(not necessarily in that order)
Our Ananda Village choir resumed rehearsals this week after an extended pandemic hiatus and several failed comeback attempts. We’re hoping and praying that this time choir is back for good!
Although Ramesha and I aren’t there to participate yet, we’re thrilled to know it’s happening. And even more thrilled to receive this photo of everyone sending us love.
How sweet is that?!?
We can’t wait to be singing with our beloved choir family once again.
To begin with, we’re in the middle of Spiritual Renewal Week here at Ananda Village, our first big in-person event since 2019! Each day there are morning classes, plus special events most evenings.
Which brings me to yesterday. We started out by singing before the morning class with the Joy Singers, leaving immediately after class to drive to town and grab burrito bowl lunches-to-go on the way to my weekly appointment at the Infusion Center.
For this week’s treatment I received four pre-meds, followed by all three of my chemo drugs: Velcade, Darzalex, and Zometa. I was a little nervous since the concert was that night and this was my first time getting all three medications at once.
The treatment lasted two and a half hours. By then we had learned there was a fire not too far from Ananda Village, so we drove home to prepare for the concert while listening to fire reports and hearing about what areas were under mandatory evacuations (as opposed to just warnings).
We only had about an hour to eat dinner, change clothes, and get over the amphitheater to set up the stage, but we started hearing speculation that the concert should be delayed or cancelled because of the fire. So, we called and talked to the Village community manager, a very calm and wise soul who explained why he felt the concert was a “go”, and we totally agreed. And then the power went out!
But let me back up and give you some context about our concert…
We usually have a well thought out “theme” for our SRW concerts, but this year was simply about finally singing together once again — in person — as a global community! The choir wasn’t large, but we hadn’t had singers from so many different locations singing together in one place since our 50th anniversary event in 2019!
We had been really looking forward to this concert, but we encountered all kinds of obstacles along the way — my health issues; the ongoing COVID realities (increasing cases, singers testing positive, and others avoiding singing as a precaution); having to relocate the concert from the Temple of Light to the outdoor amphitheater, which was the only way we could have a large choir; musicians having accidents that put them out of commission; you name it!
But all along we felt very strongly that we had to keep moving forward with restoring our music to it’s primary place in the life of our global community. Why? Because Ananda Music is such a tremendous tool for uplifting consciousness, which is so needed in the world right now.
The added confusion and challenge of a fire and power outage just a couple of hours before the start of the concert had us wondering whether there weren’t downward pulling energies trying to block the powerfully positive and joyful expression of our music.
If so, we weren’t going to allow it to happen! I was inwardly resolved that the concert would happen — even if we didn’t have power. I figured that we would simply sing unamplified with however many singers showed up and whoever made it to listen would just have to come right up close to hear us!
But the good news is the amphitheater was on a generator, so we did have power. Plus all the singers made it and the concert went miraculously well.
Oh, and I felt absolutely fine the whole night, with no side effects whatsoever from my big chemo treatment. Miracle on top of miracle!
And that was my super big day.
It feels so good to be having Spiritual Renewal Week in-person once again.
At tonight’s choir rehearsal we had singers from Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, Palo Alto, Los Angeles, Assisi, and Ananda Village (of course).
It’s not a large choir such as we’ve had some years, but it’s thrilling to finally be singing all together once again.
What joy!
I started the day by making it to the Temple of Light to meditate. I was a little behind schedule, but it was a beautiful meditation, so I’m not complaining!
Ramesha and I also meditated in the Moksha Mandir this afternoon. This is where Swamiji is buried; it has an amazingly powerful, beautiful, and expansive vibration.
Then we gathered as a community in the lower gardens at Crystal Hermitage and celebrated Swamiji’s birthday with choir and a small group, a joyful sing-along, brief talks by Jyotish and Devi, birthday cake, and lots of love and laughter.
It was an altogether lovely day!
You know the Oratorio is getting close when you’re working on cheat sheets; figuring out when the choir stands up or sits down; and sending out promotional blurbs.
And now that I can lift my shoulder again (whoohoo!), I’ll also be figuring out my flute playing logistics as well.
Exciting stuff.
Just found this photo from my time living in Lugano — feels like eons ago!
This was our meditation group choir preparing to perform at an event at which Shivani (one of the main teachers from Ananda Assisi) was speaking.
Amazing to realize this was almost twenty years ago now.
Lately I feel like pinching myself to make sure I’m not dreaming…that singing together in increasing numbers really is starting to happen again!
We were already approved to have a small live choir for this year’s Good Friday Oratorio, but now it looks like we’re going to have another small choir for an event later this month.
Plus planning is getting underway for Spiritual Renewal Week at the end of June, for which we just might be able to have a full choir — for the first time in over two years.
It’s enough to make me giddy with excitement!
We’ve been grappling with the question of choir and singing and safety and masks.
It doesn’t help that issues with the post office have our singing masks in some sort of postal limbo.
Plus we had to accept that not everyone in choir has the same idea of what being “extra careful” means.
Which is all good, but it means we’ve had to pause choir for a bit while we figure things out.
I managed to take a few pics of choir the other night.
On the one hand it felt quite low key and normal, but on the other hand it was our first time in the Temple as a choir in almost two years!
Definitely a moment worth capturing.
In just over an hour from now choir at Ananda Village will meet for the first time in twenty months! Twenty months — can you believe it?!?
Talk about anticipation….! Which got me thinking about the Carly Simon song. Do you remember it?
Anticipation, anticipation
Is makin’ me late
Is keepin’ me waitin’
The chorus is all I really recalled, and I realize now that I only ever knew the first two words even of the chorus! 😂