FW: Carrot Cake and the Evansville Dam

[Guest guest]

Dear Brothers and Sister's in Amma:

 

Here's my little story of Amma's birthday:

 

Since I came back from India I have been struggling with this distance thing

(to use Kalika's wonderful image, the Kenna Ashram has been in a terrible

state of upheaval). The flight home in early February was very hard, in the

sense that I was going away from Her. What helped was to finally (though I

met her in 1987) read her biography. It meant so much to me. I felt like I

was meeting Her for the first time! I remember hearing over and over again

while at the Ashram that Amma would say that thousands will try for freedom

and only one will make it. Well, that certainly felt discouraging for me. As

many of you have said, I know I am bound to fail there. I just wanted to

quit. But She does have Her ways of picking us up. So what jumped into my

heart from the biography were a few lines on Devotion and a verse from the

Bhakti Shastras at the beginning of Chapter Six:

 

"A true devotee's sincere desire is to remain a devotee forever. He wishes

to attain neither heaven nor liberation. For him, devotion is his life, and

the Lord is his All-in-all....That is why the Bhakti Shastras declare:

 

Devotion alone of the fruit of

devotion.

In its intrinsic nature this divine

love

Is Immortal Bliss."

 

Somehow, Mother reached me with this. It helped me accept this distance,

this feeling of being in the desert. It helped me cultivate Archana every

morning and Arati everynight. The internal ashram was getting a little

order, with Her Grace. But something peculiar started happening during

archana. I would get a recurring image of a park in Evansville, about 20

miles to the south of Madison. I had only been to this park a couple of

times in the early 90's to meet a woman to plan a retreat we were giving

together. (Strangely enough, I had several dreams of her while at

Vallikavu.) I finally realized that Mother wanted me to go to this park and

say the 1000 names. As soon as I understood this and committed myself to

going on Her birthday, the image disappeared from Archana. While at the

Wisconsin River some days ago, I was meditating on all of this and suddenly

realized that there was a dam and river at the park in Evansville and that

this all had something to do with saying the Names by rivers. So I decided

to return to the Wisconsin river for Archana on my birthday in early

October.

 

Yesterday, I headed out to Evansville. I felt like I was going on an

adventure with Amma. Just Amma and me! All along the drive I saw wild

flowers in brilliant fall bloom, all appearing to be especially bright for

the celebration. The rains that were threatening held off. When I arrived at

the park, I began to wonder whether I should stay in my car to avoid looking

too weird, but Amma was already headed for this sweet little lake made by a

small dam on the river where dozens of Canadian geese were gathered. So I

followed and we sat right at the edge of the lake near the dam as the

Canadian geese swam out to the middle of the lake and 3 big white geese

settled near by on the shore. I felt pretty bold wrapping my white prayer

shawl around me and saying the Names out loud in the middle of the day on a

dam in a small town in southern Wisconsin! When I finished, the geese all

came back and one swam back and forth in front of me. No one will ever

convince me that it wasn't Amma enjoying the water now full of sacred names

to be carried by the river to who knows where. Perhaps this is how we can

create rivers of love everywhere!

 

Last night at the gathering of a singing group I helped start called Joyful

Noisemakers, we had a carrot cake in honor of Mother and showed a brief

segment of River of Love where She's giving darshan (we wanted to keep it

short since some people in the group have never met Amma). Several of us

were in tears, just being with Her that way. After the video, the entire

group fell into a profound silence, as if we were all in Her lap, unwilling

to move. It occurred to me to share the wonderful story that was shared here

about the stolen car, when suddenly another member of the group started

telling her story about how her husband has lost his wallet because he'd

left it on the top of his car, and how she'd prayed to Amma to help him and

he had recovered it. After she told her story, I told the stolen car story

which everyone seemed to enjoy (more thanks to this list! In this way you

were all at our celebration last night!). All this was very sweet and

humbling for me as it wasn't the satsang group I have tried so hard to keep

going for years here. (Some of you may recall that I was asking some of you

about your satsang groups some weeks ago.) I decided I just needed to

surrender our satsang to Amma and remember I wasn't the doer anyway. So not

much has been happening here since we got back from the summer programs. But

last night it seemed like Amma was reassuring me that she will make it

possible to share devotion with others here.

 

I celebrate all the devotion you share.

 

In Her Grace,

 

Premarupa