This lovely photograph, of David and Marilee Rhody (the couple at the left), Bob LeBlanc and his wife Louise Profeit-LeBlanc (centre), and Helen de Marsh with her husband Maury Miloff (right), will be used this week in an article in the Low-Down, a Western Québec English newspaper which features their contributions to my book, Partners in Spirit. All have become dear friends and I am so pleased that the paper is doing the feature.

Today I went to Ottawa University and got my new identity card. My new identity is "Professor". I am liking this phase of my life: we'll see how it goes when the actual teaching begins on January 4, but I think this should be fun.

Mom and Dad have arrived safely in Saskatoon but apparently the trip was a little hard on Mom, who got the shakes, but is now okay back on her oxygen. They travel again in a few days so I hope they are able to ensure that she doesn't have to be off the oxygen for too long. Laurel will pick them up in Edmonton, where Dad has his next eye appointment, and then they are off to Fort St. John and Whitelaw again...home, in other words.

Meanwhile, I have begun the process of booking our flights for pilgrimage in July 2007. All five of us are going to Haifa...I begin to anticipate, as we get closer to the actual year. My son asked me today about fulfilling dreams, and I realized how many of mine are coming true.

I am grateful.

Here are two pictures from last night's dinner. It was our time to say farewell to my parents, who as I type, have headed west to my sister Andrea's for a few days in Saskatoon before going home to northern Alberta. My brother-in-law, Steve, is always telling me to get pictures of Mom without her oxygen hookup, so I am pleased with this particular photograph.

The other picture is of my eldest daughter, who was seated, unexpectedly, next to Dan Jones. I recognized him when we entered the restaurant (an Indian buffet, in deference to Dad's predilection for buffets and our preference of Indian food). He is, of course, the author/producer of one of my favourite blogs, doberman pizza. He is a Baha'i from Ottawa, whom I know more from reading than from our rare meetings, and it was a pleasure to see him and have him join us for dessert. He already knew another of our dinner companions, cousin Jack McLean; apparently he is Jack's Ruhi tutor! After the dinner, Jack came home for the evening and when I arrived home after my Assembly meeting, I joined Jack and Mom until the wee hours, hearing family stories I had never heard. Jack has a tremendous memory and of course he is somewhat older than I so he remembers Mom from the time she was fourteen years old, and could tell us stories of Grandpa & Grandma Halsted, as well as Auntie Vi.

Our time shifts, now, with Dad and Mom gone, back to some sort of routine, I suppose. Tomorrow night we will miss my parents at our Ruhi class. Next week, however, we will begin to welcome other family: my sisters Laurel and Andrea are both coming with their families over the holiday, and I expect to be cooking for a gang on Boxing Day. This year I am going to experiment and make a mincemeat cheesecake and a cranberry one, in addition to the regular pies. We will have to get an extra large turkey, and I will try and figure out a good vegetarian treat for my second daughter, who will be working most of the day but will join us in the evening. Our place will be full of cousins!

I have almost finished preparing for the course I will be teaching next semester at Ottawa University. It is exciting to think about how I can make it interesting, and I am looking forward to offering my lectures and to meeting many young people again.

The writing continues. Wish me well, as I wish all of you a happy time and safe travels if you are en route somewhere to someone special.

This is my favourite picture from the recent Festival of the Covenant, a gathering which welcomed Baha'is from all over Québec to Gatineau. 'Abdu'l-Missagh Ghadirian and his wife Marilyn are friends of my parents and they had not seen one another in many years. I had seen Dr. Ghadirian more recently, and am always interested to hear news of his son, Nayyer, whom I taught at Maxwell International Baha'i School in the '90s, but it was a particular pleasure to see, albeit briefly, the pleasure in these old friends meeting one another.

I continue to reflect a lot about history. When I was at Maxwell, I spoke to the student body and assembled staff at the morning assembly in their dining hall, at the invitation of Deloria Bighorn. This was to promote my book, but it was also an opportunity for me to reflect a little on the past. One of my former colleagues used to comment that we had no "institutional memory" and I have thought about this remark. It's the old idea, "if these walls could talk", I guess...translated into the current reality. The students were 'the same'. No, of course they were new individuals, and some of the teachers there actually were the same because one, at least, has been there since the inception of the school (!) but despite the change of faces, changing times, there is something about the ethos of any institution which remembers...and yet memory is seated only in the people who have been there, who have gone before. Much is lost, as people come and go, because there is nothing permanent to mark their presence, not so much as a gallery of photographs. It seems to me that having a 'rogue's gallery' of sorts provides a sense of history: a room, or hallway, dedicated to pictures of those whose lives have changed, or have been changed, by being present there. Yearbooks get lost, photos grow old, but framed on a wall they give a sense of the institution. There is no trace, now, of the man who made the statement (Dale Robertson). He has gone on to change his name (Hero Vey) and apparently runs a B&B at Tofino with his new wife. But he was at Maxwell for years, and his legacy, particularly in the Dramatic Arts, was rich. I chatted a bit with the librarian, Leola Witt-McNie, now in a better venue. She has surrounded herself with memorabilia, because I think she understands the importance of a sense of continuity. The loss of memory, personal or institutional, means loss of access to important archives, to history, to all that was good and all that was meaningful, except in the capricious minds and hearts of its participants. I would have liked to see, as you enter the office, a gallery of Principals and Vice-Principals, past and present, so that Dr. Ray Johnson, Dr. Kurt Hein, Arini Beaumaris, Dr. Stephen Waite, June Barrow...the list is longer...are not "lost" to the memory of the place they helped to build. My friends, Mark Miller, Lisa Brosseau, Dale Robertson, the Naderis, the Heins, the Varners, the Zahrais, the Johnsons, even Jacob Bighorn, aren't there anymore...and many more besides...but they are present in the spiritual realm, and there should be, could be, some small place to mark their passing there.

I think this is why I am making books that hold memories, this desire to leave a marker, not only for myself, but for those whose place resides in text. Someday, someone will pick up Partners in Spirit, and they will recall its people, and get a glimpse of the idea of the infancy of Baha'i marriage. Someday, someone will pick up A Warm Place in My Heart, and they will read about Olinga Martel, or Kai Bighorn, or Anisa Qualls, in their own words written when they were young. Perhaps they will be old by then themselves, but in text, they will have memory, they will be there to be accessed again and again...I hadn't realized this until my friend, Deirdre Jackson Farr, commented that these books would be of great interest to the historians and archivists of the future. She remarked, "Imagine if you could read stories written in first person by the early Christian believers," and I thought of the residual power, still, of Biblical lore. Current novelists reconstruct, through imagination and some glimpse of the historical record, ideas of 'how it might have been'. Anita Diamant's The Red Tent, told entirely from the point of view of Dinah, comes to mind as a wonderful example of this genre of storytelling, or Marion Zimmer Bradley's astonishing Arthurian epic, viewed from the perspective of Morgan, The Mists of Avalon. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

So I like the sense of history, in the picture above, and I like the feeling, much as I also grieve anticipated losses, that in fifty years, someone will look at these pictures and they will remember, and think of how it was, once upon a time not so very long ago. My great-grandchildren will be able to access stories, of Ron and Edna Nablo, servants of Baha'u'llah, and their many friends and family members. Even as a type, one of these is on the way to being born: my nephew Evan and his wife Amanda are due to have a baby in the next month or two. The life cycle continues, as Evan's grandmother, Joan Doran, prepares to leave this world as her cancer advances. She and Bob have had almost sixty years together. We are preparing to say goodbye, and we are preparing to say hello. They are both, in their way, lump-in-the-throat and tear-in-my-eyes reflections, and if this writing life means anything, perhaps today, in sharing them with you, I offer a chance for remembrance.