Merry Christmas

Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas

A piece of knowledge from Sri Sri RaviShankar-ji on occasion of Christmas.

You are the Christmas tree that points upwards with branches on all sides. At the time of year when other trees are barren, you are green with many gifts to offer. - Sri Sri Ravi Shankar 

Christmas gift for the homeless

Yesterday while driving back from office I got stuck at a signal, I had barely missed the signal because the car in front of me had slowed down a lot to make the left turn. 

While I was silently cursing that car/driver and was in the process of accepting what happened, I noticed another car on my left which had a green but had stopped conspicuously. I started to wonder what was wrong with that car and then the car slowly made a right turn and stopped.  The lady sitting in the car was waving towards the homeless guy begging at the signal. My small mind was saying, "why is she waving towards the homeless?," and "doesn't she know that she is blocking the traffic?" and so on. To be fair, the traffic was fairly light and she wasn't really bothering the traffic movement. 

Once the homeless guy reached the car, it was my turn to be awed. Out of the car came a big nicely packed gift box and after asking the guys size a jacket too, I am sure she wished him merry Christmas.

I was amazed at the lady and her organization for doing this charity. 

Now I know why I was stuck at that signal for an extra 2 minutes.

Our Art of Living volunteers also took part in a similar endeavor few days before Christmas. 

Christmas at Bannockburn–snapshots of the season

This Christmas, thanks to Sandhya who has made this list of things to do during Christmas/holiday season, one of them happened to be performance at Bannockburn Church.

Considering Avni is following a new routine of sleeping at 8:00 and due to other unavoidable reasons we could only make time for the last show on Monday at 7:00PM.

If I had one word to describe the performance it would be, “wonderstruck”. The performances had people of all ages from kids to adults, the dances were extremely well choreographed, the singers had amazing voice, the lighting was just perfect, the artists were extremely talented and last but not the least the dresses they wore just lit the stage on fire.

The best part of the show for me was the myriad ways they performed for the song “Jingle bell, jingle bell … “. If I may divide the show into 2 parts, the first half was fun and joy and that was the part in which Avni had a blast and second part was performance on life of Jesus from birth to crucifixion and re-birth (after which I had to leave). Both parts were very beautiful and kudos to the production team for pulling this off with incredible precision.  

Many thanks to our Circle C ranch Facebook page and the residents who evangelized it. It was a wonderful performance and something I look forward to for next year.