I have a group of dear female friends--sisters if you will--that gets together whenever we can and email the rest of the time. We can talk about anything and having reached a certain age, most of us are examining our relationships. We have children and grandchildren, some with husbands and some without due to widowhood, divorce or personal choice. Some of us live alone, some in new marriages, some approaching a the half century mark -- and one who just had her 70th wedding anniversary!

We pretty much agree these days that friendship transcends all those boundaries we used to think mattered when we were much younger. We got to discussing recently how our loved ones showed their love, whether it was husbands, parents or children. When we were college age, we leaned heavily towards overtly romantic gestures: being seated or having doors opened for us, with flowers or little gifts to remember import times. Not so much any more!

Not that we don't appreciate those little touches, but there are several other ways that seem more important to us now. I condensed those ideas into the latest article from the Baha'i site at BellaOnline.com.

Five Ways to Express True Love
"Love one another" is a divine admonition that exists in every religion, but human history is littered with mankind's failures to do so. Here are some ways anyone can change that on a daily basis.

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art182084.asp

The coming week is a busy one in the US with the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, squashed between the biggest travel day of the year (as everyone heads to Grandma's house) and followed by the biggest shopping day of the year as everyone heads out to buy Christmas presents. At least, that is how the whole is advertized. Since this year I'm the Grandma (smile) everyone is coming to my house, and none of us plans to go anywhere near the shopping venues anytime that weekend.

In addition to all that, the Bahá'ís have two holy days this week: commemoration of Day of the Covenant ('Abdu'l-Bahás birthday) on the 26th, and His the ascension 1 AM on the 28th. You might be invited to one or both, so here are a couple links for further information:

Day of the Covenant: http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art54558.asp
'Abdu'l-Bahá, the Perfect Example: http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art27301.asp
November holidays: http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art46188.asp

Do visit bahai.bellaonline.com for more articles on parenting, education, and tools for character building, plus links to the sacred texts of the Bahá'í Faith. You don't have to rely on only my understanding, when you can go straight to the source!

Join free online discussions, view time sensitive announcements and check out interesting external links in the site forum located here -

http://forums.bellaonline.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=321

I hope to hear from you sometime soon, either in the forum or in response to this email message. I thrive on your feedback.

Cheryll Schuette, Baha'i Editor
http://bahai.bellaonline.com

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