Every month New Expression hosts a potluck in Clarkston as an effort to get to know our neighbors and build community. Onur attended our last potluck and was amazed by the event. He is a student of NXP volunteer Cynthia Gibson, and wanted to share his thoughts about the party.
We went to a party which is called as “potluck”. I was not familiar with that term at all. As far as I learnt, it would be a party where immigrants and volunteers come together and share their foods with each other. We had lots of fun and talk with the other parents at the party. I always admire those people who leave their problems aside and spend their time and effort to help to others. I also feel myself close to them as long as I believe that they are sincere.
If you need to learn if a community of people are sincere, you are supposed to look at the children of them. Kids are always sincere, they never fake. Perhaps it is a little bit early to say this, but these people are good people. I can see this particularly when I look at their children.Do you know why? Because, while most of people just talk about peace, love and brotherhood, these people doing something on this way. They don’t wait somebody to come and bring the peace. Moreover they leave their comfortable beds even on weekends, and go to fix something in the society; moreover with their family; moreover in an era when walls are started to be built again. They do “something different”.
At the party we saw lots of people with smiling faces which is getting rarer day by day. But one of the most amazing and impressive thing at the party was the food. At the party, people started to share and eat food, but we didn’t interested in it as usual, because of our concerns about halal. Our friends noticed this, then approached us and said that all foods were halal. What!? I could not believe to my ears. Later on I learnt that organisation committee sent a notice to participants, and asked them to bring only halal foods, so that muslim participants also could eat. They also notify about what is halal, how to prepare halal foods etc. Even though we were not hungry, this sensitivity made us so happy and feel full. This thing can be entitled as love and courtesy in all around the world.
These kind of events are like a medicine for society to increase the consciousness of living with others in peace. We are muslim and they are not. I don’t care what is their belief, how they pray and how they live, we are all humans and live in the same place. We were different in terms of religion, race, nation, culture and life style, however we danced, ate, painted, and laugh together.
I felt, the peace was there yesterday…
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