Layli, Gill, Serena on NPR

Posted on March 7th, 2008 by Larry.
Categories: General Family Talk.

Class Teaches Virtues to Children of Many Faiths

by Barbara Bradley Hagerty

Gil, Layli and Serena Miller-Muro learn about helpfulness.

Rachel Galoob-Ortega helps her son Luka place a symbol of Buddhism on his lamp shade to illustrate the idea that religions may look different but have the same source that illuminates them.

Tatton Oliver, Brice Gaskins and Serena Miller-Muro with the lampshades they made.

Cowboy Hay performs for Shazia Philipsen and her daughter, Serena (in pink) as well as Brice Gaskins (pointing) and his brother Carter (crawling) Gaskins and Yacob Alemayehou.

Morning Edition, March 7, 2008 · It sounds like the start of a bad joke: A Jew, a Baptist and a Baha’i get together every Sunday morning …

But it’s a new kind of Sunday school, where families from a range of religions gather to teach virtues to their young children. On a recent Sunday in Falls Church, Va., Layli and Gil Miller-Muro invited parents and children — aged 14 months to 6 years old — to their home to learn about helpfulness.

“Parents of my generation feel incredible pressure to make our kids read earlier, to know math sooner and better, to get into the top preschools and then the best schools,” Layli explains. “But what many of us forget is the other side of the character of our children, not just the academic side, but the spiritual side and their character side.”

And so last September, the Miller-Muros, who are Baha’i, approached their religious community and asked them to sponsor a virtues class — where the children learn virtues such as obedience, service and friendliness.

In the past decade, the Baha’i faith has sponsored about 900 such classes nationwide. They’re based on the central Baha’i tenet that all religions are different but come from the same source, God. Gil says the couple then asked their friends if they’d be interested.

“When we proposed this idea to them, they said that was something they’d like to do to,” Gil says. “So we realized we had a critical mass and it was time to get started.”

The parents come from Muslim, Jewish, Protestant, Unitarian Universalist, Greek Orthodox and Baha’i backgrounds. Rachel Galoob-Ortega, who is Jewish, says she wants her son Luka to learn about and accept all religions.

“What I really want for Luka is when he grows up and someone says to him, ‘I’m Baha’i’ or ‘I’m Zoroastrian’ — if he doesn’t know, for him to say, ‘Well, tell me about that,”" Galoob-Ortega says. “I want him to show a level of curiosity, rather thinking, ‘Well, that’s not Judaism, that’s not what I know.’ And to me, that would be important to the development of his character.”

Learning Virtues

And to that end, Layli calls the children to the dining room table. In front of each child sits a little lamp shade.

“Remember how we talked about how religions are a lot like lamp shades?” she asks the group. “They may look different, they may be different colors or sit in different rooms, but they all have the light of God inside of them.”

The kids glue symbols of various religions onto the shades — a Christian cross, a Buddhist wheel, a star and crescent for Islam. Then Layli calls out, “Come to the light!” And the children, one by one, place their decorated lamp shades on a light bulb.

Layli then turns to the core of the program: virtues. She starts by asking about last week’s lesson.

“Did anyone exhibit contentment this week?” she asks the group sitting in the living room.

“Not me!” one boy announces.

“Not you?” she laughs. “We’ll work on that. But we’re good at honesty.”

Each week, the children learn a different virtue. They studied “justice” for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. For service, they made chocolate chip cookies and delivered them to a retirement home.

Mimi Alamayehou realized that she needed to expose her 5-year-old son, Yacob, to the notion of virtues after she had an epiphany a year ago. She and Jacob were visiting family in Ethiopia, and they saw some children begging.

“And I was telling him, ‘These kids don’t have any food and don’t have anything,’” she recalls. “And he said to me, ‘Mommy, I think you need to tell their mommies where the Whole Foods is.’” She laughs. “I was so shocked! I said, ‘Oh my God, I really have a lot of work to do if he thinks the only problem is that there’s no Whole Foods around!’”

So, do the virtues stick?

Shazia Philipsen thinks so, especially when she receives an occasional lecture from her daughter, Serena.

“It’s things like patience,” she says. “In the car, when I’m driving, Serena will say, ‘Mommy, you have to be patient!’ So she understands through the books, through the storytelling, what it means. I don’t think she learns that at school. She’s changed, and it’s great.”

And the children have been so patient for more than an hour, waiting for the highlight of the class, Cowboy Hay. Gil Miller Muro’s stepfather strides into the room, sporting a long white beard, a hillbilly hat and a banjo. He begins strumming and the kids join in, perhaps not realizing they are crooning a theological message.

“We are drops … of one ocean. We are waves… of one sea. Won’t you come and join us in our quest for unity. It’s the way of life for you and me,” they sing.

The parents collapse into comfortable chairs, as Cowboy Hay and his young virtuosos sing about unity in the complex future they face.

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Thanksgiving at Layli and Gil’s

Posted on November 22nd, 2007 by Larry.
Categories: General Family Talk.

We had a great family and friends dinner at Layli and Gil’s house.Their huge living/dining area was perfect for the event. Click on the photos below to enlarge. We hope everyone else had a “thankful” Thanksgiving.

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Halloween at the Miller-Muro House

Posted on October 31st, 2007 by Larry.
Categories: Gil, Layli & Serena, General Family Talk.

Grandpa Haydn, or “Cowboy Hay” as he is better known, was in charge at the door.

Amira’s first Halloween and Serena is, of course, a princess.

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Vermont Photo Trip

Posted on October 16th, 2007 by Larry.
Categories: General Family Talk.

I recently spent a week in Vermont looking for good scenery and color for my photography hobby. Please visit my pbase gallery (www.pbase.com/lmmiller9) to see my humble effort.

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Tahirih Justice Center Wins Best Managed Non-Profit

Posted on June 21st, 2007 by Larry.
Categories: General Family Talk.

There are a lot of non-profit organizations in Washington, D.C. But, of course, only one is led by a Miller. So, the competition wasn’t that hard. Seriously, at the awards banquet were 300 Washingtonians from the Washington Post and the not for profit world in Washington and the award is a great tribute to Layli’s management and leadership skills.

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The Four Grandchildren: Serena, Zoe, Jalil, Evan, soon to be five.

Posted on June 9th, 2007 by Larry.
Categories: General Family Talk.

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A Trip to Merlefest

Posted on April 30th, 2007 by Larry.
Categories: Larry and Carole, General Family Talk.

As an “old” guitar picker (old as distinct from “good”) one of my favorite things is to go to Merlefest, Doc Watson’s bluegrass festival held every year in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. Here are a few of my favorite photos from this weekend.

Little Pickers: musicians of every age gather around for jam sessions that go on all day and night for three days.

Old Timers:

Doc Watson on stage at the age of 84 years and can still play a million times better than I can.

One of the great things about Merlefest was seeing some of the fantastic young groups who are preserving the best of the old time country and bluegrass music traditions. Her are a couple:

Uncle Earl (yes, four young women!) Excellent CD’s, and the banjo player, Abigail Washburn also has a great CD.

New generation jam session on the Watson stage with some chaotic combination of Uncle Earl, The Duhks, Crooked Still, and The Infamous Stringdusters. It was a great session at 11 in the morning.

Crooked Still

The great old Del McCoury Band performing on the Watson stage with 70 thousand in attendance.

One of the eight stages has continual instruction workshops. Here is Roy Bookbinder, Happy Traum and John Hammond. Roy is no doubt telling one of his stories which comprise about half of his act.

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Funerals Are Not Bad Things…

Posted on February 24th, 2007 by Larry.
Categories: The Preston-Martin Family, General Family Talk.

I confess to not being a funeral goer. Generally, I don’t like them and do my best to find an excuse for not being there. I understand the need to grieve, to share that grief and to bring closure to our relationship with the departed. But….I still avoid them.

I did attend the funderal of my aunt, Jean Preston Martin, not only out of respect, but because I believed it would serve as something of a family reunion, one of the things she liked the most. I appointed myself the official photographer and here I post a few of the photos, hopefully, happy memories, from the funeral. These are “thumbnails” that will go to fullsize when you click on them.

Inside St. Lawrence Basilica in Asheville.

At the gravesite:

Here are Jean’s children Ann, Tom, Lisa and Kathy

Dinner was a good occasion to renew family ties, as Jean would have wanted it.

Here is Lisa with two of her nephews, Jim Dubois and William Compton

I suppose to say “I am looking forward to the next funeral” would probably not be the right thing to say… but,

Larry Miller

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Welcome to Family Talk

Posted on February 22nd, 2007 by Larry.
Categories: The Preston-Martin Family, General Family Talk.

Irene Miller and Jean Preston Martin

Two weeks ago I attended the funeral of Jean Preston Martin, my aunt and my mother’s sister. During the last stage of Jean’s life one of her passions, along with my mother’s, was to bring the extended family together, to share news and create a genuine appreciation of the family history. Jean also initiated a family newsletter, “FamilyTalk”, hence the title of this blog. If you like, you can consider this in her honor.

The purpose of this blog is to serve as a location for sharing family photos, stories, and news of any sort. This blog is intended to replace what was the Miller Family web page. This will be a lot easier to maintain, make additions, comment on, etc.

So, I hope every one will feel free to contribute and comment.

You will notice on the right hand of the page both “Pages” and “Categories”. In case you are not familiar with blogs, the main section is a running chronicle. So the next entry will appear above, in chronological order.  The Pages and Categories are ways of filing postings. I am filing under Pages, an introductory page on each individual family. Under Categories I am indicating when a post is about one particular family. You can, by clicking on a category, find all of the posts that are referenced under this topic. I hope that makes sense.

If you maintain a personal or professional blog and you would like me to add it to the “Blogroll” please let me know and I will do so.

If you go on an interesting vacation, if you have a new member of your family, or if you would like to add a post yourself, please simply send that to me (larry@millerfamily.org) and I will add it.  If you have any other suggestions, please let me know.

Larry Miller

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