I Want To Fly

“Sometimes you just have to smile.”

A look of contentment brightens my Mother’s face as she says this.  Outside the grey winter sky wraps around the town and offers up no particular encouragement for this unexpected remark.  Little about her life, virtually trapped in this small room on the second floor of the hospital in Goderich for more than 2 weeks and counting has been uplifting or hopeful. 

The inspiration that fueled this comment is unknown, its source mysterious and untraceable.  Perhaps to be found down one of the long dim corridors of her mind. One that has seen much of its brightness and clarity vanish.   But whatever its source the feeling of contentment is welcome here. An experience that has been all but absent from her life for such a long time.  It is a small victory considering all that she has endured of late. To be lifted up by even a fleeting moment of happiness is no small thing. 

She then follows this first utterance with one of the expressions that she has used so often in her life. 

“I think I can I think I can.  Do you remember the little train engine trying to climb the hill?”  It is a line taken from a classic children’s story.  One that she has recited to me so many times, particularly when I was a small boy and thought something I needed to do was just impossible.  

I reply by making the toot toot sound of a train whistle and answer back with the concluding line of the story, “I thought I could I thought I could.”  That is what the little engine exclaims when it at lasts reaches the summit after pulling the heavy train up the long steep hill.  All things considered she really has climbed a long hard hill over the past few weeks.  One, that none of her children, or even medical staff thought possible.  

Over the past 2 weeks some small sweet portions of her life have been gifted back to her.  Like a capricious tide some measure of strength has drifted back to her limbs.  Each morning now, if you place it in her hand, she can bite down on small bits of buttered toast.  Though she cannot open her eyes much or even really see.  Just days ago an IV dripped into her arm and she barely had strength enough to suck water up a straw. 

But more importantly her mind now seems able to gather up at least some small grasp of her current reality.  One that does not compare with the independence that she had just a few months earlier.  But definitely this version of her life is much superior to those anxious days just a few weeks off, when her life seemed on the verge of drifting out past the far flung frontiers of this world.  

Feeding Me

“You never thought you would be feeding me.”

My Mother says this.  Her eyes closed, sitting wrapped in a frayed white wooly blanket.  She is perched, just a little bent to one side in an upright chair.  The dull grey winter light touching the side of her face.  I have just tilted half a spoon’s worth of vegetable broth between her lips. 

She is right. 

Nothing about this scene would I have ever imagined in this well ordered life of mine spent for many years so far away from here.  But in this moment now there is no distance.  

Time has changed us both so much, and in so many ways.  I am no longer an anxious little boy clutching at her hand and crying out for her all comforting embrace. 

She is 96 and the flame of her life flickers dimly now.  The intimate connection between Mother and son transformed into a manner now new and unexplored to us both.

Yesterday her slender young Doctor, with dignified streaks of grey that swept across the temples of his dark brown hair said, “Mary, you are slowing down.”  

She nodded to this, even though she may not have heard it all or even seen his face.  Her eyes closed so often now.  Her scattered thoughts drifting across the deep sea of her precious memories.

Even a young Doctor has seen lots of little frail old ladies sitting awkwardly in hospital chairs and grasping at their fading lives.  Coming to terms with this new reality as great portions of their world start fraying and dissolving around and about them.

I dip the spoon into the bowl, navigate a circuitous course around soft lumps of carrot and potato.  Delivering then a clear warm spoon of broth to my mother’s lips is after all such a simple thing to do.

What is much more difficult is digesting the immensity of what this moment means.   To measure this small act against all that she has done and sacrificed for me is impossible. 

Her love for me cannot be contained.  Maybe all children catch a glimpse of this when they serve their mothers is some small way.

Winter has come

Yet the flower still grows

Waiting, patient

To scatter its seeds up into the wind

Coming To Rest

It is my last night at the foot of the Sacred Mountain Arunachala.

The road is entirely closed to traffic and the pilgrims continue to make their barefoot circuit while the moon is full.

A man paints the face of Lord Shiva on the road.

Giri Pradaikshina

We are drawn sometimes to things that at first seem to make no sense.  Yet when we actually fulfill this act, the importance of doing so is only then revealed.

Walking the sacred pilgrimage trail around the Arunachala mountain was something I had wanted to do the moment I first read about it many years ago. The spiritual path of Ramana Marshi I knew was not mine but still something drew me too him and his advice that walking around the mountain was an important task to perform.   It is certainly not an easy thing, and it cannot be taken lightly.

The circumambulation of Arunachala is known as Giri Pradakshina in Sanskrit and Giri Valam in Tamil. Performing pradakshina of Arunachala is considered to be beneficial in all ways. Typically, pradakshina is done in bare feet, with the Hill on the right. Sri Ramana Maharshi once explained the meaning of the word pradakshina and how it should be done by a devotee: "The letter "Pra" stands for removal of all kinds of sins; "da" stands for fulfilling the desires; "kshi" stands for freedom from future births; "na" stands for giving deliverance through jnana. If by way of Pradakshina you walk one step it gives happiness in this world, two steps, it gives happiness in heaven, three steps, it gives bliss of Satyaloka which can be attained. One should go round either in mouna (silence) or dhyana (meditation) or japa (repetition of Lord's name) or sankeertana (bhajan) and thereby think of God all the time.  Wikipedia

It is a 14 km trek and I knew that it would take me most certainly at least 2 hours or more, and when the sun came up it would get hot.  When I left my little hotel it was pitch dark and cool.  The time was just before 6.  As soon as I stepped out the door I was greeted by a quiet dog, who came towards me with his tail wagging.  

When I spoke to him he turned and then trotted ahead of me up the road leading out of the compound.  A neighbor lady had just stepped out from her house and was using fine chalk powder to draw a simple mandala on her doorstep.  It all seemed auspicious.

As I neared the main junction I became aware of a continuous parade of people moving up the main road that circles the mountain.  Mostly silent and barefoot they moved at a gentle pace.  I could not help but think that I too could do this.  I just had to release my doubts and continue.

From time to time chants filled the air, coming from speakers beside the road.  Sadhus in great number sat beside it.  Some begging, some in trance, all adding to the exquisite atmosphere that permeated the air, the night, and the road in front of me. 

What I learned only after completing the pilgrimage was that because of the full moon today was particularly auspicious.  Until much later this evening the flow of humanity would not stop.  It would at times fill the road and when you think simply there could no be more travelers, still more would come.

After 2 and a half hours I made my way back down the road to my hotel.  The sun now up the atmosphere was more agitated but I was so incredibly grateful and peaceful within.  The importance of completing this task now clear to me.

Later in the day my friends and I made the trek up to one of Sri Ramana Maharshi's early meditation caves.  The path starts just behind the ashram.

There are little shrines along the way.

Tiruvannamalai

It is this mountain that has brought us to the bustling little city of Tiruvannamalai

Of course that isn't entirely correct because it is more precisely the Indian Spiritual Master Sri Ramana Maharshi who created an Ashram at its base.

At the age of sixteen, Venkataraman lost his sense of individual selfhood, an awakening which he later recognised as enlightenment.A few weeks thereafter he travelled to the holy mountain Arunachala, at Tiruvannamalai, where he remained for the rest of his life.
^Wikipedia

Another Day

There are a tiny number of these rare photographs.  Ones that show Sri Chinmoy back visiting in this world from whence he came.  A place he lived for more than 20 years at least.

My challenge today was to try and retrace his steps back to the places where I knew the pictures were taken..January 1995

Magic mountain is in one corner of the little park.  The railing is long gone but when you walk your way to the top you can see just how much simple fun it is to do.

 

Matching the tree photo proves more difficult to place than I imagined.

 

There Are Places

There are places here in Pondicherry that carry a special meaning.

Time and weather may not have treated them well but they still remind us of when our teacher walked here many years ago.  This lady used to pour water into the pond but a storm took away her right arm. Yet she still smiles.

Perhaps remembering an encounter here so many years ago....January 1995