Life’s Silver Linings

Tags

focus, holidays, hope, new year, perspective

As early as last week, I started hearing and reading references to how much 2020 “sucked”, and that folks couldn’t wait for the year to be over — so that we could all march into 2021 and forget about this year. It made me ask two questions —

• was there anything good that we could take from 2020 as we welcome 2021?
• how was 2021 going to become ‘magically’ different for us at the stroke of midnight on December 31?

I guess I wasn’t alone in noticing the emerging negative tone towards 2020. On Monday, my long-time twitter friend, @VegyPower messaged me to say that she had an “idea for the #SpiritChat conversation on Dec 27”. We talked over the phone, and sure enough, she was thinking about the “silver linings” amid all the storms that we experienced in 2020. Hence, this week’s topic was seeded. 

After my phone conversation with her, and as the week progressed, I did not have to think too much or too deeply about my own silver linings from 2020. For that matter, perhaps you won’t have to look too far to find them either. To begin, it may be helpful to ask some questions that invite us to reframe, refocus and revisit our perspective of 2020. For example, if you could take three positive ‘things’ forward from this year, what would they be? My suggestion would be to pick one ‘thing’ or ‘set of things’ each — for mind, body and spirit. Write the ‘things’ down on three sheets of paper. Add some bits of poetry, some doodles, or some photos, and maybe even create a “2020 Silver Linings” board. If you feel like it, now share your board with friends and family — who knows, it may inspire them to do the same. 

It is easy for the human mind to forget, to want to forget pain, and painful times. I often hear and read that most of us are attracted much more to pleasure than to pain. Hence, we tend to want to fill our lives with experiences that bring smiles, laughter and Joy. And yet, it is pain, suffering and death on an unprecedented scale that brought the best minds of Science together in 2020 to design, test, manufacture and distribute, not just one, but multiple vaccines, in record time, to fight the pandemic. In my mind, this  ‘coming together for a common goal’ is surely one silver lining from 2020. I am sure you can think of many more. 

Now, about the second question —  how will we use the silver linings, and even the dark clouds that we experienced in 2020 to continue to create better versions of ourselves in 2021? I haven’t seen my Aunt, with whom I have spent many a Diwali, Thanksgiving and Christmas in the past, at all this year. I picked up the phone and called her in the evening on Christmas Day. The phone rang a few times, and I was composing my voice mail in my head, when she answered. She had just returned from Christmas dinner from her son’s home and some wonderful family time with her three grand-daughters. We talked about the year, and about the year to come, and she was all excited about the second vaccine dose that is she is to receive in mid-January. But that wasn’t all. 

As we talked about 2020 and 2021, she said that she had spent a lot of time doing ‘spring cleaning’ in November and December. She had found a “folder” full of something, which had items that went back to 1967 – fifty three years ago. She asked me to guess what may have been in that folder? The best I could come up with was — “maybe they’re some kind of letters.” Close enough, she said. For the next hour or so, she then proceeded to tell me the story of the ‘long-distance romance through letters’ that happened  between her husband-to-be and her while she was in India and he was in Canada. It was quite a story, which I had heard for the first time — and I’ve known her for 34 years. 

Why do I tell you the story of this conversation? After I hung up the phone with her, it made me think of silver linings and the remarkable story that I had just heard. It also made me ask – what are the stories that 2020 has uncovered for us, from which we can learn and remember, so that 2021 can benefit from them. Will we remember stories of pain, of love, of joy, of suffering, of hope, of giving, of receiving, of tears, of laughter, and treat them all alike? Or will we choose to forget them, only to re-discover them in our heart’s folder many years, if not decades hence? 

The lesson of 2020, for me to remember, is that every moment of a fully lived life is a silver lining unto itself. What will you remember?

Kumud

P.S. Join us for a special conversation with the #SpiritChat community on 9amET / 730pm India, Sunday, Dec 27 2020 on twitter. My gratitude to @VegyPower for the inspiration for the topic (and some questions!). If you cannot join us in the hour, I wish you the best for the New Year. Namaste ~ @AjmaniK

 

If we look closely enough, there are silver linings everywhere…

Harbingers of Hope

Tags

faith, giving, holidays, hope

It was one of my Grandmother’s favorite quotes. When I would ask her about the minuscule impact that her giving of yesterday’s flatbread to the the sadhu (monk) who would come and clang the wrought iron gate every morning to announce his presence, she would say — “doobte ko tinke ka saharaa’ — “to the one who is drowning (in a whirlpool) in the middle of the river, even a blade of grass floating by seems like a lifeline”.

As you can tell, I never forgot her interpretation of giving. She wasn’t merely giving yesterday’s flatbread – she was giving Hope. She was giving light for another day, or maybe even for a few hours, to a single human being, who would arrive daily in the hope that his hunger would find some relief. She was helping to sustain someone who had chosen the life of detachment — not beggary, mind you —  but a conscious, aware choice of total, unconditional surrender to divine sustenance. 

There are very few among us who can practice that  level of complete faith. Our faith is often an incomplete one, where we think of our spiritual practices as tools in our tool belt. Today, I feel emotionally down, so let me meditate a bit more. Today, I feel really good, so maybe I’ll give my meditation tool a rest in my too-belt. One of my Vedanta teachers describes it as a “faith of convenience”. We employ faith as a tool of bartering with the divine and the universe. 

And then we are left wondering why our faith does not work as and when, and in the way, we expect it to. Imagine that we were to only breathe when we found it to be convenient for us to breathe. We wouldn’t last very long, would we? Then why do we expect our intermittent faith to sustain us? I posit that this is where Hope enters our practice. Hope fills the voids and cracks that our incomplete and intermittent faith and half-hearted actions create. 

This is not to say that Hope isn’t necessary for the world at large. It is. In Rabindranath Tagore’s famous verse, he says — oh, wait. As I google the quote, I see that many have used ‘hope’ and ‘faith’ interchangeably… “Faith (Hope) is the bird who feels the light and sings while the dawn is still dark”. And then there is Emily Dickinson’s poem which begins with… 

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

The practicality of life necessitates that we may need both, faith and hope. When one flounders, the other shores us up. When we lose faith and start drowning in life’s storms, hope steps in and becomes the blade of grass that keeps us afloat. We can then find strength to sing our song while the dawn is still dark. With both hope and faith, we can discover Joy in the gaps between the breaths of our life, and make every season a season of giving.

In the pure spirit of Joy that emerges from a complete faith, we can choose to become harbingers of Hope. Our giving is then complete. That’s a season worth celebrating. What say you?

Kumud

 

P.S. Join us for our weekly gathering of a community of faith, hope, joy and giving in #SpiritChat – Sunday, Dec 13 at 9amET / 730pm India. I will bring some tea and fresh flatbread (with a drizzle of caramelized brown sugar) to share. Namaste – @AjmaniK

 

A miracle, a death, and the holidays

Tags

death, holidays, miracles, prayer

Lucille Rusconi Fisher for Spiritchat

Thirty-seven years ago, on December 2, 1981; I watched my father, Frank Rusconi, take his final breath. He had fought a rare intestinal cancer for two and a half years. He amazed his doctors who didn’t think he would survive the initial crisis. It was after my sister’s birthday celebration in June that he woke up with severe pain in his abdomen and went to the hospital. We were initially told by his longtime doctor that he had a hernia, and he was scheduled for an operation. He was 63 years old and me and my two sisters were still living at home. I was attending college.

His doctor called to say the operation went well but neglected to tell us about the cancer. The next thing we heard was he had a heart attack. In truth, he became septic because his bowel and appendix burst. We didn’t find this out until he was transferred, near death, to a Boston hospital. The doctor at Boston University Hospital was horrified by what he saw and quickly brought him into surgery where they released some of the poison in his system and repaired the damage as best they could. We learned after, that the Boston doctor had only seen one case of this rare cancer and that person died shortly after. Thus, the doctor didn’t think my dad would survive long either but shortly after surgery he came out of his toxic delirium and said, “I have to get home to my girls.” And so, he did, three months later.

I think prayer had a big part in his recovery. We had a lot of people praying for him, He was known and respected in the community and at church as a dedicated volunteer. My aunt even called a radio prayer line and asked strangers to pray for him. My father loved his faith and he was a good, kind man. With his illness, he couldn’t get to church but we often watched the Reverend Robert Schuller every Sunday on TV and found comfort. One of Reverend Schuller’s standard lines was “God loves you and so do I.”

My father was dubbed a miracle man by the doctors and hospital staff. The attending doctor said “If you wanted to pray, the place to do it is under Frank’s hospital bed.” My dad continued to beat the odds for another two years, never complaining. What we came to realize and appreciate was the strong will to live this good man had. Thus, he gave us the miracle of time.

At the onset of his illness, I was 21, my sister Christine 17, and my older sister Annmarie was 26. My mom was 56. At the end of his two- and one-half year illness, he had showed us how to be strong and prepared us for life without him. Even though the doctor recommended he be put in the hospital near the end, my mother refused. “He will die at home,” she told him. My mother was amazing. Not trained as a nurse, she quickly filled the role. Irrigating the open wound in his abdomen, emptying his colostomy bag, attended to him with inspiring love. At our final thanksgiving together, he was unable to leave his hospital bed located off the kitchen (my mother’s former sewing room). We attempted to get through Thanksgiving dinner by trying to engage him in our conversation, but often we reverted to reminiscing. It was excruciating. He quickly declined thereafter, and it was clear his death was looming.

I was so frightened because I didn’t know what death looked like. However, I stayed close by. In those final days there were many moments of grace. At one point I was leaning over his bed and he reached out his hand to caress my face. Not a demonstrative man before his illness, he didn’t hesitate to express his love now. He would say to my mother, “I have had a good life. It is better me than one of the kids.” He looked at me at one point and said, “I don’t want to go.” And I replied, “You are not going anywhere daddy. You are staying home.” Thinking that he thought he was going to the hospital.

His eyebrows furrowed and later when I thought about it, I realized what he really meant. I would say to him, “God loves you daddy and so do I.” It would make him smile. The final night he got a burst of energy and asked to speak to my two older siblings who were married, so I called them to come quickly. He said he wanted scrambled eggs which we made but he didn’t eat. He asked my mother to sleep with him that night in the hospital bed which she did.

The next day, December 2nd, he fell into a coma. We did not leave his side. At the moment of his death, near 8 p.m. that night, my mother and I were the only two in the room. He took a breath and held it then let it out. Silence. His soul had left. I was stunned by the beauty and sacredness of the moment. So peaceful it was.

Christmas eve was three weeks away and my family talked about whether we should have the big Christmas Eve celebration that was our tradition. My mother told the story of when my dad’s eldest brother died near Christmas and he insisted that we get a tree and celebrate as usual. I was small at the time and he did not want any of us to be denied the joy of the holiday. So, we had our Christmas Eve celebration in 1981. We invited all his nurses and doctors as well as family and friends. It was a joyful celebration of this miracle man who left us with so many gifts of grace.

Lucille

Bio: Lucille Rusconi Fisher is the owner of Sage and Savvy Marketing. She helps business owners over fifty grow their companies through digital marketing. She has been a seeker of truth her whole life and began to study the ancient teachings in earnest and meditate regularly fifteen years ago. She took classes with Donna Mitchell Moniak, founder of Spiritfire Retreat Center in Leydan, MA and creator of the Practice of Living Awareness meditation. In 2011, she was fortunate to attend the Dalai Lama’s Kalachakra in Washington, DC with the Spiritfire sangha. Her life mantra is taken from a Dalai Lama quote, “My Religion is Kindness.”

Editor’s Note: Please join me and guest-host Lucille (@sageandsavvy) for a twitter chat on Sunday, Dec 2nd at 9amET. Lucille is a wonderful friend of the community, and a long-time regular in our Sunday gatherings. We will discuss death, miracle(s) and the holidays! Thank you. – Kumud @AjmaniK

Lucille (on right) with her Father…

On butterflies and renewal…

Tags

easter, healing, holidays, renewal

Her wings spread wide to the fullest, she floated lifeless on the water’s surface as I drained the pool…

maybe she is still alive, I thought, for I had not seen her floating a few minutes ago…

lifting her up out of the water with the pool cleaning net, I thought I saw her move one of her… or was it just my imagination?

and as headed over with her towards the row of herb planters, my heart leaped with joy as she did lift her other wing off of the blue mesh…

but she still could not fly, as her wings were wet and all her feet were enmeshed… did I dare to try and extract her from the mesh without causing her damage?

Surely, she would die without my help (or would she?), even though I had to use the gentlest of touches so to not break off a leg of hers?

In what seemed like an eternity that must not have lasted more than fifteen seconds, I managed to pry her loose and set her free again as she landed on a blade of tall grass to dry her leaves and recover…

And then, a few minutes later, she came to circle the pool many times… as if to express her joy… flapping her wings with abandon…

But wait… what was this? Were there were a few more of her siblings that she brought in her wake? Sure enough!

And I got the feeling that it was going to be a busy morning rescuing butterflies with the net for me…

Sunday morning on the farm in Brasil.

A lesson about returning to life, to freedom, to flight, and to light…

– Kumud

Reframe. Receive. Rejoice!

Tags

holidays, photography, spiritchat, spiritual

Some of you may know that I tend to take a lot of photographs with my phone when I am walking the forest. Over time, I have learnt the importance of ‘framing’ the scene properly. Proper framing – and reframing when necessary – often provides better perspective for the photographer. In digital photography, attention to framing is perhaps becoming a lost art because snapshotters feel that they can ‘crop’ or edit out the unwanted parts of the photo later. My proposition is that it is better to slow down, take time to (re)frame the scene properly. Reframing avoids clutter – both in photography and in life situations.

Once we learn to reframe our situation, we allow for FUD to dissipate from out life. What is FUD? Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt. FUD is supplied to us from various sources – sometimes even from those whom we know and trust. They may do it inadvertently, without even knowing that their propensity for FUD is clouding our heart’s viewfinder, and preventing us from seeing what we need to see. They are showing us what they think is ‘beneficial’ for us. They truly do believe that they know what is best for us. As you gather with friends and family over the next few weeks, observe the FUD dispensers. And carry some ‘cleaning cloths’ for those times when the frame gets really dirty…

After the appropriate framing, we may need to adjust our camera’s aperture (opening) to receive the proper amount of light. This setting is also called ‘exposure’. Again, with digital software, we can ‘correct’ the exposure ‘after the fact’, after the photo is taken. But we may save ourselves a lot of unnecessary angst in life if we ‘receive the correct amount of light’ to begin with. Over- or under-exposure to life’s situations often waste our precious mental and spiritual resources to fix the situation ‘after the fact’. We may even have to return to reframing! With proper tools and training, we can learn to receive the appropriate ‘light’ and energy to move to the next step along our path, at the precise time that we need it. Just in time receiving!

So, we have framed properly and received the correct amount of light on our camera’s sensor. What’s next? If we had managed to hold the camera perfectly still, whle having kept proper focus, it may be time to rejoice! Reframing and receiving help us create a joy-filled awareness of time and space. We admit the possibility to recreate a moment of joy every time we reframe a negative situation. We have the potentiality to recreate joy when we open ourselves to new light, and shadows.

In reframing, receiving and rejoicing, we can recognize, reduce and eventually remove the fear, uncertainty and doubt that hold back our spiritual progress.

What situation or relationship can you reframe in your life today? How can you adjust your life’s input filters to receive the proper light and guidance? Are you ready to rejoice, to find joy in the moment, through reframing and receiving? Pause and examine. The answers may perhaps be the best gifts you can give to yourself.

Namaste,

Kumud

Join us Sunday, December 18th at 9amET/2pmUTC in #SpiritChat on twitter – we will reframe, receive, rejoice and reduce FUD 🙂

Original View of the Rocky River (Fall 2016)

Reframed View of the Rocky River (Fall 2016)