(not necessarily in that order)
Yep, as of tomorrow we’ve only three days left before getting on a plane to fly back to the States.
That means it’s time for lists…many lists!
Lists of borrowed items to be returned; final purchases to be made; items to give away; things to remember at the last minute; decisions about what goes in which suitcase; comfort items for the flight; and so it goes.
We’ve been gone so long that I can barely remember how I packed originally, so it feels like being back to square one.
It was finally a day of truly beautiful weather, so we took some time this afternoon and went for a walk in the lovely town of Tesserete.
Below is a close-up of the group of mountains you see in the distance: Denti della Vecchia (which translates as “Teeth of the Old Woman”).
These are perhaps my favorites of the local mountains; they always draw me in whenever I see them.
We spent time with wonderful friends from both sides of the world today.
In the early evening we met with members of our Ananda Village music team. We’ve been in touch by text and email, but — with less than a week to go before we return home — it felt like time to begin the process of fully reengaging with our ministry there.
But more than that, it was an opportunity to hang out with dear friends that we haven’t seen now for almost two months.
Later in the evening we went to the home of our friends, Dudo and Karin, for tea. They’ve been my dear friends ever since Ramesha and I got together in 2003, though he’s known them for way longer than that.
While thoroughly enjoying the conversation and laughter I was also aware that we’ll once again be a continent away from them in less than a week.
Then there’s Ramesha’s family, who are equally friends.
I look forward to being back in California and seeing my father and siblings, but can’t help feeling sad that we’ll once again be apart from Silvio, Graziella, Fulvio, Manu, John-beni, Nicole, and Antonio.
Such precious friendships wherever we go, but — no — we don’t get to have them all in one place at one time.
We saw this sign in front of a café in Lugano this morning and it made us chuckle. So I decided to share it with you.
Translated it says: “Life is that thing that begins after coffee.”
Lord knows I’ve had plenty of days where this felt all too true! ☕
My cozy recovery day didn’t quite do the trick. I ended up with my usual tight chest, minor head cold, and lingering cough (no COVID, thankfully).
It’s been hard to really lay low as we come down to the final week of our visit.
So, last night I had wheezing in my lungs that kept waking me up. After looking up what could help, I boiled water to breath some steam and also made a cup of ginger tea.
And this is what my tea bag had to say. It was the perfect reminder to be grateful, regardless of little setbacks along the way.
This evening we watched the video of Friday’s very beautiful Ananda Village event celebrating Swami Kriyananda’s birthday.
Of course, it would have been lovely to have participated ourselves (if only we could have been at the Village and in Lugano at the same time!), but it was deeply satisfying to see how wonderfully the music is going in our absence.
Kudos and heartfelt appreciation to the entire music team!
At some point — hopefully in the not-too-far-distant future — I’ll share photos of the various events, places, and experiences that have filled the past three weeks or so.
In the meantime, this is our current home-away-from-home: Villaggio Turistico Reka in Sureggio (Lugano).
We don’t have amazing, expansive views like in Aldesago, but it’s much more conveniently located in relation to Ramesha’s father. And it’s still quite beautiful, just in a different way.
I started writing this blog on Swami Kriyananda’s birthday in 2019, largely as a way to combat my tendency to doubt. I doubted not only myself, but also whether I had anything worthwhile to share.
On the day after Swamiji’s birthday that year — my second blog post — I shared how I had been inspired by what famous blogger Seth Godin had to say about the benefits of writing a daily blog, and how “The first 1,000 are the most difficult”.
Well, today I realized that four years of daily blogs means I’ve reached 1,460 posts! Not only am I well past my first 1,000 but I am, in fact, having a lot of fun doing it.
So, that’s the background to today’s post. But what I really want to share is how this is the first time in almost twenty years that Ramesha and I haven’t been in an Ananda community or center, celebrating Swami’s birthday with our spiritual family.
It definitely feels rather strange.
We thought about trying to perform somewhere, but we don’t even have a guitar with us here in Lugano. But then I thought about a recent (and very impromptu) “performance” that we gave during a family luncheon couple of Sundays ago.
The primary entertainment was the duo Tacalà, a lovely couple who’ve been specializing in the traditional popular music of Ticino for the past twenty years. A number of extended family and friends were in attendance, with everyone singing along with a lot of joy and great gusto.
But someone had told the duo that we were musicians, and at a certain point they invited us to sing. We were rather hesitant about making the switch from the fairly boisterous sing-along mood to our more “spiritual” music, but they wouldn’t take no for an answer.
So we sang. First we did a couple of perky, upbeat songs (“I Will Always Think of Thee” and “Life Is Beautiful”); but when they asked for a third one we figured, “Oh, what the heck!” and sang “O Signore mio altissimo/Make Us Channels of Thy Peace.”
There was actually quite a bit of talking going on in the restaurant as we began but then things settled down and people absolutely loved it.
It feels appropriate to share this on Swamiji’s birthday because it represents our ongoing gift to him.
Swami gave us so much — the music, of course, but also spiritual family, community, divine friendship, guidance, unconditional love, and so much more – and in return, we can keep singing and playing his music anywhere and everywhere the opportunity arises.
You see, Swamiji wanted his music to help people, mainly by raising consciousness. And every time we sing — especially in the extremely unlikely places! — we experience yet again the tremendous power of our music to change people for the better.
Thank you, Swamiji. And happy birthday!
It was raining really hard as we drove up the A-1 on Tuesday, but we had no idea just how much rain the region was getting until reading about the flooding, evacuations, and deaths this morning.
I’m extremely grateful that we decided to stick to our departure date, rather than delaying by even a day.
Our guardian angels were definitely looking out for us.
First came a couple of super early mornings, one of them coming after a late night pizza dinner. Then there was lots and lots of interacting with lots and lots of people. And finally we spent something like eight hours driving from Assisi to Lugano, much of it in pouring rain.
It isn’t surprising that by bedtime last night I was feeling slightly under the weather. So this has been a cozy recovery day — with an afternoon nap, cups of herbal tea, and I even put on warm socks (an extremely rare occurrence)!