In the Bosom of Bangalore

I've slipped into the flow of Indian life....it has been less than eight months since I was last here, and it is great to be back.

Thanks to a generous British Air employee in NYC, I was offered a grand seat on the Upper Deck of the 747, a seat that became a bed. Here is the view from my upgraded bunk, looking at the cockpit before take off.

Yes, I enjoyed the pampering of Business Class...newspapers, fresh salad, coffee in china cups. Thank you, John B., for offering me this unexpected treat! Can you believe it, John saw GLOVER, VERMONT written on my suitcase, and being a parttime Vermonter himself, he took me under his wing. (pun intended!) Moving through the dark skies at more than 600 miles per hour, I did sleep like a baby....a flying baby. When I arrived at 4:30 Wednesday morning at the beautiful new Bangalore airport, my smiling friend Suja was at the gate. How blessed I am.

Because the sun rises around 7 a.m. in Bangalore this time of year, it is easy to be up before dawn. This morning, I sat on the veranda and read some of The Hummingbird's Daughter, and waited for the sun to appear. The days are lovely, in the mid 80s, and the nights cool for sleeping.

Sending love and morning sun from Mother India to you.

Heading Back to India

Your thoughts and prayers will be appreciated tomorrow, as I return to India. Flying via London again, I arrive in Bangalore almost the day I left...back to the future! (Can you see Bangalore, in the south, dead center?)

During my four month stay, I will help operate my friend Suja's coffee shop, with 100 percent of the profits going to the poor, as well as teach English to men and women who want business careers. Of couse, I also will reconnect with friends, teach yoga in the garden, and spend time in temples and in meditation.

Thank you to all my friends and family who have encouraged me and in many cases, helped me make this trip. I am so grateful, and so happy.

Yes, 2009 is a great year.

Tapping and Sharing Inaccessible Resources

*Updated*

Water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.

I’ve spent the past week on an island in the Gulf of Mexico. We see the ocean out the front window, and have spent many hours walking the beach.
Yet, in this place where the SEA is the most abundant fixture, we are constantly reminded to conserve water.

Conservation is required, because while we are surrounded by water, it is undrinkable, being full of salt.

Sitting in the sand, I meditated on inaccessible resources:

***What a child in a wheelchair experiences, when the door of the church bathroom is too narrow for passage;
***What a hungry beggar in Mumbai feels, when smelling the kitchen aromas wafting from the Oberoi hotel;
***What a man of color lives with, when standing outside the white mens’ halls of power.

WAIT A MINUTE!!

Today, the history of the world is being rewritten.



Today, in Washington, D.C., our 44th president, a black man, moved into the White House, a building built by black slaves OWNED by white men.

Today, unavailable power became available.

Today, the voiceless have a voice.

Today, the definitions of being a citizen of the United States and a citizen of the world changed.

We have discovered there is enough ocean....and water...for all.

What great peace, justice and joy lies ahead!

*Update*: Watch the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States:


Read the text of the President Barack Obama's inaugural address, here (via White House blog). View additional Official White House video's, here (via YouTube).


*Note*: added video and link to inaugural address; last updated on Thursday, January 22, 2009 at 5:48 AM (EST).

We Fundraised for Bihar Playing Bingo

"Would you like to play Bingo tonight?" my friend Marion asked. She and husband Clint were driving over in just an hour to a giant Bingo Hall here in New Port Richey, and had room in the car.

"Well, sure," I decided on the spot. "And I'm gonna win and bring the money to India." After all, I leave the end of January for Bangalore, and I always wish I had more money to support needy families. (here are Clint and Marion)

So, with the help of other women at our table, in the crowded room full of hundreds of people, I won three times! Two times I was the sole winner, so I took the $50 pots. The third time I split the winnings with six others, $6.25 each. So, $116 earned in about four hours. I was so excited, I couldn't even focus. Thank you Lisa, Harriet, Marilyn, Marion and the lady behind me. Bless you!

Yes, I will write it again, thank you, Clint and Marion! Families in the state of Bihar made homeless by flooding in September 2008 are going to benefit. My Indian friend Sujata Naidu has opened a coffee shop in Whitefield, Bangalore, with 100 percent of the proceeds going to the Bihar survivors. I will hand the Bingo winnings to Suja in about three weeks.

Did you hear about the horrific Bihar floods? While the US was totally preoccupied last fall with the presidential election and our crashing economy, more than three million Indian families and their villages were washed away.
Would you like to help some Indian families recover? UNICEF is one of the finest organizations working in Bihar, and will use whatever you can contribute most wisely. How about just playing some Bingo?

Live Your Truest Joy of Human Life

Since last week, the media has been drowning us in new year's resolution stories about weight loss, going back to school and making other major life changes. I just watched a commercial for chosing a career in truck driving or medical transcription, and said, "That's it! I must speak up."
Finding our life design or purpose is not about randomly selecting a job because it pays well or is near your home. Such decision making would be like eating everything on the menu until you find what you life.

I remember meeting a college freshman from Hawaii in 1974. She was painfully homesick at Adrian College, sitting in the cornfields of southeast Michigan.
"How did you choose this school? You can't afford to go home even once a year!" I asked.

"It was the first college listed in the big book," she said through her tears.

No, such random acts of blindness are unwise and dangerous. Pity the poor children who are being taught by a teacher who really doesn't like children. I endured more than one year in such a classroom.

While bike riding yesterday, I watched birds dancing along a lakeside, spending the afternoon hunting for food. How at ease and comfortable they looked in their beautiful habitat. They know what their life is about, I thought.

My late grandparents, Floretta Elmore Greeley and Dr. Hugh Payne Greeley, learned early that their lives were about service to others. In their book about living in Newfoundland, Work and Play in the Grenfell Mission, they detail traveling upwards of 25 miles on snowshoes to treat typhoid or tend to a sick newborn. What joy comes through in their stories! Recommending this newly married couple for this remote outpost assignment in 1911, Dr. Wilfred Grenfell wrote, "I do pray your generous gift of time and labor may repay you amply. It is at least giving you another taste of the truest joy of human life; that, in my estimation, is its true dignity and justification: that we put something into life to help others, which I believe is the true and only real expression of our faith in our sonship of God."

Whether we see our service as an expression of faith or an expression of love, the key is living our "truest joy of human life!"