Notes from Sister's circle...

Our last sister's circle was conducted in Arabic. Its great for our language skills (and an ego booster when we find we can understand most of it!)

We looked at a hadith from our 6th Imam who says that there are 8 characteristics of a believer:

1. They are firm in times of tremor (that means anything that knocks you from your day to day routines - a death, accident etc)

2. They are patient in times of hardship

3. They are grateful in times of ease

4. They are satisfied by what God has given them

5. They don't oppress their enemies

6. They don't oppress their friends and forgive them easily

7. Their body is always tired

8. People are always at ease around them.

We discussed each of the points - some of them are quite obvious, but I'll expand on a few of them:

(4) It's human nature to look at people and only see their faults. For example, you see that your friend's husband does x y &z around the house and so you fault your husband for not doing the same, forgetting that he does a b &c.
If you think of everyone as a glass - half of us is filled with good qualities and half with bad qualities. So we need to start looking at the good half.

(7) This one was a bit puzzling - because we straight away thought it meant that the body should be tired with worship. But actually it means that the believer shouldn't rely on other people to do their work (unless of course they need help), but rather try and do as much as they can themselves. I guess its all about setting the right expectations of other people and realising that no one 'owes' you anything.