same sun, different dawning points

winter is coming
i can see the smokey haze of the Shanghai sunset, behind the grey concrete sky-scrapers, making their windows sparkle and shimmer with orangey red colours. It's getting darker sooner and sooner, i think to myself as I look out the window of my bus home from school.
In the morning I wake up and the blindingly bright sun is not as evasive as I remember... but it's still the same sun as it was two months ago.

I looked out my little window by my bedroom this morning, and I saw the lady next door knitting inside the frame of her tiny window...like a mini theatre show, a picture perfect moment. It reminded me the morning before after I said my morning prayers, opening my eyes to the light and seeing her husband brushing his teeth in contemplation... Moments like that, I just soak up this place, it's sights and smells. Yes, I am in China. You have to choose what you want to focus on each day, you see the good the bad and the ugly, the sound of spitting really really irritates me so much, and I hear it most mornings... but I can choose not to focus on it, and look for the magic...its a daily battle...even in my attitude towards myself, towards being here...i keep thinking disaster thoughts 'I just want to go home. I just want the familiar. I just want to feel settled. I am lonely, its so hard, i'm out of my depth...blahblahblah'
but its a matter of attitude... and then GOLDEN moments happen. Each day is like a mini series of crisis and victory in my head...I plunge into depressive thoughts and then experience the most BEAUTIFUL of all moments, that make me think 'what is all the fuss about Chantelle?'
For example....
it never ceases to amaze me the open hearts and minds of people in this world.
take my landlady for example...

She came round the other night to teach me how to make shanghainese dumplings and i made an israeli 'tomato, cucumber, coriander and lemon juice' salad as my cultural offering...haha...

she doesnt speak any english
and i speak hardly any chinese
but we laughed
and had a great time
me fumbling and making a great mess trying to fill these dumplings using chopsticks...

later, as we were sitting on my couch, she saw my 'Baha'i' magazine on the table.
you can just sense when someone is genuinely interested...so i got out my laptop and showed her my bi-lingual Ana's presentation.
She then proceeded to teach me Chinese using Ana's presentation as the basis.
Painstakingly she would go through each sentence and then me repeat it. Then I would say the english version and she would copy. It was a beautiful beautiful experience. Both learning from each other in sooooo many ways!
We laughed as we both tried to sound out these foreign words...but then some words such as
'Baha'u'llah' were the same in both languages and we smiled at each other each time we said it...

After three hours of going through this presentation her husband, (who had been waiting outside all this time!!!) finally banged on the door and told her it was getting late and time to go. Again, we laughed as we realised the time, and I gave her a prayer book and an introductory book on the Baha'i Faith in chinese. She smiled that deep smile of hers, her face beaming, and her eyes sparkling as they did the first time I met her when I stepped into her apartment.

Then last night we met again for dinner. She said, (courtesy of a translator friend!)
"I was a Christian but after reading this book I know that I am a Baha'i. Because it is the same sun, only at a different angle on the horizon."

wow....i was in absolute awe. Here was my landlady, a beautiful Shanghainese woman of 62, a woman I have only met a few times, who had only just read a small booklet on the Faith a few days ago, now speaking nearly word for word what Abdul'Baha said nearly a hundred years ago, without even knowing it!
In 'Some Answered Questions' Abdul-Baha has said,
"Sometimes the sun rises from the center of the horizon, than in summer further north, in winter farther south - but it is always the self-same sun, however different are the points of its rising.
In like manner, truth is one, although its manifestations may be different. Some men have eyes and see. These worship the sun no matter from which point on the horizon it may dawn; and when the sun has left the winter sky to appear in the summer one, they know how to find it again. Others there are who worship only from the spot from which the sun arose, and when it arises in glory from another place they remain in contemplation of the spot of its former rising... Those who in truth adore the sun itself will recognise it from whatever dawning place it may appear, and will straight away turn their faces towards its radiance."

No wonder she has the most radiant face.

She loves the teachings about the equality of men and women. She told a funny story about a Japanese christian who came to their christian women's group to preach, and took a rather fundamentalist approach to marriage. She told them that, "You must obey your husbands. You have to do everything they tell you to do because they are the man, the head of the family, and you are their servants." My landlady strongly disagreed with this, and asked the "What happens if you husband does not know what he is talking about, and is stupid?" She caused a bit of a stir at the meeting...hehe. We had a great laugh about this!

She is now finding a group of her friends to start studing the Ruhi courses with.

As I sat in the back seat of the taxi home last night, looking at the night sky and the glittering lights of Shanghai, I said a prayer of gratitude in my mind....
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you
for bringing me to these incredible souls whom I have so much to learn from, so free of judgement, so open and truth-seeking, thank you for allowing me to experience that...it helps sustain me, and it strengthens my own faith at the same time...
wow. awe. wonder.
sigh