I was 2yrs here. Bahāʾullāh (b.1817) and Baháʼí Faith first taught me about Love regardless of race, gender, class, age, background etc.: a practice towards Oneness of Humanity.
A Polaroid of Wisdom
stories of human goodness
Start: 05.2026
"I have long suspected that a sense of isolation and aloneness may undermine the will to live. For more than twenty years I have used a simple way to help people facing radiation, chemotherapy, or surgery to remember that they are not alone. I suggest they find an ordinary stone, small enough to fit into their hand, and invite their closest friends and family to a meeting. It does not matter how large or small the meeting is, but it is important that it be made up of those who are connected to them through a bond of the heart.
The process is simple and intimate. People sit in a circle in silence and the stone is passed from hand to hand. One by one, each person holds it and tells the story of a time when they too faced crisis. People may talk about the loss of jobs or dreams or relationships, or about illness or death. When they finish telling their story, they take a moment to reflect on a personal quality that they feel helped them through that difficult time and name it out loud. People will say such things as, 'What brought me through was stubbornness,' 'What brought me through was faith,' or 'What brought me through was a sense of humor.' When they have named their strength, they speak directly to the one who invited them to the meeting, saying, 'I put stubbornness into this stone for you,' or 'I put faith into this stone for you.'
Often what people say is surprising. Sometimes they tell stories that happened when they were young or in wartime and share things that others, even family members, may not have known before, or they attribute their survival to qualities that are not ordinarily seen as strengths. Many of my patients bring their stone with them to the chemotherapy or radiation, and some have even gone into surgery with their stone strapped to the palm of their hand or the bottom of their foot with adhesive tape.
No one has chemotherapy or radiation or goes into an operating room without the thoughts, hopes, and prayers of others going with them. The stone makes all that visible, tangible, real."
- Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom, 1996)
I want each Polaroid to be a little like that stone.
I am visiting people across Thuringia with a Polaroid camera and a question: What is a kind quality you admire in someone in your life? Whose wisdom has shaped you? Who do you become in the presence of this person?
The conversations are short. The Polaroid stays with the person who has spoken. A picture of it, and a few of their words, find their way into a small, slowly growing archive here. An archive of care, friendship and wisdom. Stories that might heal.
I was born on the Earth, but was not born here. I have come to think of Thüringia as home. The land, the creatures, the people, the lives I pass on the street, among the trees or the farms — I am still getting to know all of it. What I am learning, mostly, is that there is much more wisdom here than is ever spoken about. There is much more gentleness and kindness than one might expect.
So, I'm curious to hear, learn and archive the healing stories and wisdom of people in Thuringia. Human goodness is everywhere. If you would like to be visited, or to point me toward someone whose wisdom or story should be heard, write to me here.
0. Sibling-hood
The first story, or the "zero" story, begins in my heart. There is one person always there as the icon of love, courage and wisdom. It's my sister Marjan. She doesn't live in Thuringia but, she lives in my heart and since at this moment I live in Thuringia, I assume she lives here too. I speak about her as the wisest woman I know. Not because she knows everything, and can handle everyone but, when I see her, in her life, despite all the things that she is going through, she knows how to be love for everyone around her. At this moment 2026, she is a woman in Iran, imagine! A women born in a minority under oppression.
One of her super powers is humor! She opens you up, turns you upside down, connects to you and dismantle you with her sense of humor. Humor, is an opposite of ego story, an opposite of arrogance, remedy to confront inflated egos, even to face evil. Humor, is also an invitation for friendship and lightheartedness, a courage to say: I don't know, no one knows, let's dance and be friends.
This is her wisdom for me. It's a way of being humble and kind to others. It's also a way to face violent, oppressive forces. Another way of saying, I rather be curios and live the mystery of life than to insist on my limited imaginations and knowings of life.
She doesn't insult, she won't make fun of anyone, she doesn't mean to hurt. In the face of patriarchy, she just doesn't take them that seriously.
Among her friends, she is the warmth they come around. She invites the best out of everyone. She is a lotus in the water of oppressive forces.
Marjan means "coral" in Farsi. Just like a coral, she is a place for everyone to feel safe and at home.
1. Little Prince
Well, my mind comes back to Cindy. A Weimar close friendship. Ironically, only recently, I felt very distant from her. The war in Iran made it difficult for me to see her as my dear friend who was there when I needed her many times, and showed up for me as much she could.
The war pushed on all my dark buttons, and I went blind. I could not see her as Cindy, my friend, my dear dear friend. I fell into the trap of seeing her as "a white woman, upper class, a decedent of colonizers, inheritor of the stollen wealth of other nations, a European, a Westerner, someone who benefited from "our" misery, another white person with harmful desires, at the top of manmade hierarchy of harm and on and on and on."
I fell into the trap. I went blind and forgot who we were to each other and for each other. She was the irreplaceable Cindy, my friend who was open and vast to hear my wildness and my dark creatures when they were unknown to me.
It wasn't only who she was and what she had done for me, it was about us. Who I could become in her presence, and how precious the friendship was. Those part of non-verbal ways of sensing one another that only the heart can know.
I never had to force myself to wish her to be fulfilled or happy. I knew, I wanted her happy. I knew, I was excited to see her blossom in her elements.
One time, she was teaching yoga. I was a student in her class. I looked at her, in her elements, she was doing great. I adored her in my heart, I smiled. I was deeply happy for her. No surprise, later a lot of students came to thank her, and appreciate her for how she held the class, how she taught them to connect to their bodies.
I noticed, I wholeheartedly felt happy for her, each time she was enjoying herself.
Her good news, was always good news for me. It made my day to know at least she was doing well.
I know this feeling from my sibling-hood with my sister. It wouldn't matter how heavy life might be for me, when I see Marjan happy, it brightens my heart.
Now, at the moment of saying these lines, we're gently and slowly re-imagining who we are to each other. We both admit that our hearts are connected, and our friendship is there. Maybe, the fruit of this friendship is harvested and it needs to begin a new season. Love, can fruit in different ways, at different times.
One time she gifted me the book Little Prince. I wonder if she had foreseen the nature of our friendship. We might "come from" different planets, with different realities, but at the end the planet for love is the heart. Whoever seeks love, inevitably has to live on the planet heart.
2. A Yellow Wild in Thüringen Wald
Lui's roots are literally among the roots. If fairytales born in this landscape had a home, it would be near where Lui sprout out: Thüringen Wald.
Now, as a grown up I see how my childhood cartoons had scenes of Lui's home. Among the trees, with mysterious creatures and magical stories. Sometimes scary but, often times other worldly.
Me, a city boy biking in a metropolitan, Tehran. Lui, a forest girl walking in the woods, Ilmenau. Me, from the "east.". Lui, from the "west." My home made of Iron, her home made of wood. Me, brunette. Lui, blond. Me, curly hair. Lui, silky straight. My mother tongue with no gender pronouns, Lui's mother tongue masculine-feminine.
Our planet has given birth to so much variety. One human family, almost uncountable ways of being and becoming.
Sometimes, It's not easy when East meets West. When Masculine meets Feminine. When Poor meets Rich. when Ground meets Sky. Neither can exist without the other. It's like different kinds of symmetry in mathematics. Nothing is ever excluded in this life, all is here and there is a mirroring in everything.
Well, to be fair, our friendship hasn't been that dramatic in terms of contrast. Nevertheless, differences exist. Lui and I call it complementarity, not contrast.
Before I moved to Germany, I wasn't too familiar about Germany's East-West dance. To me, coming from the East side of our planet (it's bizarre to phrase it like this. According to what?), a lot of concerns of former Eastern Germans sounded very familiar to me. Something like this: Westerners came to the East and did this and that, and we feel hurt.
If you are born in the Middle East, East or South, you might hear similar stories of how the West introduced itself to the East. Again, the meeting of West-East. Always a dance. Sometimes like a Tango, other times like a Punk and often like a HipHop.
A lot of what I learned from Lui has been non-verbal. It can look like trust and transparency. Like diamond, it's both see-through and solid. I see this quality in a lot of humans I've met in Thüringen. Lui, expresses it even more maturely. I wonder if the mercy of living among the plants and animals has something to do with this wisdom.
Her transparency smells like forest scent. It's raw and wild and unfiltered, just as it is, naked and scary, nude and wonder-some or as Germans say it: wunderschön (Wonder-beautiful)
Lui's wisdom lives in her body. She knows the world through body than word. It's a wireless way of sensing the world or knowing life. It comes from all direction and it senses in all direction. It's unlike words, which the German language has a lot of, some say millions!
Who could have thought a city boy from Tehran would one day befriend a forest girl from Thüringen Wald and they teach each other what is it like to be the human they are. Like symmetry in mathematics, complimenting each other, never separate and always part of each other, despite the distance, part of a bigger picture.
It does seem like we're in the era of Oneness of Humanity. East meets West. Masculine meets Feminine. Seemingly opposite forces unite to give birth to a whole new body of being.
And, It's not easy. For example in the beginning, Lui asked me whether it snowed in Iran or if there were rabbits in Iran. I was simply sad when I heard these innocent and well intended questions. "Of course!" I said.
Why did I know so much about the geography, history and culture of the West and had adopted and learned so much from it yet, she had never learned about us, the rest of humanity?
Did she not know how Middle East participated in Europe's civilization? For example, how Europe rediscovered much of classical Greek science through Arabic translations and scholarship during the Middle Ages and so on?!
Well, Lui and I are learning a different dance. One that actually draws from the Buddhist wisdom: Now.
Yes, there are all these difficult questions, yet we choose to know and relate to another through the core substance of creation: Love.
It's a muscular love that acknowledges harm and injustice, but knows the fact that we are and we have been and we will be, always, entangled. Separability is a blindspot.
Again, like the Jewish wisdom I heard from a grandma: "Who said life was supposed to be easy?"
It's like the mixing of alchemical compounds, there is and will be a lot of heat and fire involved to transform us into more mature dancers.
And if you've ever danced, you know you got to take yourself and others lightly, let go and be ready to be moved, to be danced.
3. Coming Soon...