This Sunday, as part of clowning, a bunch of us went to spend some time with an organization who trains people with special abilities to make incense sticks. It was a completely new experience in terms of “design” as this was our first encounter with people who cannot move.

There was a mixed feeling of openness, resistance, awkwardness in the air so we started with a circle of sharing. The people from the organization insisted on sharing about the city as they were new to this place and so some of us shared the history of the city. Gradually they also started sharing about there experience of coming to a new city and how they got a warm and welcoming response from people around them. I feel that positive experience led to their openness to say yes to total strangers because of which we got the opportunity to spend few hours with them.

Once we were done with our first sharing circle, we thought of singing our favorite songs but the participants were not comfortable singing and so they said that we will only listen and not sing. So one of the senior volunteers who is an amazing storyteller also asked me to offer a prayer. I agreed to offer a prayer with a condition that we all will offer a prayer in any form that we would like. It was amazing to see how there was a shift from resistance to surrender where everyone in the circle sang a prayer. Even the one who resisted the most gently offered a prayer without any hesitation.

We could sense that the lines of “them” and “us” was blurred soon after this and each one shared how they were feeling so much at peace. As each one experienced the power of prayers they decided to take this forward as there daily practice while they are making incense sticks each day. We all sang, “sathe ramiye.. sathe jamiye” and shared how this prayer is led by small kids every awakin’s before the meal and how each day we can find god in various forms if we have the eye and heart to embrace it in that way as we ended with, “Ghat Ghat Vasta Shree Bhagwan”.

Posted by Jaimit Vaidya on Feb 20, 2018 | permalink